Monday will mark the 50th anniversary of the single biggest mass homicide in Alaska history, the Lane Hotel fire of Sept. 12, 1966.
The intentionally set blaze took the lives of 14 people, more than the victims of the Manley Hot Springs shootings of 1984, the McCarthy shootings of 1983 or the still-unsolved Craig murders of 1982. The tally of victims killed by "Butcher/Baker" Robert Hansen was higher, perhaps much higher, but those murders were spread over the course of a decade or more.
Built in 1916, the Lane Hotel (originally the Crescent Hotel) stood at the corner of Fourth Avenue and C Street. In 1965-66 its lobby was remodeled to include a coffee shop. At that time the building was inspected by city officials and deemed to meet fire and safety codes. Nonetheless, many considered the two-story wood structure a tinderbox.
When smoke began to fill the building after midnight, waitresses ran into the street leaving their street clothes behind. The hotel clerk, John Uhles, raced down the hall pounding on doors until the fire pushed him back. He had no chance to get to the second floor. "The flames came down that hallway like a tidal wave," he said.
Some guests made it to the roof where firemen used ladders to rescue them. Two, Maggie Kochutin and Zenith Williams, survived by leaping from windows. Williams had stayed until his hair was on fire in a futile attempt to save his wife.
One of the victims was Albert Kaloa Jr., the "Fearless Man of Tyonek," the village chief who was working to organize Alaska Native leaders in a concerted effort to obtain federal recognition of land claims. The fire was thought to have started either in his room or in an adjacent bathroom. The damage was so extensive that investigators could not be sure.
Kaloa was said to have many enemies, and not just among powerful parties opposed to Native land claims. His father was under arrest at the time for an alcohol-driven shooting. Just a few months before, members of his family had died in a fire in Tyonek. Detectives considered whether there might be a connection. It was widely suspected that the hotel had been ignited to kill or conceal the murder of Kaloa.
But events one month later led to an even more frightening possibility, that Anchorage was being terrorized by a compulsive firebug. Fires set at or adjacent to the Alley Cat Bar, the High Hat Bar, the Sourdough Bar, the Western Bar and at the Polar Hotel were discovered before they went out of control. Another fire did $500 in damage to the Palomino Club.
At the Palomino, however, the pyromaniac was spotted. Robert Daugherty, a U.S. Army private, gave chase, losing the suspect but getting a license plate number. Police traced the car to Charles Thessen, a former cook at the Officer's Club on Elmendorf Air Force Base, which had experienced a large fire the previous year. He had since worked at Broaster's Restaurant and the Outpost Bar in Anchorage, both of which had suffered serious arson attacks.
Thessen had applied for a job as a cook at the Lane Hotel a few days before the fatal fire and been turned down. He couldn't get work, he said, because previous employers told lies about him.
The unemployed cook was charged with murder. His trial was moved to Fairbanks where, on June 2, 1967, he was convicted of 14 counts of manslaughter and sentenced to three consecutive 20-year sentences.
And then, as they say, the trail goes cold. Spokespersons at the Anchorage Fire and Police departments told me files from so long ago were unavailable; the agencies didn't have them and didn't know where they went. The Department of Corrections likewise couldn't tell me what became of Thessen, only that he is not currently in their custody.
So did Charles Thessen die in prison? Was he paroled? Did he leave the state? Is he living next door? No one I spoke with knows.
The site of the hotel is now the northwest corner of the parking garage at Fifth Avenue and B Street. Nothing at the site speaks to the tragic events half a century past. The information for this column was drawn from newspaper and magazine reports of the time.
The bodies were so burned that it took a week to identify them. Here are their names: George Ray Batchelor; Jack Saber Bennett; Hazel Dayo; Robert Bruce Hoffman; Hattie Mae Jones; Albert Solomon Kaloa Jr.; Hazel Minnie Lindstrom; Wayne Oscar Markanan; Bertha Reese; Richard Reese; Joseph Daniel Thomas; Norman White; Mary Ann Williams and Amaer, a seller of tapestries known only by that one name.