Free Hunted on Ice: The Search for Alaskan Serial Killer Robert Hansen by Reagan Martin Page B

‘Eklutna Annie’, and with no leads to follow the case soon went cold.
    In July of that same year, 23-year-old Joanne Messina went missing from the town of Seward. She was last seen leaving her job at a cannery, accompanied by her dog. Her body would be discovered later that fall, secreted within a moldy sleeping bag, in another shallow grave not far from where Eklutna Annie was found.
    Joanne too was badly decomposed, and animals had carried off a good portion of her body. It was determined that she died from a .22 caliber bullet wound, but there were few other clues to go on, and just like Eklutna Annie, Joanne Messina’s case soon went cold.
    Only two months after Joanne vanished, Lisa Futrell also disappeared. Lisa differed from the other girls because of her age. While those who vanished earlier had all been young, in their late teens or early twenties, Lisa might be considered middle aged at 41. Still, her background was similar enough to the other girls that law enforcement could not discount her.
    In early 1981, 22-year-old Andrea Altiery, a topless dancer who worked on 4 th Avenue, also disappeared. Andrea was a tough girl, who was last seen in Anchorage, wearing blue jeans, a winter coat, and her custom made fish necklace. This piece of jewelry was a priceless treasure to Andrea, and she was rarely seen without it. It was a small sterling silver charm, crafted into the shape of a fish, and always dangling from her neck.
    On November 17, 1981, 24-year-old Sherry Morrow, a dancer at the Wild Cherry Bar in downtown Anchorage, told her friends that she was going to meet a man who had offered her $300 to pose for nude photos. Sherry never returned home, and friends quickly reported her missing to the police.
    Six months later, Sue Luna, a tiny 23-year-old Asian girl who had come to Alaska from Washington State, disappeared after telling friends that she was meeting a man at a downtown restaurant around noon. She walked off to keep her appointment, and that was the last time Sue Luna was ever heard from again.
     
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    If police were concerned about all these missing girls, they certainly never went public with it. Officials were aware that there were similarities among all the disappearances, but it was just such similarities that made the cases difficult to investigate. Was there foul play involved, or had the women just left on their own?
     That question was impossible to answer until something showed up to point them in the right direction. Either the girl would eventually turn up in another location, or a body needed to be found before police could investigate further. Law enforcement officials were frustrated with their lack of progress, and eager for any new developments. They waited anxiously for a break, and as they did so, more women continued to disappear.

Chapter Two
     
     
     John Daily and Audi Holloway, two off-duty Anchorage police officers, were spending a few much needed days off twenty-five miles north of the city in the Knik River Valley. Considered prime hunting ground for those experienced enough to brave its isolated wilderness, the valley is replete with all types of wildlife, including black bear, Dahl sheep, mountain goats, elk and moose.
    On September 12, 1982, the men had hunted all day with little luck, and evening was fast approaching. Deciding to head back to camp, Daily and Holloway began walking the banks of the winding Knik River, avoiding the tangled scrub that lined each shore. Crossing a sandbar, each man noticed something sticking up from the silt and paused.
    “What is that?” Holloway asked, pointing.
    Daily shook his head, squinting his eyes in an effort to see it better. “I don’t know.”
    The two men continued to walk, the object coming closer and closer, until they could distinguish that it was actually a boot jutting up from the sand. This was not that unusual, but the fact that there was a skeletonized leg bone in it was.
     Backing away slowly, the men