On September 7, 1982, the fishing boat Investor was discovered burning off the coast of Craig, Alaska, a community on Prince of Wales Island in southeastern Alaska. Investigators determined that everyone aboard had been killed. Due to the severely burned condition of the remains, officials could only positively confirm recovery of seven bodies, though a coroner's jury ruled that all eight people known to have been on the boat had died in the incident.
Among the victims were the boat's owner, Mark Coulthurst, of Blaine, Washington, along with his wife, Irene Coulthurst, and their two young children, all of whom were aboard the Investor at the time.
In September 1984, two years after the killings, a suspect named John Kenneth Peel, from Bellingham, Washington, was arrested in connection with the murders. Peel's first trial ended without a verdict after the jury could not reach agreement, resulting in a hung jury. He was retried in 1988, and that trial ended in his acquittal.
The case remained associated with Craig's local history for decades afterward. In 2017, Tim DeSpain, a spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers, stated publicly that "the case is closed," indicating no further active investigation was underway.
Beyond this case, Craig is a small city in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area within Alaska's Unorganized Borough. It is the largest town on Prince of Wales Island and serves as headquarters for the Craig Tribal Association, a federally recognized tribe of Alaska Natives. The town's economy has historically centered on commercial fishing, fish processing, and timber, and its population has fluctuated with the fortunes of the fishing industry — growing during record salmon runs in the 1930s, contracting after the fishing industry's collapse in the 1950s, and later stabilizing with the establishment of a sawmill in 1972. As of the 2020 census, Craig had a population of 1,036 people, down from 1,201 in 2010.
Separately from the 1982 killings, Craig was affected by a 7.5-magnitude offshore earthquake on January 5, 2013, located about 63 miles west of the town, which prompted regional tsunami warnings and voluntary evacuations, though no fatalities, injuries, or significant damage resulted.
Credit: Federal Bureau of InvestigationPublic domainSourceSOLVEDListen
