Dean Moon was 19 and a deckhand aboard the 58-foot salmon seiner Investor when the boat tied up in Craig, Alaska, over Labor Day weekend in 1982. In the early hours after the vessel came ashore, everyone aboard was shot and the killer tried to erase the crime by setting the Investor on fire. On September 7, 1982, townspeople spotted the burning vessel off Fish Egg Island; when the flames were extinguished, the remains of eight people, including Moon, were recovered.

Witnesses reported seeing a lone young man piloting the Investor’s skiff back toward Craig and later returning to shore in a calm, deliberate way. Locals also recalled a slight-built man in a baseball cap with a pockmarked complexion buying gasoline that morning, fuel believed to have been used to torch the boat. Those sightings became central to the investigation after the fire and tide destroyed much physical evidence.

A former crewman, John Kenneth Peel, was arrested and charged in 1984; his first trial in 1986 ended in a mistrial and a second trial in 1988 resulted in acquittal on all counts. With no conviction, the killings remain officially unsolved.

If anyone remembered the skiff, the gasoline purchase, or other movements around Craig that Labor Day weekend, please share what is known.