Alaska Was Beautiful... Until It Wasn’t

Episode 4: A Den Mother & A Scout

Shirley's Dating Life

Content note: This article discusses topics that may be disturbing.

A Conversation About Love, Secrets, and the Wilderness That Keeps Them.

Most people remember Alaska as wild, cold, and untouchable. In this episode of Shirley, You Can’t Be Serious, Alaska is remembered as safe, free, and almost idyllic, until hindsight changes everything.

This isn’t a neatly wrapped true crime story. It’s a lived-in one. A story told through memories of neighborhood kids running free, long winters filled with art classes, endless summer daylight, military parties, journal entries, and the slow realization that the person you trusted most may have been hiding something unthinkable.

This episode is a conversation, not a headline. And that’s what makes it unsettling.

Alaska: The Place Everyone Else Hated but She Loved

“Most women hated Alaska. None of my girlfriends loved it. I don’t understand it… it was my favorite.”

That line sets the tone.

Alaska in the late 70s and early 80s felt insulated from the rest of the world. Kids wandered the neighborhood without fear. Crime felt nonexistent. The biggest danger wasn’t people, it was moose wandering through backyards.

Long, dark winters were filled with community classes: pottery, oil painting, ceramics, even belly dancing. Summers were impossibly bright, three months of daylight that felt like a reward for enduring the cold.

It’s important to understand this version of Alaska, because it explains why no one was looking over their shoulder. Why suspicion didn’t come naturally. Why trust came easily.

When the News Creeps In

The episode weaves personal memory with breaking news clips from the time - reports of murdered women, bodies found near highways, whispers of serial killers operating in Alaska.

Names surface:

• Robert Hansen, later known as the “Butcher Baker”

• Other violent offenders whose crimes overlapped in time and geography

At the time, these stories felt distant. Like background noise. Alaska was huge, after all. People disappeared for lots of reasons. The wilderness swallowed evidence. That was just how it was.

Looking back, those news stories feel less like coincidence and more like warning signs no one knew how to read yet.

Dating in Alaska During the Pipeline Boom

There were ten men for every woman when the pipeline hit and that imbalance mattered.

Many men were married but living alone. Some lied. Some treated women as accessories. Some were outwardly respectable and privately cruel.

This episode doesn’t romanticize that era. It tells it plainly:

• Jerks were common

• Nice men existed, but timing, belief systems, or circumstance got in the way

• Trust was something you extended before you learned better

Against that backdrop, meeting someone who seemed stable, kind, and devoted to his children stood out.

Enter Steve Skaggs: The “Nice Guy”

Steve Skaggs didn’t arrive as a villain. He arrived as a solution.

He was:

• Military

• A pilot

• A devoted father raising two kids on his own

• Well-liked, sociable, involved in church

• Outdoorsy, adventurous, competent

He fixed a broken-down car. He showed up. He asked her out to dinner.

In Alaska, that mattered.

They dated briefly. They married quickly. It didn’t feel reckless, it felt right.

The House, the Journal, the Life That Looked Normal

They built a beautiful home in Eagle River. Kids filled the house. Neighborhood boys slept on couches. Life felt full.

Shirley kept a journal. Nothing dramatic, just daily life:

• Who went hunting

• Who flew where

• What the weather was like

• Which kid was in a bad mood

• When Steve was gone

At the time, it was ordinary. Later, it became evidence.

That’s one of the most chilling themes of this episode: how normal documentation can become a timeline of absence.

Flying, Hunting, and Being Gone a Lot

Steve flew. A lot.

He took family members up in small planes. He rented aircrafts. He went scouting for hunting season. He disappeared for entire days or longer.

Nothing about that seemed strange in Alaska. Military schedules were unpredictable. Hunting season explained everything else.

Looking back, the question isn’t why didn’t she know, it’s why would she have suspected anything at all?

When Alaska’s Darkness Got Personal

The episode takes a turn when the conversation shifts to working nights at a mortuary.

Bodies came in. Sometimes they were strangers. Sometimes they weren’t.

One was a former classmate identified by a high school ring.

That’s when Alaska stopped being abstract. The disappearances had faces. Names. Connections.

The wilderness that once felt protective now felt complicit.

Arizona, Arrest, and the Shattering of Reality

When Steve Skaggs was arrested in Arizona for a brutal attack, the illusion collapsed instantly.

What followed wasn’t just a legal process, it was emotional chaos:

• Bail that never happened

• Attorneys

• FBI involvement

• Whispers about Alaska

• Numbers that didn’t make sense at first (“18?”)

• Maps with markings

• An airplane sold to pay legal fees

And through all of it, Shirley stayed married to him for years.

Not because she was blind. Because she believed vows were unbreakable. Because he maintained innocence. Because faith complicated grief. Because leaving felt like another kind of betrayal.

The Cost for Everyone Else

This episode doesn’t forget the collateral damage:

• Children bullied because of their last name

• A stepdaughter who lived with fear

• Friends who worried he might get out

• A woman who couldn’t hike alone anymore

• A community that slowly connected dots too late

Even jokes about “bars” and prison carried unease because some threats don’t feel like jokes when you’ve lived near them.

Alaska Revisited With New Eyes

What lingers most isn’t just what Steve Skaggs did or may have done.

It’s the realization that Alaska; beautiful, vast, and free, made certain crimes easier to hide.

Planes. Remote wilderness. No witnesses. No remains. No closure.

People didn’t vanish because no one cared.They vanished because there was room for them to disappear.

Why This Story Matters

his episode isn’t about shock value. It’s about how ordinary life and extraordinary evil can coexist. About how women survive not just violence but the aftermath of loving someone capable of it. About how memory changes when truth finally surfaces.

And about how sometimes, the scariest stories aren’t the ones that start dark but the ones that start happy.

🎙️ Listen to this episode of Shirley You Can’t Be Serious to hear the full conversation, the journal entries, the laughter, the pauses, and the moments where everything suddenly clicks into place.

Some stories don’t end when the crime does.They echo for decades.

Full Episode Transcript:

Dead Serious.

Most women hated Alaska. None of my girlfriends loved it. And I don't understand it because of all the places I've lived. It was my favorite.

It was, there was no crime. The kids could roam all over the neighborhood. The only thing you really had to watch out for was the moose. The moose were the most dangerous things you had to watch out for when you were out, roaming around the neighborhood.

 Breaking news tonight, several leads in their investigation of the Brutal Murder. Committed. A series of murders of young women and girls, the decomposed body of partially decomposed, whose body was found Christmas. A brutal murder of an Anchorage woman in the city of Fairbanks, Alaska. Thomas, Richard Bundys and Robert Hansen.

Michael Silka. Louis d Hastings, the murder series began on August 29th, 1979, found bare 19 Alaska Stranger police. He saw her talking to a stranger, sitting in a blue car and wearing an air force uniform. During the investigation, the police for the first time suggested that a serial killer from among the military personnel was operating in the territory.

 I didn't mind. The long winters where there was no daylight other than dust. Right around noon I did skiing I took all kind of classes from pottery to oil painting to ceramics, to belly dancing. We just, there was all these free classes for everybody.

And then in the summer you have three months of daylight and that was incredible. And it's beautiful there. It's absolutely beautiful. I loved every minute I was there.

 And now the story of a happily ever After stolen cars, and my stepmother Shirley, enjoying it all. I.  

I'm Amanda, Fallon, and this is the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast.

  There were 10 guys to every girl up in Alaska when the pipeline hit. So I dated a lot, most of 'em were jerks. Really? Yeah, they really were. A lot of them lied. And they were married, I found out. Yeah. Yeah. Their li their wives just weren't living in Alaska with them. Oh, some of them weren't.

Some of them aren't. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's amazing. And then one guy, he had four kids and he asked me out. I really didn't care for him. But I went out, I thought I'll give him a chance. And all he did was talk about how fat his wife had gotten and he didn't wanna be seen with her. He was the head of the electric company.

He needed a nice looking woman on his, , arm when he would go to parties. Can you believe that? I thought, what a jerk. So if I get fat, then he dumps me too. Oh, I was, ooh, that was a short date. No, there's, there was a bunch of . Jerky guys in Alaska. Really? Yeah. Very jerky guys. There were some nice ones, I did date one guy that was super, super nice. He was my next door neighbor. I would've married him, but he was. Seventh Day Adventist and they didn't believe in divorce and remarriage, his wife had left him for another guy and he said he could never get married again as long as she was alive.

He was devastated when I got married. He told me I broke his heart. The last time I heard he was a preacher down here in, in the States somewhere.

I don't remember where, but he did get married after all. That's the one I would've married. But it wasn't meant to be.

 And then how did we end up down here after my dad had died? My mom dated a few other guys. And anybody who was nice and a good guy, and genuinely showed care and concern for my sister and I, she'd lose interest in and I'm just like, what the heck? And even right up to just before she married your dad, right?

Finally met a, a really nice guy. His that she worked with he was her boss, a big guy up and he started dating my mom. And it's man, this guy's got his stuff together.

He's a good guy and she's just not interested in him,

 so when you met Skaggs, you had been basically a single mom for 10 years. Yeah. Your first husband had left you. And he was dead. All, most of the guys were jerks in Alaska. So you meet Skaggs. Oh. And the guy you liked was married? Yeah. Told me that he could never get married. So you meet Skaggs?

And was it instant attraction or were you just this guy's not a jerk. Like what you He seemed really sincerely nice. Yeah. . There was another guy I dated in between, I dated him for seven years. Wow. Yeah. Charlie. Oh, Charlie. Charlie's the one that, every time I think of Charlie, I say, thank you, God.

I didn't marry Charlie. I was in love with Charlie. I wanted to marry Charlie. That was before the next door neighbor, but uh, /charlie was a Romeo to the hilt, and when he told me he's the one actually. That led me to the Lord as far as my personal relationship. He's the one who invited me to the Pentecostal church.

That's where I got saved. That's where I got healed from my arthritis. So Charlie was a big factor in my life, and I was in love with Charlie, but he told me the  year he got saved, he went to bed with 14 different women. 14 women the year he got saved. And I purposed in my mind at that time.

I would never be on his list and I never was. We dated for seven years off. Actually, I think he wanted me more for a mom than a girlfriend. He wanted to be one of my kids. He was different. He was handsome, but he was different. Yeah. He loved hanging out with me and the kids. It was like he wanted to be one of my kids.

Anyway, so Charlie was actually at the wedding. He was invited. Invited to, he went to Wedding Youk. Yes, I invited, yes, I invited him to the wedding. He was a friend. Did Skaggs know that you guys had dated? Yeah, but I told him, we never went to bed together. He even rented out my back room for a year.

He was living in his car, so I let him ran out the back room, but still, because he told me that. I never ever, crossed that line. Yeah. And that was good. So he always has to admit one getaway, one getaway.

 So where did you meet Steve Skaggs? Actually, he lived about three houses away from me. He was in the military. Him and his wife and two kids bought a house, right down the street from me. Ra actually babysat for them a couple times, and then his wife left. She left the two kids with him. I really didn't know him.

But one day my car broke down and my neighbor across the street, Patricia said Shirley, my neighbor next door is always outside working on his car. Why don't I ask him to look at your car? Maybe he can help you. And that was Steve that she went to talk to. And he came over he actually fixed my car.

And we just got talking and then he asked me out to dinner and then we started dating. I was impressed with him for the fact that he was raising the two kids. The kids were like seven and 10 years old and they seemed to adore their dad. And uh, he was just really a nice person. He was fun to be with, so I felt very comfortable with him,

I had my two kids and several neighborhood kids. We picked up a homeless girl that was living in her car.

Most of Eddie's friends', moms had left the picture. They were out of Alaska being raised by their dads, and so we always had a gang of boys living at our house. I was, like I said, the neighborhood mom and I loved it. I loved kids, so that didn't bother me at all.

I never knew who was sleeping downstairs when I got up in the morning, but there was always at least one or two sleeping downstairs. So the house got a lot of use.

We had nice things for the first time in our life, we had nice things and I felt equal to all my peers all of a sudden, which was good in high school,

and this is where my mom meets Steve Skaggs. Right now what happened? My dad passed away. She sold the house. So she had a chunk of money and she bought a trailer on a private lot. said it was a decent home, but she was able to buy it, pay cash for it

anyway, we started dating and we, enjoyed each other's company. He went to church with me. I thought he was a stronger Christian than he was. He had been raised a Christian, but he had been away from the church for quite a while.

But he was going back to the church. He was very nice and everything, and we had fun together and we only dated for about six months, and then we got married.  how did Corraine and Eddie take the news?

,  Next thing I know they're getting married and I'm just like, wow, that was quick. 'cause it couldn't have been but a couple, three months and they're getting married

when you were married to Skaggs, you kept a journal. Yeah. Describe the journal and what the police said . The journal. I just put a day to day, it was a diary, and I would mention today he went hunting or today this, or today, we did something fun or, it was just a day.

And I probably, I'm sure I have it at home somewhere. I gave it to the police. They made a complete copy of it and gave it back. And I don't think I ever looked at it after that, but yeah, it had a record of when he was gone, when he was flying, when he was hunting, all of that was in there.

 Saturday, November 6th, 1982. The wedding was the most beautiful I have ever seen. Rudy was nervous. He skipped one song and had the people stand all during the service. The boys decorated the truck with balloons and tin cans and followed us all over town.

 It was great.  

Can you just describe. That neighborhood

We lived on a dead end street, which was really nice. I love that. You know, a lot of trees. We had a manufactured home that I had bought, that the kids and I lived in, starting right next door, there was a whole community of brand new homes that they had built.

He was in one of the newer homes, so when we got married, we built the house up on the hill in Eagle River, it was really nice. 'Cause we needed, um, , 4 bedrooms upstairs.

And then we had another huge bedroom and a family room downstairs. That's where the boys were. And, so, yeah, it was a really, really nice home. We lived there less than a year before he got his orders to go to Iceland. So we were married about a year, and then he took off for Iceland.

 Sunday, December 12th, 1982, moved into New house today. Animals are not adjusting well, Chrissy won't eat. Go to the bathroom or come out from under the bed.

 Eddie was busy working two jobs to pay for his car. They weren't home much. They weren't home. But yeah, other than the fact that Skaggs did get upset with Eddie for getting into his tools, but he was never abusive or even yelled at. He told him, he locked up the tools, is what he did.

He just locked him up. But he was never, ever abusive anyway, verbally or physically. Coleraine would irritate him once in a while. She'd come home from school and walk right past him, into her bedroom, go to her phone without saying hi, and that offended him. He mentioned that before, so it was like she just ignores me completely.

That kind of hurt him. But other than that, no, there was no, no problem between them.

February 24th, 1983. It was a Thursday for some, reason everybody in the house was in a bad mood. The kids all complained about Steve Steve's complaining about the kids. The only one I wanna be around is Chrissy the Cat.

 I don't know if he had a lot of friends, but he had some good close friends,  so he's pretty much just your normal, very nice guy. Yeah, he was a very nice, everybody liked him.  the military base, they're all pretty friendly, so we, like I said, we went to parties there. Mm-hmm. You know, The first time I met any of his friends, he took me to a Halloween party on the base, and he went as um, the little creature from Star Wars. I don't Oh, Yoda. Yoda. He went as Yoda. So he walks in with his mask on, completely covered in his bathrobe, and nobody knows who he is. And then here I am and I'm going as a sixties girl or something, and everybody's looking at me and say, who is she?

And, what's she doing here? And who's he? But they were all very nice to me, very nice to me. And then one lady came up to him and she's checking him out and she grabs his hand. She goes, I know these fat little hands. This is Steve Skaggs.

Anyway, everybody was very friendly to me all the time, yeah.

 So Skaggs, great military job. Yeah. Awesome. Dad to two kids. Yeah. Had some fun hobbies. Yeah. Yeah, why not, right? Yeah. Yeah. Really, you probably had no idea what we were for you. Yeah, we had snow machine, and skiing. We went across country skiing together. Yeah. We had a lot of things in common that we enjoyed doing.

And we were old enough at that time, that they could leave us to go on their honeymoon in Hawaii. I threw a party, didn't mean for it to be a giant party.

But word gets around, literally. And had a few of my buddies and we went to go get cases of beer and when I left there was like 10 people, and I come back and I turn onto my street and there's no place to park. The whole street. I end up parking all the way at the end of the street, my whole class of 83 from my high school is practically there, and, we filled a pickup truck bed, with bottles and cans and we cleaned up the next day. And my mom's best friend, pat, you may have heard her talk about her, pat Velain, the old maid lady who lived up there in Alaska. And my mom stayed in touch with her many years.

She was the one who was supposed to watch. And I thought sure, because she was gonna be a nun, but, ended up doing something different. But, so she lived one of those celibate very conservative lives. All her years and lived alone in a little trailer there.

But um, she didn't narc us out. I was like. Wow. Cool, cool. Pat, didn't narc us out and I remember when they got back from their thing, and I'm with, my guy friends and whatnot, he comes out all ticked off. 'Cause he found a beer bottle cap in the couch cushion, when he came back, you know, and he comes out and he's scolding me for the beer bottle cap, so we got away scot-free. He never knew about the giant party that we had, and, literally half the towns youth,

 Monday, July 9th, 1984. Praise the Lord. Eddie was put on two weeks of jail sentence and four years probation.

they had finally caught up to me and they had been surveilling me for a while.

, And then they, you know, came with their search warrants to move in while I was at work. So , I get home and of course the cops are all still there and everything. They had. Taken everything out of the garages. You know, we had a nice big house, double story, two car garage underneath the deck in the front, you know, and they had it opened up and they had all the contents of my dad's garage splayed across it, and they couldn't find one dang stolen thing, right?

Other than the truck that I had, uh, re-badged as I, I had a, an old broken down blazer. Well, I stole another blazer and, uh, we stripped her down and primed it black and transferred a bunch of stuff to it. And it's look at the repairs we've done.

Right? You know, so my parents thought it was the same truck that I always had. Now that was laying way out on the ski trails off in the woods, stripped down the rest of the way, you know, that's where the real truck was. And so this one that we had stolen. Now, of course, I didn't steal from somebody who, that was their only vehicle.

We picked a house that, had lots of cars and trucks and lots of money. And I remember, uh, this kind of thing happened a few times. It wasn't my first. Adventure down that road. But this is the, the big one that got me to serve 21 days in Cook Inlet pretrial facility as an adult, even though I was 17 when I committed the crime, by the time they caught me and prosecuted me, I'd turned 18.

So they prosecuted me as an adult , but yeah, so I was barely 18 years old and boof, I get, get to stay at the, the prison. And um, that was an interesting experience too.

  Wednesday, July 11th, 1984, took Eddie to jail so he could start serving time, but there was a mix up in paperwork and they wouldn't accept him. Went back to lawyer to see if he could help. 

 Thursday, July 12th, 1984, Eddie checked into Cookie Inlet Jail this morning. Lawyers said he never had anyone thank him so much for getting their son into jail. 

 Alaska is so huge. So huge. When you have a plane, you just go wherever you want. All over the place. Is there a specific river you remember or a state park? No. Not really. I remember we followed the Iditarod that was fun

 saturday, March 3rd, 1984. Steve took me for first flight in small aircraft. His takeoff and landing was perfection. We flew out to Settlers Bay hit bumps over Big Lake, circled our house. Then came in early as Storm started approaching.

 He ever take the kids up for rides? I think he did. I think he did. Yeah. At least Stan and Leslie. I don't know about if Eddie went up or not. I don't remember. Possibly.

Oh. And he had a plane. He was a pilot. That's what he was in, in the military. He trained all the new upcoming pilots for the, the F14s. He ran the simulator and taught the pilots how to fly in the simulators before they got to get into the real thing.

 Thursday, December 23rd, 1982. Heater broke in car five below zero. Steve took kids flying, both loved it. Corra kept asking for stalls. Then she ended up getting sick.

I remember one, cool adventure. Took us down to the, the local aviators club or whatnot. And this is before they bought their plane, but and checked out a Cessna and this would be my first time up in a small plane. He took my and my sister and I got to get.

Shotgun, so I'm in the front. That's probably a wrong choice. I realized as we're taxing down the runway, and first thing I noticed was the door on this airplane is like canvas skin. And the inside piece is like the cardboard of a shoebox, literally. Just tagged on covering the, and the outside is like Canvas, and I'm looking at these hinges and the wing stretching out and it's got this cable running up to it, and. The same little tensioner that you have on your gate Yeah. That you pick up at ACE Hardware. Sure. And that's holding the cable, that's holding the wing , on the plane, and in the back of my mind, I'm like second guessing the decision as I'm looking at all this, what looks like hardware store parts and we're gonna fly into the air with this.

He loved taking the airplane out. I wasn't that enthused when I saw it.

It was made out of canvas and not metal or aluminum. So basically I was terrified to be in it. I went up once anyway, he did a lot of flying checking out different hunting places and he was gone a lot, doing that. And also being in the military, he was also gone a lot on maneuvers or whatever.

And I say we take off from the ground and immediately he climbs the plane up and we get to about , 10,000 feet and we're out over the inlet. Of Alaska. And in Alaska everything is just different shades of gray. The water's gray, the sandbanks are gray, clay, silt, the snow and the ice are dingy gray, so this is all gray. And and I'm looking at that cold inlet. Because it's like anything goes wrong. That's where we're gonna end up in the bay in all that cold water and ice.

And and the first thing he does is

starts off with a climb. Straight up is as much as the little airplane would do. And he goes, this is a hammerhead stall, right? And we start climbing and then all of a sudden you hear a little stall. Alarm in the back of the plane's going and, louder it screams just before the plane completely stalls and falls outta the air basically.

And so the plane goes up, stalls and falls backwards out of the air like that. And he just lets it fall. Then, flies out in control. So he spends the next few minutes doing all kinds of aerobatic maneuvers that looks like you're gonna tear the wings off the airplane. And I'm looking out the window and every time it stalls, that little cable starts flopping around and everything, and the wings are doing this. And, and I'm like, eh, I don't even know you got a bungee cord to make sure the door stays shut.

But the moment of glory for me is it's like I'm handling it right? I'm in the front seat and I'm like, woo. Wow. That's wild. Wow. That's wild. Now I'm the kid that when we go to the fair, you never got me on the roller coaster. My sister, on the other hand, doesn't matter what it was, the more thrilled seek a ride, boom. She was there. Always no hesitation. And I turn around and my sister is turning green and I'm like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Yes. More

first time in my life that I got to one up my sister when it came to stuff like that, so yeah, I came down beaming ear to ear and my sister came down totally green and couldn't wait to spill herself out of the back of that plane. That was one of the, nice memories with Mr. Skaggs,

he would go out in the plane prior to hunting season. And he would always say, checking out for the best area to see where the moose are migrating. So would he be gone all weekend for those trips? He'd be gone quite a while. He'd be gone all day. It just depend.

Yeah. When he got home from these trips, did he ever act, did differently or No. Anything you remember that stood out? No. No.

(Journal Entry)

 You said he was gone a lot. It was a lot. It was a lot because like I said, part of it he said was the base, the bases have maneuvers all night tonight, and I never knew for sure.

And I didn't suspect, I thought military life is different. I'd never been involved in military life before, so I believed him, and then of course, during the hunting season, then I expected him to be gone

 thursday, September 1st, 1983, Steve went moose hunting.

 Friday, September 2nd, 1st, 1983, , Steve came back in to get some dry clothes left at 3:30 AM to go back out hunting.

 Saturday, September 3rd, 1983. Spent whole day cleaning house and getting ready for garage sale next week.

 Sunday, September 4th, 1983, Steve came back from hunting, didn't get a moose 32 degrees, and snowing in the hills.

What are some of the areas around Alaska you guys liked? My favorite was Homer. Homer was a, an artist town and it was beautiful and it was on the peninsula and it was be, it was just absolutely gorgeous Kenai steward. Every place I went Tok That's where our cabin was. With my first husband with Ed, we had a cabin in Tok, and the only place I never made it to was Fairbanks.

But yeah, every part of Alaska had just incredible beauty. And I didn't mind the cold because it was a dry cold. It was not a wet cold like Ohio, so it even below zero. It wasn't that cold and the snow would fall on your head and it wouldn't get your hair wet. It was dry snow.

You'd shake your head and all the snow came off and your hair was fine.

 Monday, September 5th, 1983, labor Day, Steve put up an antenna. We went for a walk up through Eaglewood subdivision homes are being built clear to the river. Chrissy peed on the new couch. Steve said to call some vets to see what can be done to make her stop.

And when he came back from Iceland and found out they didn't extend his tour, I was devastated. When I found we were moving to Arizona, I was totally devastated.

 Thursday, May 17th, 1984, Steve received follow along orders after Iceland, Tucson, Arizona. Both a little stunned about the move, even though we've been dreaming of warm weather and fresh fruits and vegetables. Ed and Corraine don't wanna go have to make arrangements regarding them.

/  So anyway, Eddie was still on probation, he had gotten in trouble, stealing the truck. Coleraine was pregnant and so they both stayed behind and we moved here to Arizona and Dan came back and lived with us in Arizona.

I don't know what happened to Danny and Leslie because they were with her, while he was in prison and I was up in Alaska, so when I finally came down, they had already gone their ways or whatever, and it just almost immediately, it was like they never were.

But they're two innocent kids caught in the same, not so good story, but um, that was something. So yeah, pretty much have no idea where they're at now. Danny took it pretty hard when they found out that, yeah, dad's guilty, I think he kind of shut down and went his own way and never really reached out or anything.

Do you remember? 'cause it was all over the newspapers in Tucson. Yeah. Was it in the newspapers in Alaska?

Fortunately, no nothing really broke there in Alaska. Which as I think it got overshadowed 'cause it paralleled, the time that he was up there. And that later we would find out there was suspicions about, overlap that on frozen ground um, story.

 Yeah. What happen? There's been another murder. In 1984, Robert Hansen was sentenced to 461 years in prison, late, maybe early 20. I gonna admit there's somebody taking responsible for the abduction and murder of 17 known women in the last two years. There's not one lead. Except her, she got away the wildest places.

Why don't you just start at the beginning, hide the darkest secrets. He called it, he's dead. It was more of attention. Why isn't this guy on our list? Hansons an upstanding citizen. I have testimony from a witness. She's a prostitute that refused a polygraph. It's a dead end. I need Vanessa Hudgins reopen me the case.

This guy did it and they let him get away with Nicholas Cage panic when you kill him. John Cusack. Based on the chilling true story of one of the most prolific serial killers in America, the frozen ground. Have you ever seen anybody do anything like this before?

you know, So they said the cops very much believed. And, looking back on it all, it's that first big house that we got to move into the rec room downstairs was all animal heads. 'cause he was a avid hunter and he'd do fly in hunting. Exactly The same profile as that on frozen ground guy, and I, uh, opened the eyes of cops, or the investigators and whatnot that, this might be more than just one isolated individual or event that, it's a, something a little more common. A lot of people disappear in Alaska all the time, and there's a lot of people who play these kinds of games and have the resources to do it, fly somebody out to the middle of nowhere and dump you off. And then it's hey, you're game. As far as they're concerned. And there's nobody for hundreds of miles, to hear anything, see anything, witness anything, and the wilderness swallows the evidence. It's amazing that they can find anything.

 Even when they caught that guy and he was telling them it was still a hard thing. And they only recovered like half of the people that he claims he dumped out there and they think he was being conservative about what he was claiming, so yeah. There's a lot of skeletons in the, so wildness.

Were there a lot of news stories, a lot of coverage on like missing women or bodies being found?

 Robert Hansen, the butcher Baker, Robert Hanson, the butcher, Robert Hanson, the Butcher, Bason, the Butcher Bay. Robert Hanson, the butcher Baker, Robert Hansen, also known as the butcher baker, has been arrested and is facing charges in connection to the abduction, rape, and murder of at least 17 women. Many of his victims were released into the wilderness and hunted with a Ruger many 14 and and hunting knives. 

 Yeah, no, and it concerned me. 'cause I grew up in a, a small town outside of Anchorage, so you know everybody and everybody knows everybody. And I had several girlfriends, friends, classmate friends and whatnot that it was hard not to worry about. There was a little parts runner for Napa, just cute little blonde sweet as can be and ended up at the strip clubs. She started as a parts runner, when that probably had the job illegally 'cause she was underage to even drive for 'em a thing. But she was a hardworking, good kid. And I remember how disappointed I was when I found out, she had, I.

Gone that direction

That's where a lot of these girls disappear from, and is some pretty dark stories. Cause we all had friends that, walked on the wrong side of the railroad track, so to speak. Down at the strip club and was one of the people I worried about often ending up on a meat hook in some weirdo's garage or something. 'cause these stories were coming out, and um, the uh, frozen ground one. At that time I had graduated.

I was working at the hospital and I ended up with a night job at a mortuary. And um, purely by accident, me and my friends were all motorheads. We were all into our hot rods and cruising and um, the, uh, class valedictorian, Peter Dalman had this night job at the funeral home and he was telling me about it and what got our attention is you know, they have the fleet of limos and hearses and, part of his job would be, you know, always having to detail and clean them after the funerals and whatnot. But they had a big indoor bays for taking care of the vehicles.

And so it was like, yeah, night watching all, they just sit around, answer a phone, if something comes in and vacuum, the hall and clean the cars, but you're there for hours. So pull into your own car, and detail and in garage space up in Alaska and someplace, work on your car, you know, that's, that's a nice luxury.

And um, , I had jokingly said, wow, you ever have an opening there? Let me know, you know? Two weeks later, I get a phone call from Pete and he goes, I talked to my boss. You got the job . And then I felt obligated, kind of thing. So I end up at this funeral home and it's Evergreen Memorial Chapel and it though it's, a private funeral home, the uh, coroner's office there in Alaska was not as

well equipped as our facilities, 'cause this was a big mortuary and funeral home. So our embalming tables and everything, I mean, we had a big space, could handle lots of people. So the coroner made it habit of doing the autopsies at our facility. So that's why I got to see firsthand a lot of the interesting cases that came through in Alaska because they'd come through there and the coroner would, come out and do his autopsies and whatnot.

and I was there the night we got the first of the bodies in from this guy, he had started spilling the beans and giving locations and they'd started doing recoveries. I remember the first body that came in, it was like there was hardly anything in the bag, and and open it up and it's just skeletal remains and not a whole lot of that, for the first ones that came in from him.

 On January 19th, 2006, the FBI interviewed Shirley at her home in Arizona. This was leading up to the potential parole and release of Steven Skaggs. Multiple law enforcement agencies had conducted investigations and were collaborating on open cases.

I'm surprised you do remember what you do. Oh, it's been a long time, actually. Pretty impressive. Do you want to talk about Hansen? Um, Yeah. I was wondering if you were aware. Like I, I wanted to show you a picture of him. This is. The book that I picked up and there was a man that was arrested for numerous homicides in Alaska, and somewhere along the way I was told that your.

Husband knew this person. His name is um, Robert Hanson. But the bottom picture if, does he look familiar at all to you? Did he ever have anyone he went hunting with that had their own plane?

 Steve was a pilot.

 Do you remember when he rented planes from up there? What airport? What it was?

 Oh golly.

Because I went with him once. I do not like flying, so I didn't like going. I went one time. So he could fly himself. Yeah. Oh yeah. Out to anywhere. Like someplace. . To hunt and he would use the plane for hunting purposes. The time we went up in the plane, we followed the dog sled that I did a rod.

 Do you remember anything about this case?

This is a big deal. It was like around June of 83 was around the time that he was arrested. And is that the same area? Is it Anchorage area or is it Fairbanks? , I would imagine where you're at, you would get Anchorage News?

 I worked in Anchorage.

 There is a big case. I remember it was the town of McCarthy when that guy killed everyone in the town and the one girl survived. She got out on a snowmobile. Her boyfriend was behind her, but he got shot. She ended up coming to our hospitals when I was there, that I remember, and no one ever knew why he did it.

He totally wiped out everybody.

 That's another wild case. Do you remember the Hansen case? There's a book about it. Um, and it's called The Butcher Baker 'cause he was a baker in town. It was a big deal. Uh.

 Because he was a baker and he uhhuh was also a serial killer. Uhhuh, like for active for several years. Huh? Numerous, , and he was also a pilot. And he would fly to these remote areas that apparently where he supposedly was hunting. Yeah. He was a big hunter. They showed all of this.

That's also one of the things that sobered me because while I was there working a number of my classmates rolled across the tables, one of the girls, one of my high school classmates and I come to work one day and I, I walk in and I see this girl laying on the table, and I'm like, no, it looks really familiar. You know? picked up her hand and yep, there's our class ring, 1983 Chugiak High. And, um, and people look different when the spirit's gone. 'cause there were a few times that.

Somebody I knew or work with ended up at my night job, be like, no, I couldn't be, I just talked to 'em like two days ago,

 State troopers are working on several leads in their investigation of the brutal murder of an Anchorage woman whose body was found Christmas Day in a campground near the city. Spokesman said an unspecified number of persons had telephone tips regarding the circumstances. S announcing the mysterious death of

 Firm of persons had telephone tips regarding the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of a freshman at Anchorage Community College. The young woman disappeared last Wednesday in the Turnin area of Anchorage. Her body was found Christmas afternoon, nearly three days later at a campground. 20 miles south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway can meet.

 It's like a young woman disappeared last Wednesday in the Turnin area of Anchorage. Her body was found Christmas afternoon. Nearly three days later, she was found at a campground 20 miles south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. Tall to.

 A freshman at Anchorage Community College. Ms. Van Zin disappeared last Wednesday. In the turn again area of Anchorage. Her body was found. Christmas afternoon, nearly three days later at a campground 20 miles south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. .

 We had Northern Lights Boulevard and Benson Highway were you're back and forth parallel streets through town and all the kids from all the high schools with all of our hot rods Friday and Saturday night. We'd cruise. The strip was just about a mile of strip back and forth, all round and round.

And um, that's where we'd all show off and flirt and chase girls and all that good stuff. And me and Pete working at the mortuary there's funerals all the time, and everybody buys all those expensive flowers and we throw 'em all the way, so I took all the roses, Every weekend night we'd load up the roses and it didn't hurt that we were driving fancy sports cars, but we just drive down the strip.

Every time we saw a pretty girl give her a rose. So Lots of girls want more flowers. What can you say,

do you remember where you were when you heard that Skaggs had been arrested

well for me it came through as a phone call,

Now, my mom wasn't real quick to share that stuff with me, over the phone. But I remember the call when the case finally ended and he confessed that call from my mom was a pretty unsettled call. 'Cause she was on the, not hysterical, but on the verge of tell she was losing it,

Have you seen that movie The Sixth Sense? Yeah. At the end when the big reveal. Yeah. And then they show all the scenes like, oh, and then you connect all the dots. Exactly. From the very first time I met him something in the eyes. Cause there is sometimes he'd look and he'd have this weird look. And it's there's something wrong there. He's real good at the fit and finish and snowballing everybody.

And And That's the kind of thing that went through my head and that's why I was. Referring back to animal trophies in our basement or in the rec room of our house.

 And like I said, some of the, the looks and the tensions and the way he'd disappear. 'cause he'd always go on the who goes hunting by yourself with an airplane into the wilderness of Alaska. Anything goes wrong. You're screwed. It's not the kind of thing you do by yourself, and um, unless of course you know you're your own worst enemy and you're not as alone as people think you are, and, so, there were things that started to click and the biggest thing for me is it's like even when the first accusations came, now fortunately it went straight from a, once they arrested him coming down the mountain, he never got out there.

They didn't let him out on bail or anything like that. And um, , I felt sorry for my mom because now she's trying to float their life. They had this big house, and airplane, and the bills for all that. , And trying to keep all that together. And at the same time the cops are doing things like they impounded his truck and it was a nice new, four by four Toyota pickup truck.

They seize it. And when she gets it back, she has to get tires for it because in the police impound yard, they stole the tires, stole the radio, stole a bunch of stuff right off the camper shell, basically the cops picked it clean for whatever they wanted, and she, yeah, literally had to go buy tires and rims just so they could get it outta impound and then sell it after, they didn't need it anymore for their evidence. And so my mom was left trying to pick up the pieces from all of that. Fortunately she was able to sell the big house up in Bear Canyon and bought the uh, house in Midvale Park.

I have a question for you. So when Skaggs went to prison. She stayed married to him until 1995. Yeah. So he went to prison in 1986 and she would go visit him every Sunday for the next, what is that? Eight? I went to visit him in prison. That's my question for you is did you ever go visit him?

What was it like and why do you think she kept visiting him for so long? Ah, and yeah. I remember the a couple of times we went anytime I'd come down to visit mom, we'd of course make a trip out to visit him. And at this time I said, it's all going through the courts. And I said, it wasn't until the very end that, you know, we. Found out for with certainty that no, he's guilty.

In the meantime, he had maintained his innocence all the way through and so when we'd go, visit him there, one of the big things I said coming from this religious background, my mom went to an all girls Catholic school, that's what she graduated from. Like, I'm not religious, but the visits with them, the first he very much. Was in the Christian men's group and all of that in the prison and, and was carrying his bible around and, and so he was putting on this, very good front, that he's , the innocent persecuted man.

And I guess outta respect, we didn't pry or I, certainly didn't pry into questionable details. I remember even when, he is found guilty she still had this false impression that, your marriage vows, she thought it came out of the Bible that till death do you part. And so she thought she was stuck and can't lawfully under God, divorce this person, in spite of the kind of crime we're talking about.

And she said as much, I corrected her on that, scripturally, I was like that. That's not right. That's not what it says. I don't know where you got that idea, but there are. Times where divorce because of unfaithfulness, and the hardness of hearts that it's a acceptable and it wasn't until I showed her that in the Bible and she realized that, she isn't locked into this contract no matter what, for better or for worse, that she had to stick with them.

And that's when she got the courage or the realization that she could, without breaking some oath to God, divorce, divorce them, and , that was strange.

 But like I said, I always felt like I didn't know him that well.

 I don't even remember where we went on our honeymoon, and I've thrown away a lot of pictures and everything.

 At the time this happened, I was working at Williams and Associates. They were really good friends of mine. Through all of this, , Anne even went to court with me.

 June 8th, 2025.

 Hi Mandy. Hi Anne. How are you? I'm fine, I just actually just ran across my, whole file of stuff that I have from the newspaper clippings and the letters and all that stuff. So I just yeah, I just pulled it up and.

You're gonna wanna see this. I just opened this file and, there's one newspaper. It has Steve Kerr, our famous basketball player, receiving his. Medal or something, and then it says, man, abducts, two women on Mount Lemmon.

And then the next article on the same page is skeletal remains identified as those of bicyclist archer. All in one front page. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, it's very crazy. I just kept it all and. Yep. Oh, I got, I'm running across letters from Shirley. I'm just thumbing through it right now.

, My name is Anne and my husband and I employed Shirley

I think it was in May of 1986. The, , incident happened with Steve Skaggs on July of 86, I believe. One morning, Shirley called my house at around seven or so in the morning, and, asked for my husband and I told her that he wasn't home.

He had already gone to work and I actually, she sounded a little bit distraught, but not overly, and I asked her if everything was okay and I was on my way to work and could I get a message to my husband. And she said. My husband, I gotta go bail, my husband outta jail. He's been arrested for attempted murder, for that incident that happened at Mount Lemmon last night.

I was quite surprised to hear that and offered to help her and she said, no, she's just gonna go down and bail him out of jail. And took a quite a while. She was gone and then she called. Our office and said, it's not as easy as I thought. They're not gonna let him out, and I need to hire an attorney.

So at that point I asked her, what could we do to help her? I said, can we call people for you? I don't know what church you go to, but, , is there somebody from church or maybe a relative we could call? And, or who were her best friends? And she basically. Suggested that we were her best friends.

She'd only been in, Tucson for a number of months, so she hadn't really socialized with many people, so we jumped in the middle to try to help her out. And ran right over to her home , tried to help her with her attorney issues and anything else that was on her mind. And, of course we prayed with her

so then the rest of the story goes on with her trials and, , inability to get him out of jail. And, we felt like she possibly didn't have a very good attorney. We couldn't figure out why he wasn't, , getting him out. , Anyway as the story unfolded, as we all know, he finally pled guilty. So apparently they knew all along that he was guilty.

So.

Anyway,

Quite a shock. We had never been through anything like this before.

And, we're trying to help Shirley and we don't understand what the police are doing. And our law enforcement friend basically said, you need to leave this alone. That's all I can say. He said, you just need to leave this alone. So we at that point, of course, started feeling like there was more to the story than what we knew.

We still,

uh, ,

of course befriended Shirley and did everything we could to help her through everything, but we had a feeling that the outcome wasn't gonna be what she was expecting.

So we were doing what we could , to walk her through the motions that she needed to go through. There was no reason for us to expose information that we felt might have been detrimental to her. We didn't wanna share it with her. Would that have been in regards to the Alaska?

Yes. We had heard from somebody else, that they had , suspected him in Alaska. And apparently not enough evidence to really pin it on him, but it was pretty obvious that he had probably done it. And, but then again, we didn't, even share that with Shirley. She had enough going on in her brain and in her heart we didn't feel like we needed to color it with that.

At some point, somewhere along the line. The FBI told Shirley that if her husband was gonna get off with this in Arizona, that they were gonna extra extradite him back to Alaska and charge him in the disappearances of a couple women up there.

And there was a newspaper clipping. In Tucson that said the number 18 . And I always wondered where they got the number 18 because surely in her interviews, like she knew about it, but she only thought it was a couple.

 The same day sheriff's officials announced they'd recovered Archer's Body Air Force Master Sergeant Steven Skaggs kidnapped two women hiking on Mount Lemmon. He raped, stabbed and shot. One of them was convicted of the attacks and sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.

At the time of his sentencing, Skaggs was being investigated for as many as 18 similar attacks in Alaska, where he was stationed before coming to Tucson, and he was considered a suspect in Archer's homicide even though forensic tests were inconclusive.

 and when I had quoted that to Shirley a few years ago, she was shocked that it was 18. You are the first person. I've come across, that also said the number, 18, yeah. She had sold Steve's airplane in order to, , pay her attorney, or his attorney. And, , they had apparently found a map in the airplane with Xs on it

That was the evidence that law enforcement, I believe, was looking at.

I can't even imagine. What she was going through

Wow. It's so crazy. Like I said, you're the first person that knows about that

too, so

this was a question I I haven't asked you yet, um, Steve Skaggs had two kids and Shirley had two kids. And when Shirley first moved to Arizona, her two kids, Eddie and Crane, stayed up in Alaska.

Um, they were a little bit older and they didn't initially move down to Arizona with them. However, Steve's son, Danny. Did and I, you kind of told me he worked for you guys, but Shirley um, told me that during that time Danny was often bullied at school and it was really hard for him. Do you ever remember her sharing anything about just the home life during those trial months?

I know, uh, I know that, she was concerned for him. And um, and that's when we hired him to come into our office and do some, some odd jobs when we had a project to do, we would, um, we had called Danny several times to come in and, and work for us, and, um, Shirley was always appreciative of that.

Yeah. I actually got a hold of Danny and I Oh, I've chatted with Danny too. Yeah, he, he's, if you care to know, he's, he's doing really well now. He's actually a cool guy, but he did say that that was really, really hard on him. And after his dad was, you know, pled guilty, he actually went and lived with his mom and finished high school.

So it was probably the best thing for him with all of that. Yeah.

At one point over the weekend, we had gotten a phone call that our business had been broken into.

And we decided to install iron, rails on the doors to the front of the office. Shirley's desk was right up next to one of those windows that had the iron bars on it. And so when she came in Monday morning, she goes, oh, what's this all about? So , I said we put bars up by your desk so that you would feel more comfortable when you came to work. And, regarding Steve being behind bars. And anyway, the next day , when she came in, she says, oh, I saw Steve last night.

And I told him how funny it was that you put bars in and what you said about it. That it was make me more comfortable. And he said when he gets out he's gonna come and get you. And she said it jokingly, and I imagine he said it jokingly, but it certainly, I remember it to this day 'cause it scared me, so I thought maybe he didn't think our joke was so funny.

Shirley had told me that she was , gonna be loyal to Steve, and , she would visit him.

He was in, , Florence, in, in the prison there, and she would visit him on the weekends.

She stuck with him for many years and went up and visited him every weekend.

So her and Steve Skaggs got divorced in 1995, so it was seven years she did that. Okay. Where she would've had every weekend. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

I heard about the story when I was 15 and I always lived with this fear of scags. I was always scared he was gonna get out of jail and, come after us or come seek revenge on Shirley for leaving him, or who knows, uhhuh, do you mind sharing? ' Oh, absolutely. Just how it affected your life. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I am a hiker. I'm, I don't hike very much anymore. But when I realized that, and I, so I always tell myself, don't hike alone because that's not real smart.

We have rattlesnakes and wild animals and. Apparently wild people in our deserts out here. And , so I've always, said, okay, I'll always be with a girlfriend or with my husband or somebody. But it really bottom line, it really turned my, peaceful hikes into fearful, , times being out with girlfriends and wondering what was gonna happen or not happen.

Shirley wrote me a lot of letters, and I don't even have a date on this one. She just, she didn't date 'em, but it was obviously after the fact. Part of the letter is I appreciate all the time you spent with me at the office, at home, in the courtroom, you made a.

Devastating situation. So much easier to handle. I just praise God that he placed you in my life. Your unselfishness and thoughtfulness truly reflect Jesus and I love you both very much. May the Lord bless you abundantly in every area of your lives. You are always in our prayers and in our hearts.

She wrote me a lot of letters, but, , here's another letter if you wanna hear it. I'm picking up in the middle it says, I also wanna thank you both for being such good friends.

I don't know how I would've made it through that year that Steve was in jail if I hadn't had your support and encouragement. You are both so special. To both Steve and I, leaving your company was one of the hardest things I ever did, but at that time, I needed a position I could quote, hide in a corner, so to speak.

I knew that you needed someone who could step in when we were in a slump and selling was something I knew I couldn't handle at that time. Actually, selling is probably on the same level of talents as my cooking.

I do miss the fun I had at your company and I miss the people, your company was like a family to me. Everyone there is very special. I wish you both, all the success and blessings that the Lord can bestow upon you. You're in our prayers, hopefully someday. Won't be too distant.

Future,

Steve will be able to tour your new showroom. Yikes.

, I just found another letter this is December 94. Okay. . She says, after all this time, I finally came to a decision concerning Steve and I, I really prayed and sought the Lord's will in this, and last month I wrote Steve and told him that I was going to file for divorce.

He wrote back saying that about three months ago, the Lord had spoken to him to release me. As with most of us, however, when we hear something we don't wanna hear, we immediately question as to whether it was really from the Lord. He asked the Lord to give him confirmation. By having me write and ask him for a divorce.

Oh yeah, really sorry. But I had to, I had asked the Lord for confirmation by having Steve write back and say that the Lord had told him to release me. I don't know how this all worked, but when I received his letter, I knew we were both in the Lord's. Well, I still feel sad about everything, but we aren't parting with any, bitterness or bad feelings towards each other.

And I'm glad of that. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't live with what he has done. Although he was always good to me. I can't wipe away the memory of his crime. The letter he wrote to me was very beautiful. I still care about him and I hope the best for him, but I can't be there for him as his wife any longer.

It's a little scary to be on my own again. But at the same time, it was exciting to see what the Lord has planned for me.

​  Coming up 📍 next time.

,

A hiker found her skeletal remains scattered near where her bike was found.

She's trying to connect the dots on that one,

I'm kind of running into a lot of ghosts with this case.

Somebody disappears they played that, number one suspect thing on me.

My name is Steve Cargill, and I was married to Shirley for 23 years.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shirley-you-cant-be-serious/id1830515861?i=1000722504722