Leland E Hale

Alaska Airline Captain Robert Pfeil was the scion of an Alaskan pioneer family. His sister Muriel was a winner in her own right. Owner of Alaska's most successful travel agency, routinely voted one of the best dressed women in Anchorage, she was worldly in a city better known for its sourdoughs and roughnecks. On September 30, 1976, a vehicle explosion rocked downtown Anchorage. When the dust settled, Muriel Pfeil was trapped in the driver's seat. Dead. Her brother immediately blamed Neil Mackay, Muriel's estranged ex-husband-a multi-millionaire lawyer and real estate mogul. Robert Pfeil knew the motive: Mackay wanted custody of the couple's only son, three-year-old Scotty. Pfeil acted quickly, snatching up Scotty, intent on spiriting him away from his reclusive father. That worked for a while. After young Scotty was kidnapped by his father, however, Robert Pfeil led a global chase to retrieve him. A chase that ultimately ended with Robert Pfeil's tragic death at the hands of contract killers.

On a foggy afternoon in September of 1982 the Investor, a salmon fishing vessel, was engulfed in flames near the tiny village of Craig, Alaska. All efforts to stop the blaze were repulsed by the heat and fury of fire--until the blaze until it had run its course. Eight people, including a pregnant woman and two small children, were missing. On the charred wreck of the Investor, troopers hoped to find evidence that the fire was accidental, and that the crew and family were away from the scene. Instead, they found bullet-ridden bodies. The investigation of the case and arrest of a former crewmember of the Investor became a nationwide sensation, with headlines appearing in the New York Times and People Magazine. John Kenneth Peel, a Bellingham fisherman was the center of the investigation and eventual trials for murder and arson. Convoluted motivations, family secrets, a lawyer bent on protecting his client, family members of the victims seeking answers swirl into a story only one person can know--and he isn't telling. Leland Hale, author of Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer, meticulously researched the events of the Investor tragedy, and when alibis don't line up and witnesses doubt their own memory, Hale's narrative pulls the unraveling story together into a book that will keep your attention long after you turn the final page.

The horrific true story of serial kidnapper, rapist, and killer Robert Hansen’s reign of terror As oil-boom money poured into Anchorage, Alaska the city quickly became a prime destination for the seedier elements of society: prostitutes, pimps, con men, and criminals of all breeds looking to cash in. However, something even worse lurked in their midst. To all who knew him, Robert Hansen was a typical hardworking businessman, husband, and father. But hidden beneath the veneer of mild respectability was a monster whose depraved appetites could not be sated. From 1971 to 1983, Hansen was a human predator, stalking women on the edges of Anchorage society—women whose disappearances would cause scant outcry, but whose gruesome fates would shock the nation. After his arrest, Hansen confessed to seventeen brutal murders, though authorities suspect there were more than thirty victims. Alaska State Trooper Walter Gilmour and writer Leland E. Hale tell the story of Hansen’s twisted depredations—from the dark urges that drove his madness to the women who died at his hand and finally to the authorities who captured and convicted the killer who came to be known as the “Butcher Baker.”