The Cache Creek Murders

Ed and Belle Lee’s Talkeetna Trading Post, which served miners from the Cache Creek Mining Area

An Unsolved Mystery from 1939

The highest mountain peak in North America, Denali—The High One—lies just north of the Cache Creek Mining District, and as the foothills of the great massif roll down into the upper Susitna Valley, the Dutch Hills and the Peters Hills offer the last two prominences of notable size. This is a vast wild country, bordered by swift rushing rivers and crossed by tributary streams such as Peters Creek and Cache Creek. The area is prime grizzly bear habitat, remote and isolated, generally accessible in summer by four wheel drive or a cautious driver with good clearance; in winter only by snowmachine or airplane.

Cache Creek was likely named for a storage cache built by a Dena’Ina Indian known as Susitna Pete, who found gold in the area near the turn of the century. Peters Creek and the hills around the fast rushing stream were named for Henry Peters, who prospected in the area in 1905 with several others when they heard about Susitna Pete’s discovery. Peters and his friends also discovered gold, and three years later, in 1908, the Cache Creek Mining Company was formed and purchased all of the claims along twelve miles of the creek.

Petersville, the largest mining operation in the area and communications point for the investigating team. June 11, 1936.

Photo by S.W. Dish for the Alaska Road Commission, Alaska State Library ASL-P61-010078

Among the prospectors who came to the area seeking gold were two men from California, Frank Jenkins and Richard (Dick) Francis. Jenkins arrived in the Cache Creek area around 1911, having previously explored and prospected in South America and Nome. Francis came into the area in 1914, and sent photos of his friends, his cabin, and his favorite husky to his mother in California. He explored as far north as the Brooks Range, but made sure his mining obligations in the Cache Creek District were met.

By the 1920s a trail had been blazed east from the mining area to the new settlement of Talkeetna, on the also-new Alaska Railroad, and the enterprising owners of the Talkeetna Trading Post, Ed and Belle Lee, along with Ed’s brother Frank, freighted supplies to the miners, mostly purchased from H.W. Nagley’s mercantile. Sometime around the early 1930’s they constructed a roadhouse halfway between Talkeetna and the mining district; it became known as the Peters Creek or Forks Roadhouse, and it was a popular stop for the miners.

Mining the placer gold claims of the area necessitated having a source of water for sluicing, or washing the dirt and gravel overburden to find the gold. For this reason the miners would file for rights to use the water just as they filed for the rights to find gold, and because the gold was often found on the hillsides high above the creeks, they would dig ditches to channel the water to wherever it was needed. The flow of water through these ditches, and the interruption of that flow, became the basis of contentious ongoing litigation between Frank Jenkins and Dick Francis throughout the decade of the 1930s, with both Jenkins (and his feisty wife) and Francis making multiple trips to the court of law in Anchorage, racking up considerable legal fees, and fueling a heated feud between the two miners, a conflict well-known to all who lived and worked in the area.

In early September, 1939, the mining community and Talkeetna were shocked by the news that Dick Francis had committed suicide in his isolated cabin on Ruby Creek. Three days later the brutally battered bodies of Frank Jenkins and his mining assistant, Joy Brittell, were found less than a mile away, covered with leaves and grass. Their discovery set off a search for Frank’s missing wife, and a week later her remains were found three miles away, hidden under a grassy overhang, with massive injuries to her head and the pockets of her clothing turned inside out.

Frank Lee, chief freighter for the Talkeetna Trading Post, was among the searchers; he found Mrs. Jenkins’ body.

On September 19 the Anchorage Daily Times reported under large black headlines: “Speculation as to the motive of the murders has been rife ever since the discovery of the crime and it was said that the conditions of the pockets of the clothing of Mrs. Jenkins is the first evidence to substantiate the contention that Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were murdered for their gold. Joy Brittell, who was with Mr. Jenkins, was also murdered and the life of Dick Francis was taken in an attempt to make the crime appear as a triple murder and suicide, according to one theory.”

The U.S. Commissioner in Talkeetna, Ben Mayfield, began investigating the murders from the first, but he was not trained for the type of inquiry demanded by these heinous murders, and a request was sent to Washington, D.C. for the FBI to take a hand in the proceedings. There was only one FBI agent in Alaska, Ralph C. Vogel, based in Juneau. He was dispatched to Talkeetna by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, but not before the Anchorage Daily Times, unaware that the agent was en route, fired off a telegram to Hoover: THREE MEN AND ONE WOMAN BRUTALLY BEATEN TWO WEEKS AGO NEAR TALKEETNA STOP KILLER STILL LOOSE ALASKA AUTHORITIES UNABLE SOLVE STOP HUNDRED IN COMMUNITY TERRORIZED MANY PACKING FIREARMS PLEADING FOR EXPERT INVESTIGATION STOP HOW CAN YOUR DEPARTMENTS ASSISTANCE BE OBTAINED

News article from the Nome Nugget, reprinted from the Anchorage Daily Times.

Special Agent Vogel began investigating the case near the end of September, 1939, and he would continue working on the case until 1943. Despite the full-blown investigation, hundreds of hours of interviews, and tracking clues and potential suspects across several states, the murders were never satisfactorily resolved; the primary suspect was never charged.

In 2001 Talkeetna resident Roberta Sheldon wrote The Mystery of the Cache Creek Murders (Talkeetna Editions/Publication Consultants, Anchorage), which extensively detailed the history of the Cache Creek Mining District, the people who settled and mined the area, the murders and their aftermath, and the larger world events which undoubtedly colored the FBI proceedings.

Sheldon slowly unravels the complex and complicated history of the unsolved case, quoting from news stories and FBI reports, detailing letters and interviews from people who remembered the incident, with photos and maps which contribute to the reader’s understanding the convoluted events of 1939. Her book is widely available. ~•~

The cover of Roberta Sheldon’s book.