Reporting Highlights
- System Failure: Eunice Whitman’s boyfriend spent seven years in jail on dangerous proof, and nobody has stood trial in her homicide.
- Misplaced Alternative: Many potential suspects may have been examined extra carefully, protection attorneys say. Doing so will get more durable annually.
- A Mild Gone: Whitman’s household nonetheless visits her grave on her birthday annually. They really feel embittered by the shortage of justice for her killer.
These highlights had been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
Marcy McDannel slid {a photograph} throughout the metal jailhouse desk to the convicted killer and watched his face for a response.
Samuel Atchak, 27 on the time, was serving 115 years for an uncommon killing. One August morning in 2014, a younger girl was discovered stabbed within the throat and chest, her physique displayed nude on the tundra on the middle of the coastal Alaska village of Chevak and her garments positioned close by. Atchak pleaded responsible to second-degree homicide and tried sexual assault in Roxanne Sensible’s loss of life.
McDannel was within the loss of life of a second younger girl, lower than 9 months later, in one other Alaska coastal neighborhood that neighbors Chevak. Eunice Whitman too was discovered stabbed within the throat and chest, her garments positioned close by and her physique displayed nude on the tundra in a well-trafficked space of Bethel. Nobody had been convicted in her loss of life.
“In case you don’t need to see it,” McDannel stated gently, “I gained’t present it to you,” in line with a recording she made.
Atchak didn’t thoughts trying on the photos, he assured her. “I’m all proper.”
McDannel remembers he didn’t flinch as he stared at a redacted printout of the crime scene photograph.
Over the course of two hours, McDannel coaxed responses from him little by little. He speculated that based mostly on the place of the physique, the killer doubtless caught the girl off guard. Perhaps stunned her from behind and strangled her, he stated, with a “rear bare chokehold,” utilizing a martial arts time period. He provided ideas about why Whitman’s physique was organized simply so, what the killer’s motive might need been, even the peak of the assassin. Might be somebody round 5’8” judging from how the assault appeared to go down, urged Atchak, 5’6”.
A former state prosecutor turned protection lawyer, McDannel thanked him for the perception and headed house.
Though she didn’t ask immediately, what she actually needed to know, in fact, was if the person throughout the desk had dedicated each killings. Atchak, one in every of greater than a dozen folks McDannel portrayed as viable suspects in court docket filings or in communications with state police, stated of their interview that he thought he remembered passing by means of Bethel across the date Whitman’s physique was discovered. State troopers later instructed McDannel that data positioned him elsewhere.
Two months earlier than the October 2022 jail go to, McDannel had helped win freedom for her former consumer, Justine Paul, whom police arrested in Whitman’s murder. Like a lot in Alaska’s justice system, the victory got here at a glacial tempo, even after bodily proof used to hyperlink Paul to the crime fell aside. He spent seven years in jail.
Although McDannel’s work as Paul’s lawyer was achieved, she discovered she couldn’t let the case go.
Somebody had killed Whitman. If not Paul, she questioned, who?
Police questioned many individuals after Paul’s arrest, asking about their whereabouts, generally requesting DNA samples, but in addition in search of usually to study Paul’s relationship with Whitman and his actions the evening she was killed.
The investigation left unresolved clues, corresponding to male DNA on Whitman’s physique that got here from somebody aside from Paul. The lab discovered no match for him, the 4 males who reported discovering the physique or a registered intercourse offender captured on safety video close by.
As for Atchak, data from state troopers and Bethel police don’t present anybody requested him concerning the case throughout the investigation, regardless of putting similarities between the Sensible and Whitman murders and regardless of media consideration they every acquired regionally.
Atchak declined two requests for an interview despatched by means of jail officers and didn’t reply to written questions delivered to him this month. His final identified lawyer additionally didn’t reply.
Bethel police introduced Paul’s arrest to the information media the day after the physique was discovered. The state went to the grand jury 11 days after the investigation started.
McDannel stated police and prosecutors may have waited till testing was achieved on the important thing bodily proof. Different attorneys stated Alaska’s authorized system may transfer instances like Paul’s much more swiftly to trial, the place the validity of proof might be judged.
Both of those prospects might need stored Paul from spending years in jail on an indictment that prosecutors in the end admitted they may not help. It may have saved the sufferer’s household from going years with out anybody being tried for her homicide. It may have led investigators to pursue extra leads whereas the case was comparatively contemporary.
The previous lead Bethel police investigator stated she continues to imagine Paul is responsible and defended the efforts of regulation enforcement. Prosecutors have stated that they and the police acted correctly throughout the investigation. The Alaska Division of Regulation, which oversees prosecutors, stated the state modified course after new info got here to mild. However the division additionally acknowledged that the time the case took was “unacceptable” and stated a number of components contributed to delays, together with prosecutor turnover.
In the present day, Alaska state police are again at sq. one. They reopened the investigation of Whitman’s loss of life this 12 months, three years after Paul’s fees had been dismissed. They stated they couldn’t focus on whether or not they have dominated out anybody as a suspect.
Whitman’s sister Heather stated she stays firmly satisfied that Paul is accountable, presumably with an confederate.
Paul may come beneath renewed scrutiny if police had been to seek out new proof that’s stronger than what prosecutors confirmed grand jurors. In response to questions, the Regulation Division left open the chance a court docket would possibly permit him to be charged once more. The division has famous that the dismissal of fees just isn’t the identical as a declaration of a defendant’s innocence.
However as with all potential suspect, in any chilly case, the passage of time has made the duty tougher.
It is a story of a state authorized system that failed each particular person it touched — particularly Eunice Whitman.
Eunice Whitman
Eunice Whitman was the youngest of six siblings. Her sister Heather known as her “the sunshine to everybody’s life.”
She was completely happy, a lover of heavy steel and home events. She grew up in Bethel, attending an area college the place the Indigenous Yup’ik language was taught. Heather named her daughter after Eunice. Now 8, the woman reminds everybody of her namesake for her silliness.
“Oooh la la,” stated little Eunice, as a server positioned a glass of Dr Pepper on the desk of a Bethel pizza parlor one latest afternoon. She sat attentively as her mom recounted the household’s historical past for a reporter. Eunice ordered a burger, heavy on the ketchup.
Heather Whitman sat beside her, her lengthy hair just lately lower. So many cut up ends, she stated. Nobody has been in a position to braid it as tightly as she likes since her sister died.
Heather and Eunice’s different surviving sister, Sarah, work at a comfort retailer on the finish of the boardwalk the place Eunice’s physique was discovered, a busy footpath crisscrossing a wetland on the middle of city. Heather stated her bed room faces that very same marshy tundra. She stated she retains the window closed and avoids the boardwalk. When town lastly positioned streetlights alongside its picket planks final 12 months, she stated, she hugged one of many building employees.
Eunice’s father declined an interview request. Sarah Whitman stated she wasn’t prepared to speak about her sister’s homicide.
Particulars of how Eunice met Justine Paul, her boyfriend of 5 months when she died, come from Paul’s mom.
Joann Paul Carl stated her son had identified Whitman since they had been youngsters. The 2 met when Whitman visited Kipnuk, a neighboring village the place Carl and Paul lived, for the Native Youth Olympics. They began relationship in January 2015. Carl stated her son was quickly speaking about proposing.
Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
The day earlier than the homicide in Could 2015, Paul was visiting Bethel. A video recovered from Paul’s telephone would present her on the boardwalk arguing with the particular person behind the digicam at 12:11 a.m., in line with state troopers. Paul instructed police the couple went separate instructions at 1 a.m. About three hours after that, a bunch of younger males reported discovering her physique as they seemed for a spot to get excessive.
The case rapidly made headlines. Radio stations and newspapers ran tales quoting police saying they discovered Whitman’s blood on Paul’s garments.
Because the years wore on, police and prosecutors launched no updates to the general public on why a case offered as open-and-shut was taking so lengthy to achieve a jury. Nothing about how the state crime lab discovered that the blood was according to DNA from Paul, not Whitman. No phrase on the state dropping the fees.
Heather Whitman stated she didn’t know the rationale for the dismissal till instructed just lately by a reporter. She stated she and her household really feel he has gotten away with homicide.
The void of protection within the native information media left a side of the case unknown to most of the people, not less than to anybody who wasn’t scouring the crimson case folder on the Bethel courthouse. Paul’s attorneys submitted court docket filings that listed others they stated may have killed Whitman.
McDannel, who took over the case in 2018, stated she got here to imagine the police had gone after the unsuitable man.
An Alleged Confession
Within the days after Whitman’s killing in 2015, the chief investigator within the case spoke with a person named Kyle Jones, who’d identified the sufferer since childhood.
Paul had instructed police he bumped into Jones the evening of the killing — on the boardwalk, round 3 or 4 a.m. It was after Paul final noticed Whitman, based mostly on what Paul instructed police, however earlier than dispatchers took the decision reporting the physique.
Talking to the lead detective, Bethel Sgt. Amy Davis, Jones confirmed Paul’s account of what occurred once they crossed paths. Jones stated Paul instructed him he was out in search of his girlfriend, the investigator’s write-up exhibits.
Each males had been within the neighborhood of the crime scene across the presumed time of Whitman’s loss of life.
Davis stated she handled just one, Paul, as a suspect as a result of she noticed nothing additional to point Jones did one thing unsuitable. Paul had blood on his clothes and footwear with a tread that Davis thought resembled prints on the crime scene.
In 2019, McDannel filed a court docket movement saying Jones had “admitted to killing Eunice Whitman to a different particular person whereas crying and intoxicated.” McDannel instructed the Anchorage Each day Information and ProPublica that the particular person was Jones’ aunt, who’d approached her with the knowledge. The newsrooms’ makes an attempt to contact the aunt by telephone and e mail had been unsuccessful.
Jones had a documented historical past of violence on the boardwalk by the point of the submitting.
In 2011, Jones was charged with felony assault within the beating of a lady he encountered on the walkway. He finally pleaded responsible. 5 years later, virtually precisely a 12 months after Whitman’s loss of life and in almost the identical spot, he was accused of stabbing a person twice within the facet. Jones pleaded responsible to felony assault in that case too.
In two latest interviews at an Anchorage jail, Jones admitted to prior violence just like the assaults in 2011 and 2016 on the boardwalk. However he by no means killed anybody, together with Whitman, he stated.
“If I’ve a physique, I’ll declare it,” Jones stated from behind thick glass.
Throughout the first interview, he was awaiting trial on fees of violating a protecting order filed by his ex-wife and of unlawful contact with a sufferer. He had pleaded not responsible. By the point of the second interview, two weeks later, he’d been charged with an extra 20 counts of illegally contacting a sufferer. He pleaded not responsible to these fees as nicely.
Jones stated the drunken “confession” that Paul’s lawyer wrote about in court docket wasn’t about homicide in any respect. Jones stated he instructed his aunt throughout a automobile experience that he felt liable for Whitman’s loss of life. He instructed a reporter he believed on the time that Paul killed Whitman out of jealousy of her longtime friendship with Jones.
By coincidence, Jones and Paul shared a cell in Bethel’s small-town jail for a number of weeks in 2016. Paul was awaiting trial for Whitman’s homicide, Jones for the latest stabbing in the identical location.
Jones seen that Paul had drawn an image of his girlfriend and written “R.I.P.,” which he hung within the cell. At some point, as the boys performed playing cards, Paul stood up and quietly set about making espresso. There was one thing about the way in which Paul moved. The way in which he didn’t need to struggle.
Jones stated a realization struck him: “This man, I don’t suppose he did it.”
After McDannel filed her court docket movement saying Jones confessed, Bethel police reexamined the previous proof that had by no means been defined: the unidentified male DNA recovered from Whitman’s physique. The state crime lab in contrast it with Jones’ DNA. Like different samples earlier than, it was not a match.
However Jones wasn’t the one particular person McDannel had listed as a possible suspect in court docket filings. (The court docket didn’t rule on the validity of the filings as a result of the case didn’t go to trial.)
Police ought to have handled no fewer than 12 folks as suspects of “greater curiosity” than Paul, in line with a report written by protection witness Gregory Cooper. The founding father of the Chilly Case Basis, Cooper is listed on the nonprofit’s web site as a former performing unit chief for the FBI’s behavioral science unit. All of the folks described within the report had been seen within the neighborhood or had encountered the sufferer earlier, he wrote.
These included an ex-boyfriend Whitman had named in a restraining order the 12 months earlier than. He instructed police he had an alibi. He has since died. One other man managed the close by comfort retailer and instructed police Whitman texted him round 2:30 a.m., which was 90 minutes earlier than her physique was reported discovered. He instructed police he overheard the couple arguing, an announcement he repeated to the grand jury. He too is now useless.
The protection later added yet another identify to the persons-of-interest record: a person who fought with Paul days earlier than Whitman’s homicide. Per week after she died, he had her telephone in his possession and a bandage on his hand, in line with police experiences.
The person instructed police his girlfriend, who was mates with Whitman, discovered the telephone on the couple’s house “the opposite day.” His girlfriend corroborated discovering it to the police. The person handed it over to Davis. He instructed her the bandage was as a result of a canine bit him.
The person didn’t reply to texts and telephone calls from the newsrooms or to an e mail asking to debate the murder case and his interactions with police.
Davis, in discussions with the Each day Information and ProPublica this 12 months, rejected the chance that anybody aside from Paul may have killed Whitman. “We had the precise particular person in jail,” she stated.
It’s the protection’s job, she added later by e mail, to “current different theories regardless of how ridiculous they’re. They need to current doubt.”
The Earlier Killing
Ultimately, Paul’s protection attorneys didn’t want to indicate a jury different suspects. Prosecutors allowed the fees to be dropped in 2022 after the protection famous in court docket that the important thing bodily proof had not delivered on what prosecutors promised.
But McDannel, who stated she believed in his innocence, wasn’t completed. She stated she needed to clear her former consumer’s identify.
Simply two weeks after his launch, an investigator working for McDannel ran throughout a newspaper story that stopped her chilly. It described a stabbing case that concerned a younger girl within the village of Chevak 9 months earlier than Whitman died.
The physique of 19-year-old Roxanne Sensible was discovered by a passerby the morning of Aug. 27, 2014, in line with Alaska State Troopers. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed within the groin, stomach and throat. Along with having her bloody garments eliminated and set close by like Whitman’s, her physique was additionally discovered with legs outstretched.
Individuals had seen a younger man named Samuel Atchak behaving unusually close to the homicide scene. Troopers obtained a DNA pattern from him a month later after he tried overdosing on ache drugs and was positioned in a jail cell for his personal safety. Six months after that, on March 31, 2015, the state crime lab linked Atchak’s DNA to proof on the scene.
Atchak confessed when troopers confronted him on July 24, 2015, in line with their report. “I stunned her from behind,” he defined to the troopers. “Her final phrases had been, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ after which she blacked out.”
McDannel’s investigator positioned Atchak’s actions on her timeline: The date of Whitman’s killing in close by Bethel got here whereas Atchak was beneath investigation however nonetheless strolling free. What’s extra, the investigator was in a position to hint Atchak’s whereabouts to Anchorage simply 5 days after Whitman died, and he or she knew the one flight from Chevak to Anchorage stops in Bethel.
The similarities appeared to have eluded police. Davis, the Bethel sergeant who led the Whitman homicide investigation, instructed ProPublica and the Each day Information she was unfamiliar with Sensible’s homicide. State troopers declined to say whether or not they thought of the 2 murders presumably related again then.
McDannel’s investigator instructed her boss about Atchak. They agreed they wanted to listen to from the person.
The pair drove two hours to the state jail in Seward, beating the primary snowstorm of 2022.
McDannel took her time after Atchak walked into the room. She started by telling him about Paul and the killing he was accused of committing in Bethel. She made small speak about folks Atchak knew in Bethel, how usually he traveled there.
The younger man described his life earlier than Sensible’s homicide. A troublesome childhood with a pores and skin situation that made him a goal for teasing. Anger at his mother and father.
McDannel slowly steered the dialogue to Whitman’s homicide, exploring what sounded to the lawyer like echoes of Sensible’s killing. She requested Atchak what occurred with Sensible. Atchak stated he thought they had been going to have intercourse, after which she turned him down.
Based mostly on his personal expertise, did Atchak suppose Whitman’s killer might need had the identical motive? Was the person offended? There have been so many stab wounds, together with to the neck.
“It’s one of the best, like quickest method to let somebody die,” Atchak responded. “That’s what I feel. Like a slit throat. That’s what I’m considering. The opposite stabs to the physique, most likely the anger that was most likely of their thoughts.”
Though McDannel by no means requested Atchak throughout the interview whether or not he killed Whitman, the lawyer hinted at it. Atchak stated he thought he remembered stopping in Bethel on Could 23 or 24, which was the weekend of Whitman’s loss of life, however stated he by no means left the airport.
McDannel stated she and her investigator had their doubts.
They got here away with an odd choice for a protection group. They approached regulation enforcement with the knowledge that they had obtained. They hoped it would immediate the state crime lab to verify the unidentified male DNA on Whitman’s physique in opposition to Atchak’s. Troopers thanked them for the tip.
However on Dec. 11, 2023, Trooper Investigator Dugger Prepare dinner wrote McDannel to say the state had taken a glance and dominated out Atchak based mostly on “search warrants for journey and medical data.” Troopers didn’t present her with the paperwork they stated supported their conclusion. The company instructed the Each day Information and ProPublica it could possibly’t speak about potential suspects or proof that may exist within the case.
With out seeing the data, McDannel stated, she didn’t imagine the alibi. Atchak’s personal description of his travels throughout his interview along with her put him doubtlessly on the town, not less than briefly, close to when Whitman was killed. However she was out of choices. She was formally off the case.
New Eyes on the Investigation
One other 12 months handed.
Then, this previous January, one thing modified.
Antonia Commack, an advocate for murdered and lacking Indigenous folks, posted a video to TikTok and Fb reviving questions on Whitman’s unsolved homicide. Viewers flooded the Bethel Police Division afterward with telephone calls urging motion.
For many individuals, it wasn’t about discovering a brand new suspect. Within the absence of media protection concerning the causes prosecutors dropped fees in opposition to Paul, the general public needed to know why he was strolling free.
In March, Bethel police requested the state troopers’ Lacking and Murdered Indigenous Individuals unit to take over the investigation.
The pinnacle of the unit, Lawrence Piscoya, stated in a Could interview that detectives had begun their work contemporary. Whitman’s homicide was one in every of six chilly instances the unit was engaged on on the time.
“We now have to start out on Web page 1 and go to the tip, and there’s fairly a bit on this case,” Piscoya stated. “There’s lots to know and lots to investigate earlier than we start getting boots on the bottom.”
The Division of Public Security wouldn’t touch upon previous e mail exchanges by which McDannel urged additional investigation of Atchak. The lacking and murdered individuals unit has not solved a chilly case murder since its creation in 2022.
Davis, the previous Bethel detective who investigated Whitman’s murder, now works in Fairbanks. She known as it “a kind of instances the place I’ll without end lose sleep about.”
Davis stays satisfied that checks past these achieved on Paul’s bloody denims and shirt would have related him to the sufferer. However there may be one factor that she and Paul’s protection group would agree about.
It took far too lengthy.
“Perhaps it’s like no single particular person’s fault that this occurred,” Davis stated. “However this case simply sat on so many individuals’s desks and no person actually checked out it. The DA’s workplace there will get a lot turnover. Each time I rotated it was going to a distinct lawyer.”
The state Regulation Division conceded in an announcement that “retaining skilled prosecutors, notably in rural Alaska, has lengthy been a big and ongoing problem.” The company stated it’s taking steps to stabilize staffing.
Requested whether or not officers have a system to make sure defendants don’t wait years for decision when massive holes seem within the proof, the Regulation Division stated it constantly reevaluates each case for proof past cheap doubt.
It cited for instance the eventual choice to let Paul’s prosecution come to an finish.
Heather Whitman stated if troopers are actively investigating the homicide once more, that’s information to the household. She stated nobody has interviewed her, Sarah or their father, George Whitman Jr., about their final conversations with Eunice.
In response, the company stated in an announcement: “We acknowledge the profound loss skilled by Eunice Whitman’s household and perceive their want for solutions. Out of respect for the household and the integrity of the investigation, we is not going to publicly focus on the timing or substance of communications with relations whereas this investigation stays lively.”
After Whitman died, the household left her bite-sized cupcakes on the former crime scene, Heather Whitman stated. Vanilla and chocolate.
“Actually don’t need to overlook you,” her father wrote on her Fb web page, a day after the seventh anniversary of her loss of life.
Her birthday was Dec. 14. This 12 months, she would have turned 34. Her daughters baked an additional chocolatey cake in her reminiscence. Half they ate that afternoon, her sister stated, and half they saved for later.
