People move to the Alaska wilderness because they enjoy solitude and crave a subsistence lifestyle or because they wish to escape society. People who fall into this second category are either misfits who don’t want to blend in with others, or they are criminals, seeking to avoid arrest and hoping to disappear into the vast wilderness. Some individuals run to Alaska from a life of crime somewhere else, and while they might hope to turn their lives around in Alaska, they instead bring their problems and psychopathic tendencies with them.
Until Memorial Day weekend in 1997, Paul Stavenjord seemed to have succeeded at escaping his criminal past, but then something in him snapped, leaving two people dead and forever altering the course of Stavenjord’s life.
Paul Stavenjord
Paul Stavenjord endured a rough childhood, first at the hands of an alcoholic father and then from his mother’s two subsequent husbands. In 1965, Paul and his family moved to Seward, Alaska. Not long after arriving in Seward, the principal expelled Paul from school for hurling racially charged insults at other students. Paul never returned to school and became an insolent, moody teenager. He was arrested five times in two years for breaking into cabins, stealing a skiff and a car, and for entering his girlfriend’s house and stealing a gun. While serving time in an Anchorage juvenile facility in 1966, Stavenjord escaped, stole a car, and led police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Anchorage. He was captured and incarcerated at the McLaughlin Youth Center until 1968.
Six-months after being released from the youth center, Stavenjord brandished a gun and robbed a downtown Anchorage liquor store. The robbery netted him $190, but he was soon arrested and sent back to jail. By this time, Stavenjord was addicted to heroin and used LSD.
Soon after he was released from prison, twenty-year-old Paul Stavenjord and two friends decided to rob the Seward branch of the First National Bank of Anchorage. The robbery was such a ridiculous crime, it’s laughable now to think about it. Only one road leads out of Seward, and it is a forty-mile spur road which runs south from an intersection on the Seward highway and winds through the rugged Chugach Mountains.
Robbers attempted to escape but couldn’t handle the terrain
The robbers knew they would never make their getaway by vehicle because the police could easily set up a roadblock and intercept them before they reached the Seward Highway. Instead, Stavenjord and his buddies hatched what to them must have seemed like a brilliant escape scheme. They planned to rob the bank and then blow up a stolen car to create a diversion for police. While the police investigated the exploding car, the thieves then planned to escape on foot into the wilderness and hike over the mountains to the Kenai Peninsula. Stavenjord wanted to take his share of the loot and settle near the Yukon River where he could hunt, trap, and live in peace.
As soon as the trio robbed the bank, they headed up Mount Marathon, but they were unprepared for the steep, rugged terrain, and they had no idea $150,000, their haul in the robbery, weighed more than forty pounds. The three men ended up stashing their loot in an alder thicket and planned to return for it later. Unfortunately for them, their escape did not go unnoticed, and police pursuing them recovered the money and returned it to the bank.
Even without the money weighing them down, the robbers found the mountain trail too difficult and decided to return to Seward and attempt to blend in with the other residents. They split up, thinking this would make them more difficult to track. By this time, though, a posse of twenty-five FBI agents, Alaska State Troopers, Seward police, and local citizens, scoured the wilderness searching for the trio.
Paul Stavenjord eventually caught by police chief
Three days after the bank robbery, Paul Stavenjord staggered out of the brush fifty-feet from the Seward police chief who was parked beside a roadblock. Stavenjord failed to see the chief’s police cruiser when he stepped out onto the highway, and the police chief arrested him without incident. Stavenjord’s two cohorts were captured at a Seward diner while they ate chili All three men were convicted of armed bank robbery and sentenced to six years in prison. Stavenjord was released on probation from the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, California in 1975.
After serving time for the bank heist, Stavenjord vowed to turn his life around and go straight. He took a job with the Alaska Railroad, repairing and inspecting tracks, and he worked for the railroad and stayed out of trouble for the next twenty years. Stavenjord loved the region near Chulitna, a wilderness area and railroad stop forty miles north of Talkeetna. He met and married a waitress for the railroad, and they had a daughter and built a cabin near Chulitna where they lived for eleven years. Stavenjord supplemented his railroad salary by casting small pewter animals and buttons, carving flutes, and doing scrimshaw work on ivory, bone, and antlers. He sold his craftwork to souvenir shops and at the Alaska Fur Rendezvous. Stavenjord not only carved flutes but became skilled at playing and writing music for the flute.
Paul and his wife, Peggy, had a son in 1984, but by 1991, Peggy had grown tired of the frontier lifestyle with no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, and no communication with the outside world. Peggy filed for divorce in 1991, but she and Paul remained friends, and Paul played a large role in his children’s lives.
Rick Beery and Deborah Rehor
Rick Beery was born and grew up in Alaska, leaving only when he served in the U.S. Navy for two tours of duty in Vietnam. In 1997, Rick worked as an electrician and lived in Big Lake in the Matanuska Valley, north of Anchorage. Rick was 48-years old.
Debbie Rehor grew up near Denver. She married young, had a son, divorced, and moved to Wasilla, Alaska to be near her brother, Don Tidwell. Debbie was forty-years old and worked in customer service for the Matanuska Electric Association.
Rick swore he would never get married, but he fell hard for Debbie Rehor, and they soon became a couple. After living together eight years, they married in 1995. Debbie and Rick shared a home in Big Lake, but their dream when they retired was to move to their second home, a large cabin in Chulitna built on land homesteaded by Rick’s father. Both Rick and Debbie loved the outdoors and looked forward to spending their retirement years in quiet, secluded Chulitna. For now, though, they escaped to their dream cabin every chance they got.
Chulitna is not a town but is a designated wilderness area forty miles north of the small town of Talkeetna. No roads lead to Chulitna, but it is a whistle stop for the Alaska Railroad. Once a day, a train travels this remote stretch of rural Alaska, halting at pre-determined stops when the engineer is hailed by people standing beside the tracks. The only other way to access a remote cabin in Chulitna is to park a vehicle near the Park’s Highway and travel the remaining miles on a four-wheeler all terrain vehicle. Rick and Debbie’s cabin sat eight miles from the Parks Highway. Their nearest neighbor, approximately one-mile from their cabin was Paul Stavenjord.
Rick and Debbie had an uneasy relationship with Stavenjord, who they suspected of stealing fuel from their cabin. When Rick sold Stavenjord a cellular telephone antenna, Stavenjord helped himself to a cable which was not part of the deal. Rick told Stavenjord he wanted fifty dollars for the cable, and Stavenjord cut the cable into pieces before returning it. He also suspected Stavenjord of taking a snow machine and a .22 rifle from their cabin. Rick, who was a big man with a hot temper, confronted Stavenjord, but they did not resolve their issues.
Rick and Debbie decided to spend Memorial Day weekend 1997 at their cabin. He headed to the cabin a day early, and Debbie followed on Friday after she got off work. Debbie parked off the road near the Parks Highway, where Rick met her on his four-wheeler, and they headed toward their cabin for a quiet weekend.
Colleagues noted the unusual absence from work by Rick and Debbie
Both Rick and Debbie planned to return to their jobs on Tuesday, and when neither of them showed up for work, their bosses and co-workers found their absences curious. Debbie’s boss contacted Debbie’s brother, Don Tidwell, and alarm bells immediately sounded in Don’s head. He rushed to Rick and Debbie’s remote Chulitna cabin to check on them. When he arrived, he found their two dogs in the cabin. The dogs had gone to the bathroom in the cabin and had obviously not eaten in some time. Don knew something bad must have happened to his sister and brother-in-law. They loved their dogs and would never leave them closed in the cabin. Tidwell worried perhaps Rick and Debbie ran into a bear or got stuck on the other side of the river by rising water.
Tidwell walked to Stavenjord’s cabin and asked Paul if he had seen Rick and Debbie. Stavenjord told Tidwell he and Rick had argued, and they hadn’t spoken in over a year. Tidwell said he picked up a strange vibe from Stavenjord and quickly thanked him and left the cabin. As Tidwell continued down the trail to search for his sister and brother-in-law, he heard a noise in the brush behind him and quickly turned to see Stavenjord following him down the trail. Tidwell asked the other man what he was doing, and Stavenjord said he decided to join in the search for Rick and Debbie. Tidwell felt certain Stavenjord knew more about Rick and Debbie’s disappearance than he admitted.
When Tidwell returned to Rick and Debbie’s cabin that night, he huddled toward the rear of the cabin with his gun in his lap. He suspected Paul Stavenjord had done something to Rick and Debbie, and he did not plan to be his next victim.
On Wednesday morning, Don Tidwell contacted the Alaska State Troopers and reported Rick and Debbie missing. The troopers responded immediately and discovered Rick’s body in a creek two miles from his cabin and two-hundred feet from his four-wheeler. Rick had been shot in the head execution style at point blank range. Authorities found no sign of Debbie and her four-wheeler, so she became a preliminary suspect in Rick’s murder. Debbie’s brother and friends assured the troopers Debbie would never harm Rick, and Don feared his sister had met the same fate as Rick.
Electrical workers installing fiber-optic cable along the railroad tracks told troopers they noticed Rick’s four-wheeler partially in the creek on Saturday and it was still there Sunday. When they passed by the area again on Tuesday, though, the four-wheeler had been pulled out onto dry land. The electricians also mentioned seeing a recent campsite near the spot where the troopers found Rick’s body.
Gavin Saha considered a suspect at the beginning
Twenty-one-year old Gavin Saha called troopers and said he’d camped over the weekend in the Chulitna area. He said he saw the four-wheeler in the creek and pulled it out, helping himself to a soft drink and some gum stashed in a bag on the four-wheeler, but he claimed he never saw Rick’s body. Troopers determined Saha had pitched his tent and slept only yards from Rick’s corpse. Troopers immediately suspected Saha of murdering Rick, but where was Debbie?
A week after Rick’s body was discovered, troopers found Debbie Rehor’s body. She was downstream from Rick, and her body was partially covered with grass and tree limbs. She was naked from the waist down. Debbie also had a bullet hole in her head, and an autopsy revealed she had been subjected to rough sex around the time of her death. DNA from semen found on her body did not match Gavin Saha’s DNA, ruling him out as the perpetrator.
Stavenjord’s weak alibi
Paul Stavenjord told authorities he went to Fairbanks for the Memorial Day weekend, even providing troopers with details of restaurants where he ate and establishments where he stopped to get gas on his travels. When troopers followed up, though, nothing checked out. Not only did no one remember seeing Stavenjord at the places where he claimed he’d stopped on his trip to Fairbanks, but Gavin Saha recalled seeing smoke curl out of the stack on Stavenjord’s Chulitna cabin during the time Stavenjord claimed to be in Fairbanks. Troopers asked Stavenjord to give them a DNA sample, and he when he refused, they obtained a court order for his DNA. Stavenjord allowed a trooper to swab his mouth for DNA, but soon after the troopers left his cabin, he disappeared.
After Stavenjord provided his DNA sample and left his cabin, railroad workers reported seeing him walking along the tracks. He had shaved his beard and mustache. A railroad security guard saw Stavenjord crash a red four-wheeler into a bridge and then run into the woods. When troopers examined the red four-wheeler, they knew they’d found Debbie’s missing ATV.
The Search
DNA test results confirmed the sample from the saliva in Paul Stavenjord’s mouth matched the semen collected from Debbie’s body. Troopers obtained warrants charging Stavenjord with the first-degree murders of Rick Beery and Debbie Rehor and the sexual assault of Debbie. Stavenjord was nowhere to be found, though, and troopers began an intense manhunt, scouring the wilderness near Chulitna for Paul Stavenjord.
Troopers searched Stavenjord’s cabin and found what they believed was a script Stavenjord planned to memorize to tell police if they arrested him. Stavenjord wrote that he ran into Debbie while on a walk on the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day. He charmed Debbie by playing his flute and said they had a romantic sexual encounter. He said she then called her husband at 7:30 pm to tell him she would be late. Unfortunately for Stavenjord, Debbie’s phone records showed she placed no calls on Friday evening.
Paul’s friends and family did not believe Paul would murder two people. They felt certain the troopers had made a terrible mistake, and since Paul was now a hunted man, they feared for his life. His family hired Carmen Gutierrez, a top criminal defense attorney in Alaska, to defend Paul. Gutierrez immediately issued a plea, asking Stavenjord to surrender.
The manhunt continued for over a month, and finally, on July 12, nearly seven weeks after the shootings, Stavenjord called Gutierrez and met with her in Anchorage before surrendering to the troopers.
Stavenjord told troopers he returned to his cabin the day after the manhunt began and then again after the search ended. He went back the first time for Debbie’s four-wheeler. He said when a security guard waved to him, he thought the guard was a trooper, and he attempted to flee, wrecking the four-wheeler. Stavenjord then fled on foot before hopping a freight train. He made his way to Fairbanks where he stayed for a week and then took a van to Anchorage and then to Homer where he camped for two weeks. Finally, he took a shuttle back to the Chulitna area and hiked to his cabin where he stayed two days before surrendering.
The Trial
Stavenjord went on trial in April 1998. In addition to Gutierrez, Stavenjord’s defense team included Jim McComas, another leading Alaska criminal defense lawyer. According to the narrative told by Stavenjord’s lawyers and Stavenjord’s own testimony, Rick Beery surprised his wife and Stavenjord while the pair were engaged in a sexual encounter in the middle of the wilderness. Stavenjord claimed Debbie scrambled for her clothes while her husband pulled his gun and started shooting. Stavenjord then grabbed his .22 pistol from his vest pocket and returned fire, hitting Beery in the forehead. He said when he looked back at Debbie, he saw her lying on the ground dead, killed by one of her husband’s bullets. Stavenjord’s attorneys argued that Beery killed his wife, and Stavenjord shot Beery in self-defense.
Stavenjord said he panicked. Due to his criminal past, he didn’t think troopers would believe his story, so he carried Debbie’s body to a grassy spot near the creek and covered her with branches. He said Rick’s body floated to a deep pool in the creek, so he left him there. At the end of Stavenjord’s testimony, his lawyers asked him to play the song on his flute he had played for Debbie just before she was killed. The judge dismissed the jury while Stavenjord played his melody.
Prosecutor Bill Estelle told the jury not to believe a word Savenjord said. Estelle characterized Stavenjord’s testimony as, “lies, lies, and more lies.” Stavenjord’s trial lasted two months, and at the end, the jury found him guilty on two counts of first-degree murder.
Paul Stavenjord sentenced to 198 years in prison
Before the sentencing phase of the trial several months later, Stavenjord’s two attorneys, Carmen Gutierrez and Jim McComas, asked to withdraw from the case citing a breakdown in the attorney/client relationship. They were replaced by a public defender who requested a new trial, claiming Stavenjord lied while testifying, and his attorneys knew he was lying. Gutierrez and McComas admitted Stavenjord lied to them, but they said at the time, they believed him. Stavenjord was denied a new trial and was sentenced to 198 years in prison.
In an interview with a reporter, Rick Beery’s sister said that Paul Stavenjord expects us to believe he played his flute for Debbie, and she was so mesmerized, she agreed to have relations with the man. Ricks sister said Debbie hated Stavenjord and would have been more likely to copulate with an alligator than with him.
Investigators believe Rick Beery arrived at his cabin the day before the Memorial Day weekend and found items missing, so he confronted Stavenjord. Paul Stavenjord knew Beery planned to meet Debbie on Friday evening at the highway and bring her back to their cabin, so he hid in the brush and waited on them, ambushing the pair when they drove down the trail to their cabin. The troopers believe Stavenjord molested Debbie after she was dead.
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