Pod Insights Rotten Mango Young Woman Self Exits W/ Gun Longer Than Arms In Mayor's Home - 2 Yrs Later Another Girl Is Dead About this episode Two officers from the Kotzebue, Alaska Police Department enter a living room and ask the two small children watching SpongeBob, “Did someone call the police?”
One just points to a bedroom door. Inside, a man, Anthony, cradles a young woman’s body drenched in blood. He says she’s his girlfriend, Jennifer. That he too, was just watching SpongeBob in the living room when he heard a ‘pop’ from the bedroom and found her with a ‘self-inflicted’ gun shot wound to her chin.
An investigation begins. The rifle used measures 27 and 1/8th inches long from barrel to trigger. Jennifer’s arm is 26 and 3/16th inches long. Nothing comes of it. The medical examiner observes red strangulation marks around Jennifer’s neck. The investigation is over within one day. Jennifer’s death is declared a self exit.
They don’t test for gunshot residue on the boyfriend, Anthony.
They don’t look into his past record of abuse and SA.
After all, Anthony lives with his father, Clement Richards Senior, the mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough. Surely this was a horrific one time tragic event…
Two years later another young woman’s body is found one again, at the mayor’s home.
Full show notes available at RottenMangoPodcast.com
Transcript 15,157 words · 3 speakers
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0:58 Speaker 01 Badabing badaboo.
1:00 Speaker 00 6:00 PM in Katsubiu, Alaska. It means absolutely nothing because in Katsubiu, it's always either very bright or always very dark. There is, I mean, that's really not a metaphor. This is not something deeper. It's always either sunny all day long until you drive yourself crazy at night because you need to block out any light that's coming in through the window so that you can fall asleep at 11:00 PM. Or you get three hours of sunlight the entire day and then you just live in perpetual darkness. There is no middle ground like most places. To give you a point of reference, in New York City during the summer, you get about 14 hours of sunlight. During the winter, you get closer to 10 hours of sunlight. But it is pretty standard. You know, usually during the winter, sunset's at 5:00 PM.
1:44 Speaker 00 During the summer, it's closer to 8:00 PM. That's not what happens in Katsubiu. Katsubiu is above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, which means the winters are almost pitch black all night, all day long.
1:58 Speaker 01 But it's in the US?
1:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, in Alaska.
2:00 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
2:01 Speaker 00 It's actually closer to Russia than it is to Anchorage, Alaska. It's very interesting. Now, the area north of the Arctic Circle is probably only about four percent of the Earth's entire surface. And all you really need to know is that if you live above the Arctic Circle, things like daytime, nighttime, it doesn't mean anything. During the wintertime, it feels like Katsabue has some sort of dread countdown that starts in September. September starts, you wake up, sunrise is at noon, eleven fifty seven AM, noon. When half the workday is already over for most of everybody else. And then the sun sets before you're even out of the office at three twenty one PM. Barely three hours and twenty four minutes of actual sun.
2:41 Speaker 00 But that's not even the worst of it. Each day of early December, shave off another five to seven minutes of daylight. In Katsabue, the shortest day of the year is December twenty first. Sunrise is just right around one PM and sets at two thirty nine PM. You get two hours and five minutes of sunlight and that's it. And also, this is not two hours of high UV. Go outside and just get blessed with the vitamin D, just blasting in the summer sun. That's not what it is. The sun does not go more than a few degrees over the horizon. So it feels like a very eerie, two hour long golden hour. And then it's just gone. And sometimes it's not even just pitch black. There's a lot of residents.
3:25 Speaker 00 They say that they actually prefer pitch blackness in the winter, but they have these hours that they call blue hours. And everything is like a really haunting, intense, saturated blue. It's not bright, it's not dark. But it's just like everything is a blue tint. During the winter, Alaskans have a term called big dark. It's just like a heavy weight that you feel during the wintertime, even though there might not be anything inherently wrong. You just feel like everything is wrong. It's likely due to the melatonin production in the body. And serotonin also crashes when there's less light input. So you have surging melatonin, falling serotonin. And Alaska has one of the highest rates of seasonal depression in the entire country.
4:04 Speaker 01 Wow.
4:04 Speaker 00 Someone who moved to a town north of the Arctic Circle thought it's gonna be easy. It's gonna be easy to acclimate because quote, you know, I knew it would take some time to acclimate for it. But I I thought I prepared. I love the cold. I love the dark. I've always wanted to go somewhere dark and cold because I feel like I would thrive in this climate. I was dead wrong. I did not realize how much humans rely on light and dark cycles. I've tried to become more physically active by going on daily walks and taking all my vitamin D supplements. But my mind is beyond fucked. And then the minute that you adjust, it's time for summer. Starting in May, Katsabu suddenly never gets dark. The sun rises at five fifty-three AM and then it sets at midnight.
4:49 Speaker 00 You've nearly eighteen hours of sunlight, but that's just the beginning. Eventually, the sun is gonna be up for close to twenty-three hours.
4:57 Speaker 01 That is crazy to be living in a place like this.
5:00 Speaker 00 And when that, you know, twenty-three hours of the twenty-four hours, that doesn't mean that you have that one hour of like pitch darkness. It never really transitions into dark either, so it just always feels like daytime. And that is when a call is made to nine-one-one. Six PM, May twenty eighteen, you don't even know if the sun is setting anytime soon. It probably isn't. Nine-one-one gets a call in Katsabu that someone might be dead. Two officers from the local police department, they drive up to the house in question. They walk up to the front door and it doesn't really strike them as the type of house where something bad is happening inside. They swing open the front door. It's open. And in the living room, there are two small children watching SpongeBob on the TV. It's kind of like a weird feeling.
5:44 Speaker 00 One of the officers gets one of the kids' attention. Did did someone call the police? One of the young boys points to the bedroom door. Okay, very strange. The officers start walking closer to the door in question. It's partially open. And when they peer in, there is a man holding a woman's body. This man is coated in blood, his clothes are soaked in blood, his arms, his pants, any part of this man named Anthony that the police can see, there is blood coating Anthony. And the woman that he's holding is this small 25-year-old Inupiaq indigenous woman. She's in a fetal position. There's this 22 caliber rifle laying nearby and the officers glance around and they do notice
6:27 Speaker 00 blood splatter on the floor, the dresser, mattress, blankets. There's even a few plastic totes on the ground nearby, that's covered in blood splatter. She's been shot, under her chin. Her name is Jennifer Kirk and she's now dead. The man holding her body, Anthony, he speaks up first, he's her boyfriend. He says he was in the living room watching SpongeBob with the two kids when he heard this pop sound go off, it sounded like a firework inside the bedroom. So he runs in, he finds her on the ground bleeding heavily from her head. Quote, "I have no idea what happened."
6:58 Speaker 01 When you say "under her chin", like right here?
7:00 Speaker 00 Under her chin.
7:01 Speaker 01 From bottom to top?
7:03 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm. The investigators, they place Jennifer's body into a body bag to transport to the medical examiner's office. That bag is sealed with a tag number 0010959. The investigators, they notice a few things. I mean, first they pull out a tape measure. They measure the rifle from the tip of the barrel. So this is where the bullet comes out, it exits the gun at that point. And then the tip of the trigger, not the handle, not the other end of the gun, the trigger. You need to press this for the gun to fire. It is 27 and 1/8 inches long. And then they measure Jennifer's arm. Jennifer's arm is 26 inches and 3/16 inches long. Her arm is shorter than the trigger to the barrel.
7:47 Speaker 00 Her arm is shorter than the gun. But they believe she self-exited. Then at the morgue, as the medical examiner unseals the body bag number 0010959, they notice red markings around Jennifer Kirk's neck and there's clear handprints around her neck. So Jennifer Kirk did not just sustain a fatal gunshot wound, she was strangled before she died. The investigators, they do not ask the next obvious questions. Instead, they close the case within one day of investigating and they state that Jennifer Kirk sadly tragically self exited. They don't ask the man Anthony to test his hands or his clothes for gunshot residue. They don't look into his past because he has a past record of abuse and SA.
8:31 Speaker 00 They barely question him. They don't canvass the neighborhood. They don't interview anyone that might know something. They also don't go into the house and turn it upside down, searching every square inch for any sort of evidence. Because after all, it would be kind of weird to search the mayor's house, right? Anthony Richards, the man covered in blood, is the son of Clement Richards Senior, the mayor of the Northwest Arctic Bureau. How could a mayor's son ever turn out to be a killer? And even if they find another body in that house two years after Jennifer Kirk, do they really need to do something about it?
9:27 Speaker 00 We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Manilac Association. They are an indigenously operated nonprofit that provides high quality, culturally relevant health, social and tribal services in the Northwest Arctic Bureau. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we would also like to thank you guys for your continued support. I will say that there is this huge expose done with ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News with the journalist Kyle Hopkins. It's so informative. They went and they spoke to so many people in town. They did investigative boots on the ground investigative work and it's just a great piece of journalism. So please go take a look at that. With that being said, today's case involves mentions of self-exit, DV, gun violence.
10:12 Speaker 00 However, the biggest thing to be aware of, it involves missing and murdered indigenous peoples. There's going to be especially sensitive conversations about institutions. racial racism systemic neglect police negligence misconduct prosecutorial failures so please if you feel overwhelmed take a break and I will see you in the next one statements and quotes have been condensed for brevity everything researched for this video was found publicly available and that is in common statement speculations and accusations are not our own and are only mentioned for comprehensive reporting so with that being said nobody has been charged but I have my opinions but let's get into it
10:47 Speaker 01 really
10:47 Speaker 00 yeah being a political figure is all about how you deal with a scandal almost all the time it's a scandal that is caused by their own actions but nevertheless it is how they bounce back from the scandal it's not even about the scandal itself sometimes it requires you take the shit that is thrown at you for good reason you deserve shit thrown at you but then you take it and you throw it back at somebody else you think I'm bad go look at that person did you see what they said sometimes it's all about ignore the giant elephant in the room you ignore it so much that everybody else gets used to the elephant being in the room it's like how you forget how to blink or breathe because you're just always doing it you're always breathing and blinking
11:30 Speaker 00 without addressing it so everyone forgets that the elephant is in there and then once in a while someone will walk into the press room and go holy shit there's an elephant in here and everyone go ah forgot about the fucking elephant or sometimes the comeback requires going to jail and serving your time it feels like most mayors have their scandal at some point in their careers are you really a politician if you're not probably in the Epstein files former mayor of DC Marianne Berry thankfully not in the Epstein files I will say that this is historically one of the biggest mayoral scandals and this is not me saying that this is like the worst thing a mayor has done it's just historically known as a massive mayor's scandal it's the crack scandal and I
12:15 Speaker 00 will say for all that Marianne Berry and all that he did that was kind of bad okay because most in all mayors seem to be bad there always is some level of corruption the standard is all mayors are bad some just do a little bit more good than bad for their own citizens it does need to be noted that Marianne Berry had some very bad streaks Marianne Barry was the former DC, Washington DC mayor, and he was known as the Chocolate King.
12:40 Speaker 01 Chocolate King?
12:41 Speaker 00 Of the Chocolate City. They called it the Chocolate City. And he did, I will say, like, people love Marianne. But he was known for having a lot of hot takes. He offended Polish Americans by calling them a slur. He then stated that he would like to, quote, "do something about these Asians coming in, opening businesses, those dirty shops, they ought to go." Then he offended Filipino Americans by pointing out that there's so many nurses immigrating from the Philippines into the United States to, you know, save lives. And he says, "And no offense, but let's grow our own teachers, let's grow our own nurses so that we don't have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places, having to hire people from somewhere else." So he managed, yeah, to piss off a lot of communities, but he loved his own people, and for that, a lot of people just could not fault him.
13:24 Speaker 00 As mayor of DC, he increased the share of government contracts awarded to black-owned businesses from 5% to 40%. He also required private corporations doing businesses in Washington DC to appoint women and minorities to leadership positions. One tribute about Barry's work says, quote, "single-handedly expanded the black middle class in DC and created a generation of black millionaires in a time when economic and cultural segregation was rampant." He was also notorious for, like, driving around the city, and if he saw someone on the street, he'd be like, "Do you have a job?" And they would say, "No," and they'd get a job by the afternoon. He wanted everyone to have a job. Yeah.
14:02 Speaker 01 Wow.
14:02 Speaker 00 I would hope that his discriminatory remarks against Asians, Polish people, I mean, I hope it was a big learning moment for him, a moment of growth. But regardless, he won reelection countless times. And regardless of these remarks, he just keeps getting elected and elected, and he honestly did change the trajectory of so many families' lives, probably with generational impact. Like, ultimately, Marianne Barry did a lot of good. But then he smoked crack, and this was a huge thing. So for years, federal investigators, they've been trying to get Barry on something. You have to wonder if it's almost like they were, they chose their target, and they're just waiting for something to come up so that they could take Marianne Barry down. They didn't like that a black Democrat kept winning mayor for Washington DC.
14:48 Speaker 01 When was this?
14:49 Speaker 00 Oh, this was a long time ago, decades ago. He's he's since passed.
14:53 Speaker 01 Okay, okay.
14:54 Speaker 00 But this is probably one of the biggest mayoral scandals that there ever was. Um, this is like back when mayors did regular crimes of corruption and drugs. And now they do like Epstein crimes. So, you know, they get Mayor Barry's ex-girlfriend to come in, the feds, the FBI. And she's also under pressure. The FBI are being overwhelmingly nice to her. And she agrees to set up a room, a hotel room outfitted with two secret cameras, courtesy of the FBI. And just three days before Mayor Barry is going to announce that he's going to run for mayor for the fourth term. He walks into the hotel room and he wants to rekindle this relationship romantically. She denies.
15:36 Speaker 00 Especially because there's just another strange woman sitting in the corner of the room. Her name is Wanda. But her name is not really Wanda because she's an FBI undercover agent. And so she's sitting there and she's like, oh, I'm just a friend of your ex-girlfriend. Do you want to smoke crack? Mayor Barry is like, no. She then asks him again, are you sure you don't want to smoke crack? He's like, no, I don't want to smoke crack. And then she brings it up again and again. And finally, Mayor Barry picks up the crack pipe, inhales twice. And a second later, the door is kicked open, FBI agents, DC police. They arrest Mayor Barry, to which he responds, and this is now the viral quote. Goddamn bitch, set me up like this. Set me up. Ain't that a bitch?
16:20 Speaker 00 Those were his words. And that's why people love Mayor Barry, okay? Like, if people love Mayor Barry, and then he looks at-
16:27 Speaker 01 But they did set him up.
16:29 Speaker 00 They literally said it. I mean, I don't even know how this is not entrapment. It's just straight up entrapment at this point. She asks so many times, are you sure you don't want to smoke crack?
16:39 Speaker 01 So why, why the fucking girlfriend sold out like that?
16:43 Speaker 00 I think they were scaring her. I think they were scaring the shit out of her. Now, I do wanna know, Mayor Berry did a lot of drugs. Like, i- it is a truth. He's done a lot of drugs, all various sorts of drugs. This was a huge scandal back then because the press is racist. So first of all, the setup itself is disturbing. I think it's entrapment. And then instead of the articles afterwards just saying, oh, my gosh, our mayor was caught doing drugs, which would have been the headlines had a white mayor been caught doing cocaine. There is the persistent racism of a black man smoking crack. Which, by the way, I just wanna note that there is a sentencing ratio of a hundred to one between crack and powder cocaine, which technically the molecule high is like the same thing.
17:25 Speaker 00 Which means if you have two sugar packets of crack, you get a mandatory five-year prison sentence. Meanwhile, you'll probably see an influencer do more than that of cocaine in a Carbone or Nobu bathroom on any given Saturday night. So in order to get a mandatory five-year sentence for cocaine, you need to have over a pound of cocaine. Perhaps the more cleanly, moral, morally indisputable act is that he tried to rekindle his relationship with his ex in the hotel room while he's married and his wife did support him through the entire trial. So anyway, he goes to jail for six months in federal prison and once he's released, he runs for mayor again and he wins.
18:05 Speaker 01 He's back.
18:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, he's back. Yeah.
18:08 Speaker 01 Wow.
18:09 Speaker 00 He is since, um, passed, but yeah. He was back. This is like a crazy comeback from mayor. This is, I mean, a lot of political consultants, they study Mayor Berry.
18:20 Speaker 01 Wow. So people actually like the fact that he was like, the bitch set me up.
18:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, they love that he was very real about it and they also love the fact that he was dealing with addiction. Because I think a lot of people could relate to it. And again, it's like, wouldn't you rather your mayor be doing drugs than committing crimes against women and children? Because nowadays, it seems like every other mayor is at risk of being found in the files or being accused of essay. But even that would be more easily navigated than a situation that Mayor Clement Richards Senior finds himself in.
18:57 Speaker 00 Monday morning, police are called to the mayor's house. You know how this goes, you've heard it before. A woman, Inua Pag, found in the house, dead. Strangulation marks, boyfriend is the mayor's son. You already know this story from May of 2018. When the sun had no intention of setting, it's hot outside, the sun is up. Jennifer Kirk is found dead at the foot of the bed. But this is not that Monday morning. This is March 9th, 2020. It's 8:32 a.m. The sun hasn't even gotten up. It won't rise until 9:30 a.m. The temperature is 13 degrees below zero. And the police find another body. 30 years old, Inua Pag, beaten. Strangulation marks around her neck.
19:41 Speaker 00 And her name is Susanna Norton, but everybody calls her Susu. She shares the same birthday as Jennifer Kirk, August 21st. And both of them are found dead in the mayor's house.
19:54 Speaker 01 So the mayor lives in this house too?
19:55 Speaker 00 Yes.
19:56 Speaker 01 With the son?
19:56 Speaker 00 Yes.
19:57 Speaker 01 And in the beginning, who are those two kids watching TV?
20:01 Speaker 00 The son's kids with Jennifer Kirk.
20:03 Speaker 01 Oh, that's Jennifer Kirk's kids?
20:05 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
20:06 Speaker 01 How old are they?
20:08 Speaker 00 They're described to be juveniles.
20:09 Speaker 01 Oh, that's crazy, okay.
20:12 Speaker 00 The term op book is not like a new term. It's been around for a while. It's a research book for the op, the opponent, the opposition in a political race. So what you do when you're trying to run for mayor or any elected office, where there is a lot of money funneled into the campaigns. You hire two to three specialists. They're called researchers and you pay them anywhere between $20,000 to $80,000 to do a full workup of the inside and outside of your opposition. The researchers will go and dig through archived old news, reports, voting records, campaign finance filings, social media posts. An op book researcher says, "I was hired because they saw the opposition as a threat. My job was to try and kill him."
20:57 Speaker 00 I mean, not literally, but you get what I'm saying, right? Let's say you do find some dirt on the opposition. What do they do then? Well, they study it for the debates. But there's been this longstanding tradition, it seems, that the researchers will share that material with a journalist on the condition of no fingerprints. The journalist gets to break a story with inside sources. The campaign recycles the published story into attack ads, debate talking points. And while the candidate acts like I I found out through the news, just like everybody else, and they act just as outraged as all the other citizens. You can sometimes tell of by the release timing if this is from an op book. In mayoral races, if one candidate consistently has bad information coming out on the day
21:40 Speaker 00 of press releases or big gatherings and rallies, it could just be very well released from the other party, which is why it's important, usually big campaigns. If they only have the budget to do one op book, they do a self up.
21:53 Speaker 01 Oh.
21:54 Speaker 00 Researchers, yeah, make an op book on you, the candidate, because you know the other party's gonna do it. You need good counterpoints. You need to make sure that you're not taken off guard. I mean, it takes a lot to run for mayor or really any elected office beyond that. And that's why people like to play dirty. Some wealthy candidates have also been known to hire every political consultant in the market, not to use all of their services at once, but to prevent the opponents from accessing them. It's kind of like when, um, wealthy people, they get a divorce and they hire all, they put all the best family attorneys in the city on a retainer so that their partner can't use them. It's kind of like that. It takes a lot to win the race to be mayor, but it really depends what you get out of it, depending on the mayor system. So some cities have what's called a strong mayor system.
22:39 Speaker 00 New York, Chicago, Houston, mayor gets to appoint the heads of departments. They help draft and propose budgets. They have a lot of executive power. Then you have a weak mayor system where you're pretty much just like chairing the council meetings and cutting ribbons. Like, you don't really have any independent executive authority. You're just there.
22:58 Speaker 01 So there's more money in the strong one?
23:00 Speaker 00 Yes.
23:00 Speaker 01 Is that what you mean?
23:01 Speaker 00 And it's very strange. So there are some major cities where the mayor only gets paid like a hundred thousand dollars. And then there will be a city in Florida with a thousand residents and the mayor is getting paid a quarter million dollars.
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25:51 Speaker 00 Now, the Northwest Arctic Bureau in Alaska, that's a strong mayor system. The charter for it explicitly states the executive power in the bureau is vested in the mayor. The Bureau Mayor, as the Chief Administrative Officer, is responsible for all proper administration of all Bureau affairs. That gives Mayor Clement Richards a whole lot of power. A lot of power. Enough power that he is going to be in charge of a $60 million construction contract. And there's going to be allegations that he's blackmailed into this contract. Because there is a video of him that exists with an underage girl.
26:29 Speaker 01 Is that a rumor?
26:31 Speaker 00 It's a rumor. Now, one month after Mayor Clement is elected into office. A police officer knocks on his door. I mean, technically, this is a very uncomfortable situation for the police officer to be in, but he's got a job to do. The officer was called by Jennifer Kirk, a 22 year old. So this is when she's 22, she passes away at 25. She reports that she was punched in the face by someone who lives in this very house, the mayor's son. So the report reads from the perspective of the officer. I asked Jennifer how Anthony assaulted her and she stated that they were having intercourse and he tried to have anal intercourse. And when she told him no, Jennifer then stated that Anthony punched her in the back three times, causing pain. And punched her in the right eye twice, causing pain, swelling and a bloodshot eye.
27:15 Speaker 00 Jennifer said Anthony also grabbed her right arm, leaving bruises just above her wrist. Obviously, the officer has to investigate. He walks up to the mayor's front door and he knocks. And he knocks again, and then Mayor Richards, Mayor Clement, he opens the door and he smells drunk. Or at least according to the report, quote, appeared extremely intoxicated. And then the mayor just aggressively starts asking, how can I help you? How can I help you? How can I help you? Doesn't give the officer a chance to respond. He asks, how can I help you three times and then slams the door shut. It's like very odd behavior. This is one month after he becomes mayor. Wh- what is the officer supposed to do? Knock again? He doesn't. Instead, he just moves on. And so does everybody else.
27:58 Speaker 00 Until three years later, Jennifer Kirk is found dead inside that house. And there are clear markings of strangulation. She was shot with a gun that is longer than her entire arm. And it's ruled a self-exit. And the police and the mayor, they move on to the next big case.
28:15 Speaker 01 Wow.
28:15 Speaker 00 So instead of answering questions about what happened in his own house, what his son could have been involved in, the mayor is out there on a podium, involved in another case, answering questions about Ashley Johnson Barr. Ashley Johnson Barr is the girl in purple. So, okay, there's a lot that you have to know about the whole area of Katsabu. It's closer to Russia, like I said, than Anchorage. It's a very isolated area. It's part of this like frying pan shaped peninsula in Alaska. And it's actually believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Americas. The land should belong to the Inupiat people and they do comprise of roughly seventy-five percent of the population. Uh, but of course it's stolen land, but a lot more on this later.
28:59 Speaker 00 It's a very small population where, yes, the trope, everybody knows everybody. And it's true. It's also true that September sixth, twenty eighteen, everybody knows that ten-year-old Ashley Johnson Barr does not come home. And everybody knows Ashley Johnson Barr. People say she's the kid that just seemed to be everywhere, like she could teleport. She'll be picking blueberries with her family and then showing up to five different church services and Bible studies every single week. If there's a body of water, she's probably trying to change into a swimsuit and swim in it, even if it's a puddle. But that Thursday evening, she goes to hang out at the playground in the town center. And this is not like other parts of the US where
29:38 Speaker 00 kids are not out by themselves. She's got a phone. She's at the town center. This is very normal for kids in this area.
29:45 Speaker 01 This happened after um Jennifer's body was found or?
29:49 Speaker 00 Three months after Jennifer's body is found and this case Ashley Johnson Barr's case does make national news and because ma- the mayor is the mayor of the town that this is occurring in, he almost becomes like this spokesperson for this case and yet nobody's asking him about the fact that three months ago, a woman was found dead on his property and his own son was covered in her own blood.
30:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, how how how does that make sense? Why is nobody?
30:14 Speaker 00 Exactly.
30:15 Speaker 01 Is it just like he has so much power that this the it's been silenced from the town?
30:20 Speaker 00 Yeah. And again, this is a town where, like I said, it's that trope, everybody knows everybody and Ashley goes missing and for eight days, all hell breaks loose, boats, helicopters, K nine units are flown into the town to help, the coast guard gets involved at any given time, there were as many as fifty people searching for Ashley. September fourteenth, twenty eighteen, a volunteer spots Ashley's body in the tundra a few miles outside of town. She had been assayed and strangled to death at ten years old. So very quickly, a forty one year old man, Peter Vance Wilson, gets arrested. I mean, the first sign that something was wrong with Peter was a relative fa- a relative of Peter's was going to everyone in town is looking for Ashley and he's going through Peter's
31:03 Speaker 00 coat, I don't know if he was hanging the coat up or if it was just like sprawled out on the couch, so he's picking it up and he notices something heavy in the pocket, he reaches in and it's Ashley's phone.
31:14 Speaker 00 Okay, now DNA testing also showed that he was the one that kidnapped Ashley, assayed her and then strangled her with her own pants. He also eventually confessed. But the infuriating part about all of this is that all these people start coming forward and they keep saying, we knew that Peter had problems and we tried to tell everybody that Peter had problems. Two female relatives stated that Peter had repeatedly throughout their entire childhoods, assayed them and he never got in trouble. He started assaying his relatives when he was twelve years old. Family members describe as many as forty different accounts of essay from Peter and they tried to tell people and nobody was listening to anybody.
31:52 Speaker 01 Like the police station isn't doing anything?
31:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, nobody's doing anything. They just, you know, Ashley's father even states, quote, "Some ladies and young girls sure did try and go and speak up. Guess what happened? Nothing happened. People told them they never did this to you. You're just making up stories." But Ashley's case is monumental for a number of reasons. I mean, I could do a whole episode on this, but people realized how much resources they could actually mobilize. I mean, the way that people came together to find Ashley, how the entire state of Alaska seemed to come together, that means the resources are there. So if the case is there, this should be the reception for every missing and murdered indigenous person. Not just like once in a while, but every single time. Secondly, there was this sentiment in Alaska that a culture of silence is not going to be tolerated anymore.
32:36 Speaker 00 If someone had taken accusations against Peter seriously, Ashley would still be alive. Many of Peter's relatives would have been safer. Ashley's dad states, "Our daughter started something. No more silence." I mean, there's just so much more to the case, but I mean, her parents are doing a lot of good for women and children in Alaska. However, one of the most vocal people during the entirety of this case is this one man who just kind of inserts himself into all of this. Mayor Clement Richards. He's all over the news stations when the searches for Ashley is taking place. And it's infuriating because like, everything that Ashley's legacy symbolizes, the mayor is exploiting because if anyone profits from a culture of silence, it's clearly Mayor Clement Richards Senior.
33:20 Speaker 00 Because just three months before he makes himself the spokesperson for Ashley's passing, Jennifer Kirk was found dead in his house and he's just sweeping it under the rug. Some people just really make it easy for the police to do their job. Some cases just like are very easy to solve, or at least that's what it feels like. You get a checklist. Hey, these are the five things you need to do. Find the evidence, check off the box, we're going to trial, you're getting a conviction. Jennifer Kirk's case feels like that. It feels so easy. Either the truth is, it's in the evidence that she did self-exit, like the police claimed that she did, or naturally, there's something else to look into, like the mayor's son Anthony. I mean, how much more literal with the red flags do we have to get? The police department in their own report,
34:03 Speaker 00 quote, "I noted the rifle from the tip of the barrel to the tip of the trigger as being twenty-seven and one eighteenth inches long." Jennifer's arm, they note in the report, is shorter than that. When the police first bring in Anthony into the police station, right after finding Jennifer Kirk's body, they interview him. They don't arrest him, they don't interrogate him. They just ask him questions and they listen to Anthony's side of events, which go like this. I was watching TV with the kids. I heard a pop and then I saw Jennifer, you know, I had seen Jennifer go into the bedroom, so I freaked out. I go into the bedroom, I see her. I go to the neighbor's house and I told them to call 911. He states that Jennifer was still breathing when he found her and, you know, they've been in this very long relationship. They have kids together who are in the living room and
34:48 Speaker 00 she just self-exits. He explains, it's kind of a long story. And they're like, well, tell us. So she has this court date in her hometown, which is like a few towns over for DUI. She's supposed to turn herself in, but she was scared to go. But I keep telling her, like, you gotta just get it over with. You gotta go and turn yourself in. I kept telling her that she needed to. And then she starts getting emotional, crying and like accusing Anthony of not wanting to be with her anymore. And Anthony tells the officer essentially, I told her not to cry in front of the kids and I told her to go lay down in the room and calm down. He stays out in the living room, watching SpongeBob with the kids. And it's like an hour in when he hears that firecracker go off. So he rushes into the room, he finds that she shot herself and he explains, you know, this is very Jennifer.
35:31 Speaker 00 She's really good at hiding her emotions until she, it's like an explosion. Why did you go to your neighbor's house to call 911? Well, I couldn't find my phone, so I ran next door. Which, side note, the mayor's house is about a block away from the police department, so. Continuing on. He gets back from telling the neighbor to call the police. He goes back to Jennifer's body and he holds her. That's how it's described. It's described that he does not attempt CPR. He doesn't try to stop the bleeding. He's just like coating himself in her blood, holding her. After what can only be described as a very suspicious story. The police are like, well, you're free to go. We're not arresting you. Right when he leaves, the investigators get a call from the Emmys office and they advise the police
36:12 Speaker 00 that not only does Jennifer's body have a fatal bullet wound, but there are signs of strangulation on her neck. Like handprints. She was strangled before she died. And this police department is not big at all, which by the way, that's another thing that I have a personal gripe about this. Okay, so we tried to FOIA request this case a long time ago. And a team member on the RM team was kept trying to get in touch with the police department. And we've like, we do FOIA requests all around different states and different towns, different cities, different police departments. And some police departments, each one operates differently. And each one feels like a whole new learning process of like how to get a FOIA request.
36:51 Speaker 00 This is a small, tiny little police department and it took suspiciously long to get a response from them. Like in a way that it didn't make any sense, in my opinion. So this entire little tiny little police department, they probably know everybody. And they know that a month after Clement is elected into office, so that a few years ago, an officer got called out to the mayor's house by Jennifer Kirk because she reported that Anthony had assaulted her. And now she's dead a few years later. All they have to do is a little bit of due diligence. And if you're already pulling up his profile, you can also clearly see that September twenty seventeen, Jennifer called nine one one again. She's actually still at the mayor's house. She waits for the officers to arrive.
37:35 Speaker 00 She's standing out in the driveway. She's crying and she tells the responding officer, Anthony just choked her. He strangled her. And she's explaining like she had gotten into town. She wanted to see Anthony. So right from the airport, she goes to the mayor's house. Both of them start drinking and Jennifer just wants to go back to her hotel. And she even offers Anthony, do you want to come back to my hotel with me? But Anthony does not want her to go back to her hotel. In fact, he doesn't even want her to go. And the fact that she even offered for both of them to go is seemingly so offensive and such a heinous thing for Jennifer to do that Anthony starts verbally screaming at her. And then he slams her down onto the bedroom floor, sits on top of Jennifer, putting his entire body weight on top of her. So he's not only preventing her from getting up, he's full on suffocating her.
38:21 Speaker 00 Jennifer states that she just kept trying to struggle with Anthony to get up and he only does because she starts pinching him really, really hard. He gets up and I assume. It felt like they were both cooling down because Jennifer sits on the bed. And then she calmly tells him once more that she wants to go back to the hotel. This time he climbs up onto the bed, pushes her down. And he grabs her neck with both of his hands and starts strangling her. Her vision starts narrowing. She tells the police that she couldn't breathe. She's terrified of passing out. And the report reads Jennifer eventually was able to get away from Anthony. And during this struggle to do so, she sustained a visible laceration from the top right side of her head. The officers go to investigate and guess what?
39:04 Speaker 00 Anthony is on probation. He's drunk. When they go to talk to him, he's drunk. He's violating state law by abusing violently abusing Jennifer. So he's arrested for breaking probation. And with this, I feel like the police have a pretty at face value, a suspicious story of death. They've got strangulation marks on the deceased, a history of violence and strangulation documented by various criminal charges. And the police officers, they were even trained. Top 10 red flags for domestic violence killings and pretty much every single one of them checks off. The red flags consist of victim dies prematurely. Jennifer Kirk is 25. Self-exit or accident scene. One partner wanted to end the relationship. Prior history of DV.
39:49 Speaker 00 Victim found dead in a home or a residence. Victim found by current or previous partner. Prior history of DV includes strangulation or suffocation. Partner is the last to see victim alive. Partner has control of the crime scene and body is moved or seen or evidence is altered in some way.
40:08 Speaker 01 I mean, it's very clear what's going on. So has anybody said anything? Or they just closed the case? Like there's, there's nothing?
40:17 Speaker 00 Yeah. So they bring Anthony back in. And they're like, hey, we found strangulation marks on Jennifer Kirk's body. You didn't mention any of that. Do you care to tell us what happened? And he explains that, well, he just blocked out that part because it's just like been a bad day. And he said it was all in self-defense. He said that Jennifer started punching, slapping him on the side of his head. So in order to stop her, he does what any normal human does. He holds her back by her neck with both of his hands. It's like the most reasonable defensive stance, of course, everybody's done it before. And Anthony says, while he's doing this, she's still trying to slap him. Now, when the police are like, well, how much pressure did you apply? He doesn't recall. Did she fall unconscious or not?
41:01 Speaker 00 He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember if he knocked her unconscious or not. And all of this is happening in the kitchen. This is what he says, which is also kind of crazy because he made this whole thing about like, I don't want her to cry in front of the kids. But you're strangling her in front of the kids? So after she might have been maybe, maybe not knocked out, Anthony can't remember. And when she does become conscious, she goes to the bedroom and that's when she dies by herself. And with that, the police are given a pretty easy pathway to get to the bottom of what happened to Jennifer Kirk. And the entire town gets wrapped up in this hunt for the police department to find the strangler. Authorities are asking for the public's help. Help us find out who did this.
41:46 Speaker 00 Here are the clues that we have. They're putting out like pictures. One investigator states, the police department suspects foul play and is pursuing all investigative leads. And they start putting up photos of the suspect in question. Tipsters are calling in, volunteers are raising thousands of dollars. I mean, this news is all over the area. The strangler needs to be brought in and there needs to be justice. And they do catch him. They catch the strangler, they drag him to court. But it's not for Jennifer's death. It's not for the death of Jennifer Kirk. All of this police investigative efforts is for a husky. So around the same time that Jennifer Kirk is found dead, the city fire department's pet husky is also found dead.
42:30 Speaker 00 They closed Jennifer's case and they do like a citywide hunt for the strangler.
42:37 Speaker 01 For the husky?
42:38 Speaker 00 Yes, and like, don't get me wrong. I think that person needs to be punished for sure, but nothing for Jennifer.
42:44 Speaker 01 You think it's like a cover up? It's like a?
42:46 Speaker 00 It seems like priorities. They don't care for Jennifer Kirk. In fact,
42:50 Speaker 01 You think they don't care or they're hiding something, right? Like they don't care is like, okay, I'm not gonna do more investigation. Hiding is someone is covering up for, for, for someone.
43:01 Speaker 00 I don't know if they're that smart.
43:02 Speaker 01 Really?
43:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:04 Speaker 01 You're telling me mayor's son?
43:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:08 Speaker 01 House, a woman died, the gun was longer than her arm. It wasn't, you don't think it was a cover up from the mayor?
43:16 Speaker 00 No, I don't think the mayor is that smart. I think the mayor really runs on.
43:21 Speaker 01 What made you think that, though?
43:22 Speaker 00 Because everyone in town thought it was weird.
43:26 Speaker 01 Everyone in town thought?
43:27 Speaker 00 Jennifer Kirk's death is weird.
43:29 Speaker 01 Correct.
43:29 Speaker 00 They don't care to make statements and make it make sense. They don't care to address it. It's just like, well, what are you gonna do about it? That's the feeling that I get. It's so blatant. It doesn't, it doesn't feel like a cover up of like, oh, a diversion. Don't pay attention to this, pay attention to this. It doesn't feel like that.
43:46 Speaker 01 So why is there no investigation if?
43:49 Speaker 00 Because the mayor controls the police department. This is a really small town.
43:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:53 Speaker 00 And they don't care to investigate.
43:55 Speaker 01 So the, even the police who made the report wrote the gun is longer than the arm. That means he also suspected of something, some kind of foul play.
44:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, but he doesn't care.
44:05 Speaker 01 Or he was told not to look.
44:07 Speaker 00 And he doesn't care enough to go against the status quo.
44:10 Speaker 01 Right, so there's, there are some, some kind of like cover up from the higher end.
44:14 Speaker 00 Yes, but I don't, they are alleged, right? That's our personal opinion of just the limited information that we have, right? In terms of the Husky and the search for the Strangler, I don't think it's some sort of, ooh, diversion, don't let the community members, it doesn't seem like that. It seems like the community knows and the mayor is like, what are you gonna do about it?
44:34 Speaker 01 Okay, but, but Jennifer's case?
44:36 Speaker 00 Yes.
44:36 Speaker 01 Is like someone said, do not continue?
44:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
44:40 Speaker 01 Okay, okay. So that's a cover up.
44:42 Speaker 00 It's unclear if someone said do not continue or the lead investigator got bonked on the head with a coconut and decided to close the case. You know, we don't know what happened behind closed doors, legally speaking, that would be bad to say.
44:56 Speaker 01 Okay.
44:57 Speaker 00 You can come to your own personal conclusions about that, but all we know is that within one investigative day, the case is closed. And it's deemed a self-exit. Whether the mayor said, shut it down, whether the investigative lead said, wow, I did my due diligence of fucking eight hours and I think that this is a self-exit, it's hard to say, right?
45:18 Speaker 01 What about Jennifer's families?
45:20 Speaker 00 They think something is weird. They just want more investigations. They absolutely do not believe that she would self-exit. She was just on the phone with her mom. They were preparing for like future plan. There was nothing to indicate that she is someone that would want to self-exit. And then with all the history of domestic violence from Anthony, like it just, to them, it makes zero sense. Now with the pro-public piece, the expose, the police are going to come back and say something about Jennifer's death. And I'm going to get into it and it's so infuriating, but it just feels like to some people, because of the lack of investigation into Jennifer Kirk's death, another person is going to end up dead. Because two years after Jennifer Kirk dies, Susu Norton dies. And the mayor's son is going to be in the court once more, answering questions about Susu's death.
46:05 Speaker 00 But this time it's not Anthony. It's a different mayor's son, Amos. Okay, so Mayor Clement Richard Senior has three sons. And all three of them have been charged with assaulting women on the mayor's property.
46:21 Speaker 01 They all live together?
46:22 Speaker 00 Yes, and it's not just one that's violently abusive. All three of them, there are at least thirty-one criminal cases involving the three sons and a total of six different victims. All three sons have been charged with a combined sixteen counts of domestic violence. None of these charges resulted in felony domestic violence convictions. And when you start putting these timelines together, it's actually so disgusting. You want to lock the whole family up in a basement cell and feed them copious amounts of Advil on an empty stomach. It's just heinous, okay? A few months after Jennifer Kirk is found dead, a woman walks into the police station with a right eye that is black and blue. It's swollen shut. She can't even open her eye. She's crying and she reports that her boyfriend, Amos, the eldest of the mayor's three sons, has been abusing her.
47:06 Speaker 00 This is after, this is a few months after Jennifer Kirk is found dead on the mayor's property. So the police are like, well, we just found a dead woman on the mayor's property. And now another woman is walking in. She's got clear evidence of abuse. And she's saying that a different mayor's son, you know, the same mayor, but a different son. Is beating her and she's got strangulation marks on her neck. Just like Jennifer Nor- Jennifer Kirk had. This is Susu Norton, who will soon be killed. She says that her boyfriend Amos, he's a bit of a drinker. She wanted him to stop drinking, so she poured out his beer. He becomes so enraged, he grabs her by the hair, drags her around the entire house, kicks her repeatedly in the head, stomach, face, back.
47:49 Speaker 00 Her four arms are swollen from trying to protect her head and face while he's kicking her. And she's six months pregnant with his child. The incident report states, officer was unable to locate the defendant. That's pretty much it. Within two years, Susu Norton, just like Jennifer Kirk, will be found dead. They don't do anything. I mean, what do you expect from the sons whose own father, Mayor Clement Richards Senior, has a felony domestic violence charge?
48:17 Speaker 01 Is he still the out, is he still the mayor? Is he still out and about? What's going on?
48:23 Speaker 00 He tried to run for reelection. He did not get reelected in 2018. And then in 2022, Susu Norton's body is found in the mayor's house. And he's still out there. Kyle from ProPublica tried to go talk to him and he's like, no comment. He won't make any comments, nothing.
48:38 Speaker 01 This is so bizarre. What is going on?
48:40 Speaker 00 Now, this happens when the mom, Annette, so this is Clement Richards. This is like the ex-first lady of the town, I guess, right? But Annette is pregnant with their third son, Anthony. So they have three sons. Anthony is, you know, Jennifer Kirk's ex-boyfriend. She's pregnant. And by this point, they already have two sons. She's eight months pregnant. And Clement Richards, in a fit of anger, beats her, kicks her in the stomach repeatedly, until she starts profusely bleeding from her private areas. The police are called to the house. Clement and his wife, Annette, are just sitting in the living room. She's bleeding. And the officer concludes that Clement had been dragging Annette around by her hair, kicked her in the stomach with boots on, and then punched her in several other parts of her body.
49:25 Speaker 00 The very next day Anthony is born. Clement Senior pleads no contest to felony domestic violence assault and goes to jail for six months. Here's the mind boggling part. You remember the whole op book? That political candidates get on their opposition? Former Mayor Clement Richards has a domestic violence charge, this charge that is publicly available to see. It's a matter of public record before he's elected to become mayor. Meaning when he runs for mayor, none of his opponents, nobody in the area, nobody in the media, mentions or brings up the fact that he nearly killed his wife and child. Nobody.
50:03 Speaker 01 Because they don't do their homework?
50:06 Speaker 00 Either they don't do their homework, or it's like what a lot of people are saying enough is enough. This culture of silence is over with.
50:13 Speaker 01 Hmm, I see.
50:15 Speaker 00 He becomes vice mayor, mayor, he's on the city council. He held political office from 1999 to 2018. I feel like that's longer than some of you guys have been alive. With this charge.
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53:44 Speaker 00 And his wife Annette, she starts working for the Alaskan State Troopers, working with prosecutors in the local area that later become judges. These judges then later oversee her son's domestic violence cases. Which, side note, when Clement Richards was mayor, there was this huge scandal. So aside from Jennifer Kirk dying inside of his house, while he holds public office, there's this huge construction bid. It's a construction project, $60 million. He's the mayor in a mayor's strong system and he gets to have, like, he's aggressively pushing for this no-bid contract to be awarded to a local company called Remote Solutions. They're gonna get a $60 million contract to construct the school, the highway, like, this is what they need. The school district still has to vote on it.
54:29 Speaker 00 So does the Borough Assembly, but he's like going to each person and he's like, "You gotta vote yes, it's gotta go to Remote Solutions." Mayor Clement is using all of his power to swing the votes in his favor. They've got three special Bureau Assembly meetings. These were a huge scandal, too. So one of them is like randomly held in Seattle. So they have to fly everybody out to Seattle and they spend like over $100,000 of taxpayer money. It's like, why do you have to have it in Seattle? It just seemed like a vacation. But then out of nowhere, allegedly Clement Richards is like, "Well, wait, never mind, never mind, I take it all back. I don't want Remote Solutions to be the bid for this contract." Out of nowhere. All of this feels kind of par for the course, like some political corruption going to Seattle, but it doesn't feel that bad, right? But like, why did he suddenly change his mind?
55:13 Speaker 00 Well Clement Richards fires his chief of staff for the Borough, Eugene. And Eugene files a complaint to the police department. And he states that he was fired because he knew information that the mayor does not want to get out. Apparently, this is what he alleges, the mayor was drunk driving a Borough vehicle, this is like a city car, with a young underage girl in the car. He almost hits another car on the road and that other driver that almost got hit, his name is Chris, he starts allegedly recording this incident on his phone that depicts the mayor driving drunk in a Borough vehicle with a girl. All that appears to be underage. Chris then goes and shows it to a bunch of people who then notifies Eugene, the chief of staff.
55:57 Speaker 00 So Eugene is like, oh my God, there's this video. He says, quote, I told our mayor that he needs to go talk to Chris about the situation. Clement notified me that Chris agreed to delete the video and told Clement not to do it again. Now, he notices Eugene is like noticing all these borough meetings and Clement is like, oh, we gotta do remote solutions. We gotta do remote solutions. This is the bid for the construction work, right? And then suddenly he's like, no, it's not. We're not doing remote solutions anymore. And so Eugene is like, what the hell? And then Clement is like visibly upset. And so Eugene is like, what's wrong? Why are you upset? Eugene says, this is his claim, that Clement was told that Chris did not delete the video. And now the other parties who want this contract are telling Clement,
56:42 Speaker 00 drop, get rid of the Baker brothers. The Baker brothers own remote solutions.
56:47 Speaker 01 Who's Baker brothers?
56:48 Speaker 00 They own remote solutions. Get rid of the Baker brothers or this video goes out. So all of a sudden, he said, I don't want remote solutions anymore.
56:55 Speaker 01 So basically, he has like a little underground deal with Baker's brother.
56:59 Speaker 00 That's a big allegation, but you know.
57:01 Speaker 01 I mean, he really is trying to get Baker's brother, this deal for whatever personal, whatever.
57:07 Speaker 00 Could be for love, could be for whatever. Yeah.
57:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, he really liked them. And then someone, a competitor, got their hands on Chris's video. Now they're kind of telling him to, we want the contract.
57:18 Speaker 00 Kill the contract, kill the deal, because we want it. Now there's scandal about.
57:22 Speaker 01 Why is Eugene getting fired for that then?
57:24 Speaker 00 So then Eugene is like, that's messed up. He's like telling Clement Richards, no, like that's messed up. You gotta do something about it. Like I, you cannot let this affect how you mayor this town. Then he gets fired. So then he's like, okay, well, I'm gonna file a report because you wrongfully terminated me for like having a morally upstanding take.
57:44 Speaker 01 Okay.
57:45 Speaker 00 So, but I will say the other side of it, I went into too many rabbit holes, okay? But the other side of it, this is an allegation, but the other company, they. One of them shares a child with someone on the school board. So everybody's just trying to get the company that they get a kickback from. And I don't know if kickbacks should be used in like the very strict definition of contractually. You get this much, but just you get some sort of indirect benefits. The driver was contacted by journalists and they say that there is no video. There's no involvement, but the whole thing was just a massive scandal, just huge. It was an even bigger scandal than what's going on inside that house.
58:26 Speaker 00 The mayor's three sons, Amos, he has multiple charges against him. He's the eldest for victimizing and abusing his girlfriend and the mother of his children, Susu Norton, while she's pregnant. He's violently assaulting her, just like his dad violently assaulted his mom while she was pregnant. Susu Norton's death is being investigated right now. And I would say Amos would be, in most people's opinion, suspect number one. And then you have the second son Clement Jr. One complaint filed against Clement Jr. Reads that a redacted victim called 911 to report that Clement Jr., the mayor's second son, was assaulting her inside the mayor's house. This is Clement Jr.'s girlfriend and she says that she was trying to leave the house. Clement Jr. Gets up in her face and she starts pushing her as she's walking out of the bedroom.
59:11 Speaker 00 Quote, "The victim stated that when she turned around to push the defendant away from her, he began to punch her in the face. The victim said that she attempted to get away from the defendant, but was unable to. He just keeps punching her until a third party, one of his friends that happens to be there, rips him off of her. The officers contact the defendant Clement Jr. And they write that the defendant was extremely uncooperative and denied anything happened. He had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, as well as on his person, red watery eyes and poor balance. Now Clement Jr. Pleads guilty to harassment and receives a suspended sentence and his conviction is wiped from public record. And then you have Anthony, the youngest son, Jennifer Kirk's abuser. He's got a lot of cases. Many of them are the ones that we've covered with Jennifer Kirk, her reports before her death.
59:56 Speaker 00 He also has another case against him, an essay case where the victim states to the judge that she's terrified of running into Anthony because it's a small town. Which by the way, Superior Court Judge Paul Ropeman decides that he's going to give Anthony a special chance. And by special, I just mean very uncommon. So he gives Anthony a very low bill. This bill goes from being $7,500 to $2,500.
1:00:20 Speaker 00 And he explains his decision by saying that he worked with Anthony's mother and knew his father held elected office. What the fuck does that mean? The judge states, I know Mrs. Richards for when she used to work with the troopers. Um, she has a lot of experience with these types of cases and know what these are like. Mr. Richards has been part of city council, um, you know, if you're not now, I don't, I don't know if you are now. So he's been part of the local council. So they're going to be fine third parties, I think.
1:00:45 Speaker 01 They're going to be fine third parties?
1:00:47 Speaker 00 Yes. Okay. This is the system in which all of these little, mm, okay. They violently assault a woman. They get charged with felony assault. And then the judge gives them a low bail and the judge is like, fine third parties, meaning I think your mom and dad are going to make sure that you don't try to run away, that you don't do anything crazy while you're out on bail before the trial. And guess what? A trial never fucking happens because the prosecutors then come in and they're like, hey, plead guilty and instead of a felony charge, we'll give you a misdemeanor for something like harassment. Instead of violently kicking someone in the stomach while they're pregnant.
1:01:23 Speaker 01 They really run the town, huh?
1:01:24 Speaker 00 Yeah. The judge even says, to say that you dodged a bullet is an understatement on this one. These are some pretty serious charges and uh, I understand the evidentiary issues that had been presented. But had those not been there, had those been less complicated, you were facing some very serious charges that involve a lot of jail time. You understand that, of course. It just seems like a, who's dodging a bullet and why, how are they dodging a bullet? Through you? Judge Paul Roetman declined to comment and a court spokesperson has stated, judicial officers cannot and do not comment on their cases in order to maintain the integrity of their decisions and to ensure that for fairness reasons, their thinking is reflected solely in the official court record without extraneous commentary. Even though the code of conduct for judges state that, quote,
1:02:08 Speaker 00 shall not allow family, social, political, or other relationships to influence, influence the judge's judicial conduct or judgment. So the sheer fact that he's like, why not your parents?
1:02:18 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. Yeah.
1:02:19 Speaker 00 Even after the death of Jennifer Kirk, July 17th, 2020. So this is actually after Jennifer Kirk's death and Sue Sue Norton's death. There's another filing.
1:02:31 Speaker 00 After two women are found dead in the house.
1:02:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:02:33 Speaker 00 Okay, there a woman reports, her boyfriend scratched her face and kicked her, her boyfriend being Anthony Richards.
1:02:40 Speaker 01 What is going on in this house?
1:02:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, she said that Anthony threw her onto the ground, kicked her and punched her in the face, started kicking her in the ribs, her legs, her back, her butt, causing pain. The officers actually located a third party witness who was like, oh yeah, I saw that happen. And when they finally find Anthony, in the report, it states that he starts cussing out the officers that he's not going to jail and quote, while declaring to Anthony that he was under arrest, Anthony attempted to walk into the residence. Officer Aaron and I got a hold of him while I was trying to place handcuffs on Anthony. He grabbed my handcuff by the loop and would not let go, prompting me to pull my laser and demand that he let the handcuff go. Anthony Richards was arrested and transported to K R J, where he remained uncooperative and refused to participate in a preliminary breath test.
1:03:24 Speaker 01 Okay, and.
1:03:26 Speaker 00 But he's out now.
1:03:27 Speaker 01 So these like cops, they they they first get involved, they're like, that's us, I'm gonna arrest you, you're gonna get punished. And then they turn around, just like, there's nothing going on here.
1:03:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:03:37 Speaker 01 Drop it.
1:03:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, or they arrest them and then the judge is like, you guys are good fine people. I see no reason to be suspicious of you, you can be out on bail until the trial. And then prosecutors, remember, and that used to work with the prosecutors, not saying that there's a connection, but I'm just saying that's an odd thing, right? They'll come in and they'll say, hey, plead guilty, I'll give you a misdemeanor. They do tiny bits of jail time here and there, but barely any. And these judges are actually insane, there's one judge that lowered his bail to a hundred dollars, a hundred dollars while he's out on probation. A hundred dollars and he, there's an audio of this, where he's talking to Anthony and he's explaining why strangulation is such a bad thing.
1:04:18 Speaker 00 Aside from the fucking obvious, and he says, talking about the gravity of the situation, what jumps out at me in both of these cases is, there's an allegation of strangulation in both cases. And that's the reason that this was charged as a felony case. Listen, I hope you do understand that you're serving a large amount of jail time. It's not large at all, okay, but continuing. But you are getting away from a felony conviction by taking this agreement. That's a big benefit to you. But what I'm getting at is strangulation is a very serious thing. And it's recognized that way by the legislature. That's why these types of cases can be charged as felonies. Um, you know, one thing I would like to point out to you is the natural result of a punch or kick or
1:05:02 Speaker 00 or kind of, you know, your typical misdemeanor assault is a bruiser injury or that sort of thing. Which is fucking false, like you're a judge, you should know better. You should have at least some working neuropathways because people have died from one punch. The result of strangulation, if not stopped, is the person can't breathe. And that's death and that's a serious thing. And um, that wasn't the result in your abuse case, fortunately, but someone who wasn't trained in the medical profession, that sort of thing. It's a, it's a dangerous thing because someone like you or I, you don't know when to let up. Or when it might be too late. So keep that in mind.
1:05:38 Speaker 01 It's like you're talking to a five year old of not to play fight.
1:05:42 Speaker 00 But also, and one comment reads, keep that in mind. The judge is literally saying, next time you beat a woman, keep in mind strangulation is a bigger charge. Because you might accidentally kill them. Like, what do you mean, keep in mind? And like, what do you mean a medical professional? We're not medical professionals, so we can't strangle women. Uh, which side note, I don't know if you want to take a random comment online as truth or a fraction of the truth or like a flat out lie or a hallucination. It's up to you, but it reads, I worked a summer job in that town in two thousand and eight. One of my sixteen year old coworkers was viciously jumped by one of the Richards brothers while I was there. And another ex coworker got jumped right after I left. I tried to get the kid to go to the police, but he said their family is too powerful.
1:06:22 Speaker 00 Also, one of the police officers in that police department was basically fucking every girl in the area that was between eighteen to twenty years old. And I'm not exaggerating. He was openly flaunting his relationship with these teens he groomed in front of everyone and nobody did a thing about it. I was just telling my partner how insane this place was like a week ago.
1:06:38 Speaker 01 This town is out of control.
1:06:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:06:43 Speaker 01 Whoa.
1:06:45 Speaker 00 There's another nearby town, I believe in the same bureau where ProPublica did a huge expose on them as well. But every single police officer in that small police department, not this one, but it's a town nearby. They all have domestic violence charges. Every single one. And actually, Alaska is one of the most dangerous states in the United States for a woman. Women are two and a half times more likely than the national average to be killed by a man in the state of Alaska. More than four in five indigenous women specifically have experienced violence in their lifetime. And indigenous women are killed at a rate 10 times the national average. On any given day in the United States, thousands of indigenous women and girls are listed as missing in federal databases.
1:07:30 Speaker 00 And no matter how large that number is, it's still not comprehensive. There is not even like a way to identify that someone is indigenous when they go missing. It's always like white, Hispanic, Asian, black. There's no way, there's actually no comprehensive federal database that tracks how many indigenous women are missing. There's no reliable count of how many have been murdered. It said that when an indigenous woman disappears, she disappears three times. In life, in the media, and then in the data. So we're working on a full episode on a few other cases. I mean, a lot of these take a lot of time because it's hard even to get like the FOIA requests and it's just really difficult, but it all just comes down to this.
1:08:13 Speaker 00 Which don't even get me started on the boarding schools that they would systematically just eradicate indigenous culture. While assaying indigenous woman. Saying that their culture is lesser than other cultures, meanwhile, you're R-wording them. Every elected official gets up on every single fucking podium, shoves their face inside of a mic. And they pledge, they promise everyone that there's going to be change. And the only way that they're going to bring about change is the minute that their ass touches the seat of power. So you must vote for them specifically. It's very sympathetic words that are spoken with all of these politicians. And then the execution is completely hollow, it's empty, there's nothing of substance. Do they actually do something?
1:08:57 Speaker 00 After the ProPublica expose on this case. In an open letter, the police chief states that state investigators reviewed the case of Jennifer's death in 2018.
1:09:08 Speaker 00 And they found no new leads. The letter reads, "To the Katsubie community, since the news articles about several deaths were published by the Anchorage Daily News, past traumas and pains have been reopened in our community. These difficulties are not lost on me or your police department. The tragedy around the death of Jennifer Kirk in 2018 is one of many that weighs on our hearts. We need to advise the public that reading this letter may be disturbing for community members. Many in our community have raised questions or concerns about Jennifer's untimely death. I wanted you to hear from me directly on how the investigator assigned to the case took care to investigate Jennifer's passing and what the process looked like. So you have as much information as possible to make informed decisions about what you read, see, or hear." They allege in this letter that the investigator spent at least 16 days
1:09:52 Speaker 00 interviewing witnesses, collecting evidence, and following up leads before closing the case. Jennifer's own sister has come out to state that the police failed to properly communicate with the family during the initial investigation. They failed to interview certain witnesses. They even declined to provide the family police audio and video recordings from this closed investigation. Previously, Jennifer's parents were outspoken about stating that she would never self-exit and that the police never even really spoke to her about anything. Also, it was closed within one investigation day. I don't know where he's coming up with 16 days all of a sudden. And also, if that's the case, you should prosecute Anthony for strangulation, even if you don't prosecute him for potentially being involved in something more sinister,
1:10:36 Speaker 00 but he admitted to strangling her before she died. They continued, "The medical examiner has the ultimate authority in determining the case of death. After a thorough review of the evidence and post-mortem autopsy, the medical examiner determined that there was no evidence that Jennifer had in any way been strangled prior to her death that day. There was also no evidence that anyone other than Jennifer fired the gun that ended her life." The police wrote in their own report that her arm is shorter than the gun. So suddenly, it's no longer shorter than the gun, and it's actually physically feasible that she could have pulled the trigger. But they don't provide any context, because I'm sure you could MacGyver the trigger in a way where if you pull something else, maybe the trigger is pulled. But they're not saying that's what happened.
1:11:21 Speaker 00 They're just saying, "No, I'm telling you this, so you're gonna believe it." And they counter it with this. "Some have expressed concern whether it would have been physically possible for Jennifer to fire the rifle. Measurements taken of both Jennifer's body and the firearm show that it was." How? Literally how?
1:11:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's just like physically, like physics. Doesn't make math, doesn't make sense.
1:11:42 Speaker 00 I know this is hard to hear. Something I do want to note to you, we are aware of the domestic violence history in this case and in others. I want to be clear, I strongly and vehemently condemn that. No one should ever think that it is okay to abuse another and cause harm. Those who do harm should face consequences. Okay, then persecute him for strangulation. While it is not my decision, nor my department's on prosecuting or sentencing those incidents, I do want you to know that I denounce domestic violence in the strongest possible terms. And while many of you have asked about Jennifer, others have also inquired about Susanna Norton, her ongoing homicide investigation. Susanna is not forgotten. We know that many find similarities in the location, family involved,
1:12:24 Speaker 00 and other circumstances surrounding her murder. I understand that. As your chief, I want you to know that we have reached out to the Alaska Bureau of Investigations and asked them in 2021 to review the investigation. Which, side note, they kind of refuted this. They were like, we were not requested in 2021 to look into Susanna Norton's death.
1:12:43 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:12:44 Speaker 00 So they're like, actually, we were asked like later, not in 2021. So this police chief, I don't know where he's getting his numbers. Maybe I'm getting the numbers wrong, but like, it just is not adding up at all in any sense of the word. I'm sure the Alaska Bureau of Investigations, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Unit, will provide updates to us and to the community as they move forward. This doesn't make sense. The same reporter from ProPublica actually reached out to the police chief last year and asked a few series of questions. On what day did investigator Millett close Jennifer Kirk's death investigation? May 24th, 2018, is the police chief's word. That's one day. One day. But now he's saying it's 16 days. The death investigation records suggest
1:13:26 Speaker 00 that the case was closed before investigator Millett received the final autopsy report for Jennifer Kirk. Is that correct? And he says, correct. But then in this open letter now, he's saying, well, this is up to the ME. We don't decide anything. So why is he switching up? Jennifer's sister even states, this open letter definitely took us by surprise again, and it was almost like adding insult to injury. Okay, then what about the death, what about the investigation into Susu Norton's death? Alaskan state troopers have taken over the investigation in 2022, that's two years after she was found dead. They told Susu's family that they're gonna send investigators into the town. And that never happened. And Susu's family would know because they live three houses down from the mayor.
1:14:08 Speaker 00 They never came into town, they never investigated, they're not talking to anyone, they just keep saying that they're investigating and they also released this video on YouTube where they're like, "Let us know if you know anything."
1:14:18 Speaker 01 What's the video?
1:14:19 Speaker 00 It's a state trooper standing there being like, "We are taking this very seriously. We are investigating the death of Susu Norton. Please let us know if you've known anything, seen anything." And it's like, hmm, isn't that your job? As for Susu's family, they weren't even told that she was strangled to death. And they live three houses down from the mayor. It just feels like there are certain cases where it's kind of like the whole sympathy and words execution is hollow. Everyone is like, "Okay, we're gonna take missing and murdered indigenous people so seriously now. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna create a subunit inside of our police department, where the Alaskan state troopers are gonna have their own dedicated unit into investigating
1:15:03 Speaker 00 missing and murdered indigenous people. And we're gonna name it MMIP. And then we're gonna investigate all these cases." And they come out online and they're like, "Yeah, we're investigating." And then ProPublica goes to the family and they're like, "Are they investigating?" No. It just seems like they're not doing anything.
1:15:20 Speaker 01 So what's like the latest update on the the previous mayor and the family now?
1:15:26 Speaker 00 They won't give any comments. They all still reside in that house. And Susu Norton's death is so-called being investigated.
1:15:35 Speaker 01 So all the local knows this, I'm assuming, and they're all thinking the same thing that we're thinking?
1:15:43 Speaker 01 But still, nothing's being done in that town.
1:15:46 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. Nothing's being done. And okay, here's another thing, right? So while I do think that the rules around a FOIA request, so in the United States, if you, it's the Freedom of Information Act. If you want information about a particular case, especially like a criminal case, you as a citizen, each state is different. Some states are really annoying. Some states you have to like be a resident of that state. Anyway, you submit a request and you can get redacted case files. They're not going to give you everything. They're just going to give you what is mandated by law to give you. And with Jennifer Kirk's case, there wasn't a lot, but you can FOIA request it because it's a closed case. Because she was deemed to have self exited. Now, here's the thing with Susanna Norton. They keep saying it's an ongoing investigation,
1:16:31 Speaker 00 which means you cannot get a FOIA request on an ongoing investigation. Because most of the time, it's probably not good. They're investigating right now. You should not impede the police on doing their work. But if they're not doing the work, it almost feels like they're doing this so that nobody can get information. Nobody can point out things that are weird or ask questions. And then everybody forgets about it and then they move on.
1:16:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:16:54 Speaker 00 So they keep, they requested our FOIA request for Susu Norton's death. And they're saying, yeah, the request, they denied it.
1:17:00 Speaker 01 Oh, they did not.
1:17:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, they denied it and they said it's because it's an open, ongoing investigation, right? But then I'm looking online and the family is coming out to journalists and saying, what are they investigating? They told us they were going to come into town and they haven't come into town. So it's just open. It's not an investigation. Also, I'm just saying, it's a really small police department and the fact that they took so long to get back to us. Because usually, police departments, if they want to reject you for a FOIA request, it's like they already have a template. They're like, for ABC, bye, you're not getting it, okay? And then you can try to fight it. Because sometimes you're like, mm, I don't think that's legally right. You can try to kind of maneuver around it, but no, they took so long and it didn't make any sense.
1:17:46 Speaker 00 One comment about this case reads, "When it's rich billionaires who jettison themselves to the bottom of the ocean, we've got enough resources and money to send the Coast Guard to the bottom of the sea to retrieve their bodies and the debris. When it's two indigenous women, no one cares? Suddenly, there's no more money, no more resources, no bother, no care? This is documented discrimination in broad daylight." Other people are commenting, "How is this coordinated silence okay? Like, who's holding these organizations accountable? Why are they allowed to just not answer? Like, why is the former mayor allowed to just not respond to comments?"
1:18:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:18:20 Speaker 00 And so that is where we are right now with this case. There's gonna be a lot more. We're working on multiple different episodes, but if you live in Alaska, if you live anywhere near this town, call their police department, send in tips, send in requests to the state troopers, interact with anything that you see online about Jennifer Kirk and Susanna Norton. I think police typically don't care until everybody cares. And then they still don't care. They just don't want to be seen as not doing their job. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments, and I will see you in the next one. Be safe.
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