Goodbye To All This

Olga Klietzing’s box camera. Olga grew up on the Lucky Me homestead outside of Juneau.

Olga Klietzing’s box camera. Olga grew up on the Lucky Me homestead outside of Juneau.

You rarely hear anyone say, “Man, I wish I brought a camera!” anymore. This is the age of immediate documentation of experience. Olga Klietzing was born around 1904, Her brother was Able Anderson. She was one of the first women boat operators in southeastern Alaska, at first she ran a little gas boat back and forth from Juneau to Tennakee. Then she fished for salmon. She claimed to me that she was the first woman to fish her own boat alone. She started sometime in the mid thirties. She told me when she did it caused quite a fuss because she said, “all the men and their wives thought they weren’t going to be able to hang them selves out of their pants and pee over the side of the boat.” It didn’t seem to be an insurmountable problem… nor had it been for the men who had taken their wife’s with them fishing for years before that. There was just something about a woman running her own boat, fishing independently for fish that caused the scandal to come up. Olga admitted it was just “ridiculous” she herself peed in a bucket and stayed well enough away from the other trollers to not catch site of anything “scandalous” on deck and that problem faded. The issue of independent women overtaking the fishery didn’t raise its head until later in the seventies but by then, again it didn’t seem to be much of a problem but a welcome change when everyone was anchored up at night and the women would often have brownies with marijuana baked into them.

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But the point being… change is always happening but we turn our mind to it more in the change from summer to fall than from any other two seasons, at least I do and I always have. Fall always meant going back to school and I saw the dinner before school started as akin to the Last Supper. Except there was no rising. No hope of resurrection.

As a fan of traditional haiku every season and every shift of almost every week has its own distinct emotional corollary. Early plum blossoms of May have the feel of the first hint of infatuation where the late plum blossom of mid-June indicates the full throated expression of erotic intention. Where the “rotten plum spiked on yellow grass” of late August/ early September represents the sadness of a romance which has been spent and gone wrong. So, as I have grown older this time of year brings with it a feeling of cheating death. Maybe that’s why I’ve liked living here in that all the seasons feel like fall and I am always cheating death, and every day I has that autumnal feel of melancholy joi de vivre. Here the fires are banked down and the dreams are inner. The magic comes deep within as the story tellers voice. This is what I think of as the magic of the northern voice that turns on this kind of change, this kind of weather the long day to the long night, warm to cool. Darkness with the fire popping up to the stars. Daylight with the bugs humming all around you. The mind is bifurcated. Unlike the magic realism of South American writers where ghosts float up into the world, in the north the mind chases down into the underworld, where Grendel can be tempted out.

And it all begins now, as the earth tilts north away from the sun.

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What monster lies here

buried under yellow grass,

my love, my grieving?

jus

Here is a recording of me reading the first chapter from Ed Lin’s “Ghost Month” which is a lunar month which includes August in Taiwan, when there spirits of the dead visit the living. It is a wonderful crime novel.

This morning started off foggy with rain, like waking up inside of a summer cloud. Then the sun burned through for several hours and the cloud closed down by late afternoon. We saw blue skies after lunch but by three thirty it felt likes south eastern wind and rain were gathering us up in a quilt: a humid quilt. A man on the radio said we were at the peek of the summer green foliage and “from here on out the trees would be turning towards autumn.” It was the FM radio station.

The Alder leaves are starting to curl and some are turning yellow. Some of the vines in the underbrush are wilting down and will soon be mulch. Spider webs are plentiful everywhere and in the morning they are heavy with moisture and sag with pearls. The wind through the trees carries a scent of moldy rot. Our potted plants hold on to their flowers but the flowers are clearly weakening their grip. Late summer: turning to fall. Like a middle age man turning to fat. Not me, you understand… not unless I get to live to a hundred and seventy one.

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My Dear, I Know Nothing Of Either...

Rain again, not hard, just enough to make it seem okay to stay at my desk. The plants in the flower pots seem weary and having a hard time holding up even the small flowers. Salmon berries, those that haven’t been picked or eaten by the crows, are soft and moulding on the stems. Soon enough the Fireweed will be gone to seed and their fluff will float out over the tideflat and around the yard. My phone still rings unexpectedly with people wanting to talk about the cold case murder that was apparently all wrapped up this week. (it happened while I recording this morning.)

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My office is warm and cozy today. I am so lucky to have a place to work. I owe so much to Jan. She used parts of her inheritance to get this built for me. We had an old shed here that was built from salvaged material. The shed was serviceable, but it had begun to leak and the wiring was a bit shaky, so that to work here you often had to choose between heat and lights.

The shack had served as a overflow shelter in a storm for many people in our community. Nels lived here when between relationships. It was sometimes known as Heartbreak Hotel, before we owned it. But now it is solid, warm and full of books and memorabilia.

I had published some 8 books by the time I had a proper space of my own. I had rented a float house downtown on the channel for several years where I did investigations and writing, and I have to say I love having a place to write. My work habits are akin to a frozen up locomotive (as I think I’ve written about before) It takes a lot of warming up to get this machine of my brain thawed out and running. I’m trying to get these blog posts down to two and a half hours. ( I know… that seems like a long time for these little things) But I’m a grinder…. and that 2.5 doesn’t include the set aside time where I have to come back and find the typos. My dyslexia makes it so I cannot see the difference between a misspelled word or a correctly spelled word. Often after a day they will pop out at me so I am proof reading and making changes all week long on the previous weeks entries.

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But that’s not the point… this is about my good fortune in having a dedicated place to write. I fill this space with my imagination; My books live in here and my blog and correspondence. I still write letters to a few other writers, just for the physical intimacy of writing letters, sending mementoes, physical objects, ephemera (one of my favorite words) back and forth. I don’t keep a particularly neat office. I did a TV interview once and I spent two days cleaning up and when they came from CBS to shoot in my office the producer and the cameraman, said. “Can we add some clutter? Mess is more interesting.” That’s all they had to say to change my life. I try to keep it clean and organized enough so I can find the things I need when I need them. Essentially, this was Ed Rickets rule for child rearing: “We must have fun every day. To do that we need to eat good food to be healthy and have energy, and we must be tidy enough to find what we need to keep having fun or else we waste to much time looking for things.”

But again… I digress… Although I know I am blessed to have a space like this. (Jan now has an office at the University and one at home.)The point I want to make is that the work fills and space. The space doesn’t create the work.

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I have talked with a lot of people who want to write and often it comes back to, “If I only had more space.” or “If I only had an place like yours or an office of my own.” Well… yes. I am lucky and that’s probably why I’ve never applied for residency at a writers retreat. I rolled the dice on my career choices and every move I have made was so that I could come back to this specific spot on the beach near Old Sitka Rocks. But the place didn’t make me a writer. Writing made me a writer. Reading and the ability to take a punch helped. That means listening to criticism and incorporating it into my work by keeping writing no matter what. It is as simple and as hard as that.

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I know you have heard it all before: Steven King wrote Carrie on an Ironing board. Marilyn Robinson wrote Housekeeping with one hand while her baby was clawing at her hair. Yadda yada… it’s all hard. But then again, Michael Chabon sold his College essay for a hundred thousand bucks and probably always had a pretty good place to work. But he might just be a one in a million natural, or he just knew who he was and what he wanted to do.

Why am I telling you this? Because someone just yesterday just told me that I’m the luckiest guy in the world to do what I do… sure…I am lucky, but she was implying that she would be doing the same thing but I must have sucked up all of the good luck around here. Listen, no one knows how to encourage good luck really…. we try and we might have some good rituals: like finishishing what we start, or just write a certain number of words a day. But truthfully I know nothing of either talent or luck, I just love the world and want to stay engaged with it. Talking about what I hear, see, smell and think makes me want to stay alive. That’s it and it is a solitary sport that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails, and that’s why it’s better that I be sequestered off somewhere by myself so that others don’t have to hear me squawk when it all seems wrong…. or when it goes right and I become unbearable.


Fog so thick the gulls

float like chips of ice on the

surface of the sea.

jhs



The photographs are a 360 of the interior of my office on this rainy day. The two photos are one of Jan the year we met and one of my dad taken in his New York office in the late sixties. I really should put away some books.


Here are two recordings I made from reading two poems of W.H. Auden. I was interrupted by a phone call and screwed up the recording and I’m up against my time limit. Play the top one first, but the two poems are on the bottom one.

The two Auden poems are both about water and I love them both.

Dog Parks And Politics

Sun today and lovely. I will mow the lawn as soon as the tall grass dries out, There is a warm wind blowing from the northwest here and it is doing a good job but high clouds are also coming in so there might not be much time before the next rain. The small flowers in the meadow of our yard love the climate here, We should be raising goats, but the yard is to small for Dot to herd them, and the goats would all end up in the house or on top of our car.

Our yard this morning. Chairs still in storm mode.

Our yard this morning. Chairs still in storm mode.

It was another day for Jan’s physical therapy, and after we dropped her off there Dot and I went to the Dog park for our second visit. Our first visit we met Tom and Tesla. Tom is a nice human who says he reads this blog and is the friend of Tesla who is a very beautiful combination of golden retriever and border collie. When I say beautiful, I really mean it. She is black and fine featuered, has the coat of a retriever, and super watchful eyes. Tesla seems to be the most experienced dog park dog. She seems to get along with everybody.

Dot and I had been listening to the news on the way into town. Jan was doing something else on her phone as she always seems to be doing: emails to colleagues or texts to far off institutions. Travel in the car used to be good time for us to converse but iPhones took care of that, so Dot and I listen to NPR now and digest the news of the day before butt sniffing at the dog park.

Of course the big news is Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his VP candidate. Of course the internet is alive with opinions and the amateur punditry class, which it seems I am a part of now, is alive with discussion of her qualities and the wisdom of Biden’s choice and of her abilities.

Back at the dog park when we arrived we were the first couple on scene. We wandered around the outfield. I was happy because I wasn’t sure how Dot was feeling after her operation. She looked good and she was not draining any more bloody discharge from the drain the doctors left in her head. She had taken her one pain pill in the morning but she was lively. She pooped and I picked it up in the provided bags and we chased brown moths around just past the third base line. Then after about then minutes three other couples showed up. All pretty pure breeds two spanial looking dogs, one other boarder collie retriever mix (who knew they were such a thing?) and a really sporty looking dog with a hot dog looking tail that had a beautiful red coat. Each of their owners told me the name of the breed but I can’t remember them now because they were complicated words that I had never heard before.

Each owner talked nervously about their dogs… it seemed to me like they talked a lot about their dogs as if they them selves were being judged. Was I judging them? Probably….but not harshly, they all seemed lovely to me, and happy. If not a little hyped up. Dot had played well with Tesla and the other dogs the first day we came. This day Dot stood right by my leg like a little kid on her first day at a new school. Then she run out and chase around with the other dogs and back right to me. I thought it was all adorable.

I like Kamala Harris. I think she is a forceful speaker and I like how she questioned people who came before the Intelligence committee. She seems tough, smart, and experienced in the workings of the government. I’m not sure what she will really do as a Vice President because Vice Presidents rarely have a lot of influence. But with an old guy like Joe Biden it seems like a good idea to have someone who is ready to be President from Jump Street some one like Kamala Harris is a good idea.

I was happy and oblivious at the dog park too. Even when the pretty red dog with the hot dog tail started barking and freaking out at Dot. Dot barked back and lunged out at the much smaller dog but then right back to me. Dot looked like she would be happy to wrestle or mix it up with the red dog but the red dog was more upset than that, and that scared Dot and she hid behind me. I thought, “Just let them work it out,” as long as they don’t start fighting and Dot doesn’t rip her incision open which didn’t seem likely the way she was acting. But soon the red dogs owners were leaving the park and they seemed a bit shaken, disappointed.

But here is the deal. In these early moments almost all of the couples, human and canine were scared shitless of Dot. Here I was loving my dog and thinking she’s adorable, and others are perceiving her as some kind of “FrankenDot” who looks like a slobbering killer Rottweiler put together in a lab. She is by far the largest dog there, she was slobbery, with a horrible scar across her face and she looks like a Rottweiler dancing around on drugs. Which, is kind of fair.

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The point is this: political opinions are like our dogs on a leash. They are projections of ourselves, the problem with this is that we all have an image of what we are projecting and then we have the reality of what we are actually projecting to some people who are not “us.” Take me for instance, I think Dot is a sweet and slobbery goofball and I would swear out an affidavit to attest to that certainty. But the red dog with the hot dog tail saw her as an existential threat and he communicated that to his owners and my caviler demeanor must have seemed like indifference to their very survival. No body is to blame. We just needed more time to play nice and get along.

Reading the internet about the different opinions about Ms. Harris, why do I feel that in America today there are active forces at work that do not want us to take the time to play nice and get along.

My political opinion is not going to kill your dog.

Dot thinks she is Michael Jordan, sticking her tongue out like this.

Dot thinks she is Michael Jordan, sticking her tongue out like this.


The Fireweed blossoms

are going to seed today,

and I still love you.


Here is a recording of me reading from the beginning of a fine book by Bonnie Sue Hitchcock: The Smell Of Other People’s Houses.

The Mill Of Justice Grinding

Today’s blog is a little different in that I spent most of the morning dealing with the news of an old criminal case I was peripherally involved in. Here is the Troopers extended statement.

 Baggen murder cold case closed after DNA match

Tuesday, August 11th, 2020 1:50pm

Sitka, Alaska (KINY) - Alaska State Troopers and the Sitka Police Department have announced the closure of the Jessica Baggen murder cold case.

Steve Branch, 66 of Austin, Arkansas, the suspect in the sexual assault and murder of Baggen, killed himself on Aug. 3, after denying to investigators that he had any knowledge of the crime and refusing to provide a DNA sample for comparison to the DNA collected on the scene 24 years ago.

Investigators, after securing a search warrant, collected Branch’s DNA during his autopsy.

On Monday, Aug. 10, the State of Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage confirmed Branch's DNA matched the suspect DNA found on Jessica and at the scene.

Jessica disappeared in the early morning hours of May 4, 1996. She just turned 17 the day before and was visiting with a friend and her sister at her sister’s residence, when she decided to walk home alone, which was about a mile away. Her parents woke the next morning to find that she never made it back. Jessica’s father reported her missing to Sitka Police Department in the early morning hours of May 5th; he returned to Sitka PD later the same evening to confirm that she still hadn’t returned home nor had any known contact with friends or family.

Sitka PD mobilized the local search and rescue team.  They focused their efforts in the wooded area west of the Indian River, between the campus of Sheldon Jackson College and Sawmill Creek Road.  Soon a shirt, later identified as the one Jessica was wearing when she was last seen alive, was located. Jessica was found dead less than two hours later; it was May 6. Jessica was left discarded and hastily buried in a hollowed-out area beneath the trunk of a large fallen tree, approximately 70 feet off the bike path which paralleled Sawmill Creek Road. Most of her clothing and belongings were found in the immediate area, as well.

Nine days after Jessica was discovered deceased, a man confessed to her sexual assault and murder. While there was plenty of circumstantial evidence, it was determined months later that none of the physical evidence collected from the crime scene connected the suspect to the actual crime. The man went to trial for Jessica’s sexual assault and murder in early 1997 and was found not guilty on all charges; the hunt for Jessica’s killer, the man with the matching DNA, went on.

Despite years of investigation by Sitka PD, with occasional assistance from the Alaska State Troopers, and a private investigation commissioned by Jessica’s family, the case remained unsolved.  More than 100 potential suspects were cleared through DNA comparison and the trail went cold.

In 2007, with the original Sitka police officer that investigated the killing serving as the lieutenant that oversaw the Alaska State Troopers Cold Case Investigation Unit, the investigative efforts into Jessica’s sexual assault and murder were vigorously renewed.

“Every retired officer seems to have that one case that they can’t let go—that just haunts them. This case was mine,” said now-retired Lt. Dave Tugmon. “I walked into the captain’s office with the file and I told him we had to take on Jessica’s case.”

Years of potential leads ended with DNA comparisons clearing suspect after suspect, forcing investigators to pour over the files looking for new angles. In September of 2018, the CCIU and Sitka PD discussed utilizing a new forensic DNA procedure called Genetic Genealogy. 

After reviewing the DNA evidence in the case, the State of Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory determined there was sufficient DNA from evidence collected from the original investigation to generate a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) profile. The suspect DNA was submitted to Parabon Nanolabs a few weeks later.

In February 2019, a SNP-DNA profile was developed and uploaded into public genealogy databases. By the end of the year, after months of genealogical research, a new suspect emerged: Steve Branch. Investigators established that Branch lived in Sitka at the time of Jessica’s murder. The CCIU also learned that in March of 1996, Sitka PD investigated Branch for sexually assaulting another teenaged woman. He was indicted and arrested for the incident in June of 1996, but he was subsequently acquitted after a trial in 1997.  

Branch moved from Sitka to Arkansas in 2010 and took up permanent residency. In January 2020, the CCIU reached out to the Arkansas State Police (ASP) and requested assistance.  For weeks, ASP unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a discarded DNA sample from Branch. In the Spring of 2020, Sitka PD was able to obtain a discarded DNA sample from a relative of Branch. Kinship DNA analysis completed in May of 2020, determined that Steve Branch was most likely the source of the suspect DNA found on Jessica’s clothing and body.

In early August, investigators from the Alaska Bureau of Investigation traveled to Arkansas. On Aug. 3, 2020, investigators made a preliminary contact with Branch at his residence to question him and obtain a DNA sample in order to positively confirm he was the source of the suspect DNA. Branch denied any involvement in the homicide case and refused to voluntarily provide a DNA sample.  

Investigators left the residence to apply for a search warrant, as well as interview other witnesses who also lived in Arkansas.  The plan was to secure a DNA sample directly from Branch after getting the search warrant and to take Branch into custody following a positive DNA match. However, approximately a half-hour after the investigators departed, Branch shot himself. The Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office investigated the incident and uncovered overwhelming evidence that Branch took his own life.

“For over 24 years, investigators have vigorously pursued leads in hopes of resolving this incident. What ultimately solved this case was the tireless efforts of two genealogists, one with Parabon and the other with the Alaska Department of Public Safety, Criminal Intelligence Analyst Patty Busby, who finally pointed the investigators in the right direction,” said Inv. Randy McPherron, Cold Case Investigation Unit.  With the help of several civic-minded private citizens who voluntarily uploaded their DNA profiles into public genealogy databases like GEDmatch and FTDNA and then authorize their profiles to be accessible to law enforcement, the genealogists were able to piece together a very complex family tree that eventually exposed Branch as Jessica’s killer.  I am very grateful to have played a small role in this investigation and to bring closure to Jessica’s family and the community of Sitka.”        
 
The Alaska State Troopers and the Sitka Police Department would also like to thank the Arkansas State Police, Company A, Criminal Investigation Division; the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission; the FBI Little Rock, AR Field Office; the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in Virginia; and, personnel in the forensic biology section of the Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, for their assistance with the investigation.    

“While nothing will ease the pain or bring Jessica back, I am humbled and proud of the work that many law enforcement professionals did over the years to bring closure to her family and friends. They never forgot about Jessica or the people that loved her,” said Commissioner Amanda Price, Department of Public Safety. “Each cold case represents a victim and a family that is grieving while awaiting justice. Each case, no matter how old, matters to us.”

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My Thoughts on Today’s Development In The Jessica Baggen Murder Case

 

This article has more detailed information than the initial press release.  I hope this new development brings some comfort to the Baggen's family, who surely seem to have suffered horribly at the hands of Mr. Branch.

 Jessica’s rape and murder was a seismic event in Sitka. The Memorial walk through the park where her body was found was the largest outdoor demonstration of support for a cause or a family that I ever remember in my 45 years here. This was a different kind of crime for us. A stranger rape and murder just does not happen but it did and to a well known and well liked family. All of us took this event personally we couldn’t imagine thinking we lived in a place where such a thing could happen. The impulse to solve the crime was intense. Her body was found close to the Trooper Academy and the top forensic scientists were doing an expert job in processing the scene, and indeed it was science that finally solved the case.

But In all Lt. Tugmon's  self congratulations, I would like the Police and the Troopers to recognize that they sat by and ruined the life of Richard Bingham by following through with his prosecution and trial after they coerced a confession out of him, when they surely knew they had the wrong guy after the lab results came back.  Bingham, was an unsophisticated, illiterate young alcoholic who went to the police thinking he was going to help them with the investigation. He didn't know anything about the crime that any other person who had followed the news or listened to the gossip knew.  He had seen Jessica walking down the street and noticed that she looked "pretty" later they found out that his DNA did not match the foreign DNA martial found on her body and clothes.  But there in the Sitka PD interview room without a lawyer and hours of questioning he finally came to the point of saying "Well if you guys say I did it while I was drunk and blacked out, then I must have."  They tore apart everything he owned, and found nothing tying him to the crime. He had no significant criminal history, bur they took him to trial for her rape and murder based on his statement where they assured him it would be better for him to “get everything off his chest, and people often do things they wouldn’t normally do when they’re drunk…. if you did this and you were sober you would be a monster, I don’t think you are a monster, Rich? Are you?” And that became “No I’m not a monster, Yes I was drunk around that time, If I did it I must have been blacked out and don’t remember… to finally… well… I must have done it if you guys all say so.” This is how most false confessions go. Get the defendant to buy into a false choice and work on them to choose the most palatable, that you are a good guy who made a mistake under bad circumstances. The interviewer uses their own body language to pressure them, to make the room smaller and keep them answering questions they don’t know really know the answers to. Unsophisticated people think they can help by talking… but your options gets smaller and smaller until you have no other choice but too confess.

 Now we all think we are smarter than that.  We can't imagine that we wouldn't march out of a police station with righteous indignation if we were accused of something we didn't do.  There are great clean confessions that happen every day. But if you are a certain kind of person, it’s not difficult to get a false confession out of you: if you have memory problems, or if police just frighten you because you have problems with authority, maybe you have been abused by a father? You have a shitty upbringing and try a small lie just hoping ro our get out of the room quickly Then if you lie… the interviewer will beat you over the head with that small lie and you may compound it with another because you are tired/ scared/ guilty of some small shit (pot in your coat pocket) or because of neurological problems caused by a lifetime of beatings, or drug and alcohol abuse. Then lets not forger that we are not all dealt the same hand in life.  Some people, particularly those with black out periods, and some who feel deep shame, for whatever reason, not being able to read or not being terribly successful in life.  Not having a girlfriend or just being a bum and wanting to make it up by helping the police, they will go down that road and offer themselves up rather than forcefully telling an officer, "No. I want to talk to a lawyer now."  Police know this. They train on this. They know they need corroborating evidence to take a person to trial. That's why Richard should have put an end to the interview by asking for a lawyer. He should have stopped talking and said, “I want my lawyer right now” as soon as they took him back into the room.  If he had Alaska Law Enforcement may have not wasted so much time on taking him to trial and tooting their own horns for catching him and spent more time on the killer of Jessica Baggan who was right under their noses committing another rape before Richard Bingham’s trial. 

 Luckily Rich Bingham got a great public defender in Galen Paine and the perfect investigator in Susan Phillips and he was acquitted.  He moved away, but he was continually harassed and his life was threatened,  Where ever he went he was called into the local police station and told he was being watched and was reminded that essentially, they knew he was the guy who "got away with murder."  But he didn't.  He was innocent.

 

So, like others, I'm glad for the Baggen family, I hope they have some comfort today.  I'm grateful for the scientists and the Genetic Genealogists who finally solved this case. But I'm also happy for Richard Bingham and his family, and hope they can lift their heads a little higher and I would like to hear a little more humility through all of the horn blowing of the Alaska Law Enforcement community today.  

 

Respectfully, 

John Straley