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Tonight, on Dateline. Sonia, she was my best friend. I just dropped. I just couldn't believe it.
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I mean, she was only 19. You get the news that a body's been found, and it turns out that's somebody you know.
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Yeah, no one was expecting what happened. This is out in the wilderness, in the tundra.
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Why is she out here like this? It's very hard. There was nobody that would want to harm her
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An SUV or a truck had driven through there We thought that the person driving that vehicle
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Could potentially be the person that killed her All of a sudden you guys are looking for a shooter out there
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Yeah And there's a note I watch every move you make I will also shoot you in the head if you get close
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It's like something out of a movie It is He knew who to prey on He knew who he was looking at for victims
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I didn't know who I could trust It's nothing that I want to remember. Get ready for a mystery in Alaska.
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The last frontier. And the killer just might be the last person you'd suspect. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.
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Here's Josh Mankiewicz with A Walk in the Rain. When people talk about Alaska, they say it's the last frontier.
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And they use words like wild, untamed, beautiful. Those people are probably not talking about Nome.
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We're just a couple of degrees south of the Arctic Circle, in a gold rush town whose big money days are probably behind it.
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A weather-beaten hamlet that's grimmer and grayer than your picture postcard vision of Alaska.
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The motto here, inevitably, is, there's no place like Nome. And that's probably true.
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This is the end point of the famous Iditarod sled dog race. Right now, we're closer to Russia than we are to the rest of the United States.
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Only about 3,800 people live here. So by lower 48 standards, this is a small town.
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Around here, it's definitely the big city. And like any city, Nome has seen its share of evil.
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Where'd Sonia go? Sonia! Sonia! Sonia Ivanov saw Nome as a way station on the route to somewhere warmer.
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That's according to her best friend, Timory. She definitely knew that she wanted to go to Hilo, that she wanted to live in Hawaii
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because we were tired of the cold weather in Alaska, and she was determined to make money and go to college.
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Fresh out of high school in 2002, Sonia came to Nome from Unalakleet, a native village 150 miles to the southeast.
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Unalakleet's on a little spit, so you have the ocean on one side and the river on the other side.
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It looks like an island, but it's not. It's connected by land. Sonia was the fourth of six kids.
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Older sister Christina and her husband Tom say, if you think Nome is small, Unalakleet is miniature.
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Everybody knows everybody in a place like Unalakleet. Related to pretty much half the town.
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And so everybody knew her? Mm-hmm. Yes. Our first contestant is Sonia Ivanov. Not long after Sonia arrived in Nome, she entered something unique to Alaska, the Arctic Native Brotherhood pageant.
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It's not a traditional beauty pageant. Nobody's wearing a ball gown or a bikini or anything like that.
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No, they're all using native clothes. Her dad Larry says Sonia hoped to win some scholarship money for college.
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These men were made from my aunt, Olga, that passed away. She was proud of her heritage, wasn't she?
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Yes, she was. She was proud to be Alaska and Haiti. You were proud of her? Yes. Sonia found work at the admitting desk of a local hospital,
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and a few months later, in the summer of 2003, her BFF, Timmery, also left Unalakleet for Nome.
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And so they roomed together. Without a car between them, the two walked everywhere.
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Is it as safe to walk around at night in Nome as it is in Unalakleet? We thought so.
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We felt safe walking in Nome. It just, it felt like home too. Well, these were kids from a small village.
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And Sonia's sister and brother-in-law were worried she didn't have the radar necessary for Nome.
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You sat her down at one point, Tom. I did. I didn't even know who she was hanging out with.
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And that's exactly what I said. I don't know who you're hanging out with. But if you went missing, I wouldn't even know where to start to look.
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There's a crisis of indigenous women going missing in the U.S. The numbers are hard to pin down, but what's clear is that in Alaska, the problem is worse.
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The fact that Native American women disappear at a much higher rate in Alaska than almost anywhere else is not a secret.
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But it probably was something that she didn't know or think about. No. Yeah, no.
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At the time we never thought about that. We never thought about the amount of missing women.
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Soon they would think about nothing else Sunday August 10th 2003 Sonja and Timmery were doing their thing hanging out with friends In a town that seems to run on alcohol they were sober
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Timmery remembers Sonia had just one beer. It was still kind of early. I mean, we went out, I think it was around 11 o'clock,
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and that's early for high schoolers, to a friend's house. And they were playing board games there.
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It was summer in Alaska. The sun sets just before midnight. Around 1 a.m. Monday, Timmery, who had to be at work in six hours,
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decided to crash at a friend's place. Sonia wasn't due at work until Tuesday afternoon,
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so she had all the time in the world. She felt like being out. It was actually a little mist raining.
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She loved the rain, anything with the rain. When we parted ways, I walked towards my friend's house,
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and she continued walking down the street, but it was towards our house area. We always had this saying, peace out, pal.
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And then we go like this and then like this and then peace out. And we did that and she jumped in the rain
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and started walking. Timmery watched her best friend walk off into the light rain she loved so much.
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And that was the last time you saw her? Yeah. When we come back, what had happened to Sonia?
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When she didn't go to work, that's when we started looking. Asking people if they've seen her.
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I actually went to the police station. I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia, and they kind of took it like it was a joke or something.
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Timmery and Sonia were the type of best friends who were almost never out of touch.
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They lived together and shared makeup, clothing, even a bed. Except on that Monday morning, when Timmery got home around 5 a.m. to get ready for work.
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Their bed was empty. Sonia wasn't there. You know, we didn't have cell phones back in the day, so I figured she was just at a friend's house.
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Timmery headed to the Aurora Inn where she worked the front desk. I didn't hear from her at work all day.
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Usually she would call me, but I mean, it wasn't super not normal. It wasn't super normal either.
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Timmery was worried enough that she made some calls to try to find Sonia. I did call her sister to see if she stayed over there, but her sister hadn't seen her.
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Tom and Christina remember thinking there's nothing to worry about. Sonia's silence could be just a byproduct of teenage drama.
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My wife and I discussed it and we were like, well, maybe Sonia don't want to be around Timmery today.
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That was Monday. Sonia wasn't due at work at the hospital until Tuesday. So if Tom and Christina were right, she was just somewhere else other than with Timmery.
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Timmery, though, was getting more concerned. By evening, she knew Sonia hadn't just slept late somewhere.
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And what really worried her was Sonia's makeup bag, which had not been touched. I think more in the evening when I hadn't heard from her, I kind of started to worry.
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Because it's not normal for her to not go home and do her hair and makeup. Tuesday morning, still no Sonia.
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Timmery went to work, and as soon as she could, she phoned Nome police to ask the most unlikely question.
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Was Sonia Ivanov in the slammer? The dispatcher told her no one by that name was in custody.
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I didn't know what to do. I did a lot of calling around, and nobody had seen her or anything.
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By the time Timmery's shift was done, her concern had grown to panic. Around 5.15, she walked into Nome PD,
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a historically white agency that had a rep for not always taking seriously crimes against Alaskan natives.
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I think I was hysterically crying just because I was so scared because, I mean, in Unluckley, we don't have really official officers like what Nome does.
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I didn't even know where to begin or how to tell them. I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia,
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and they kind of took it like it was a joke or something. They're like, are you sure she's not out partying?
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Tuesday evening, Tom and Christina heard Sonia never showed up at work. And now they began to worry.
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When she didn't go to work, that's not Sonia. You know, that's when we started looking.
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Asking people if they've seen her, people that we knew she might have been with.
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We spent the whole in the car looking, scanning. They also tried to think of people she might be with and settled on a guy named Kunik.
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And he was definitely interested in Sonia. Oh, yeah. And did they get along? They did.
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Oh, yeah. They were good friends. Going to be boyfriend-girlfriend there for a while, but Sonia...
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He wasn't her type. Yeah. Even so, Tom thought maybe Sonia and Kunik were together somewhere.
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I actually went to the police station. I was there just looking for information. Maybe they knew where Kunick's camp was.
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And they say what? They were unconcerned. Let's just say that. Nome police did seem to step it up after Sonia boss called a reporter missing On Wednesday an officer named Byron Redburn came to talk with Timmery He asked about Sonia mental health and how Timmery and Sonia got along
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That conversation was recorded. Generally, overall, her mood is... Happy. Are you guys arguing or anything?
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My mood. We've never... If we argue, then we get back to talk about it. On the recording, you can hear Timmery's concern.
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I mean, I can't stand being alone and just sitting there because she's not there.
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She's somewhere. That afternoon, the police chief asked the fire department to help with a search.
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That's when it really hit reality, was when we saw the search and rescue boats. Timmery was also looking for Sonia.
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I was driving around with my friend Maya, and we pulled up to the hospital. One of, I think it was Sonia's co-worker, told Maya just to bring me down to by the police station.
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And when I got there, there was a big gathering of people, so I was like, oh great, they found her.
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She was half right. They had found Sonia. But it wasn't great. Coming up. He brought us to our porch, and that's when he told us.
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Down a lonely road, near an old gold mine, a heartbreaking discovery. I think I just dropped. I just couldn't believe it.
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When Dateline continues. It was Wednesday evening, two and a half days since Sonia Ivanov had last been seen.
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No police had told Tom and Christina to sit tight. We had quit looking just because they told us to kind of wait at home.
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There was no way to prepare for the story that was coming. Around 8.30 p.m., a volunteer firefighter helping with the search
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had followed fresh tire tracks down a rarely used road and found something. He immediately went to the police station.
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Officer Brian Wayovana accompanied the firefighter back to the scene. So we gathered up cameras and bags and whatever we thought we needed
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document and we drove here. The spot would be over there where the taller willows are.
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This was on a trail just off an old gold mining track called Dredge 5 Road. We tried not to disturb any evidence or make new tracks.
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I saw the body was a naked woman, but I couldn't see the face. I knew most likely it was Sonia.
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The chief of police went to Tom and Christina's. He brought us to our porch outside, and that's when he told us they had found Sonia, and she wasn't alive.
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Tom called Sonia's parents. It was the hardest phone call I ever made. Outside Gnome PD was Timmery.
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I think I just dropped. And I just couldn't believe it. While family and friends reeled, a murder investigation began.
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Out on Dredge 5 Road, Officer Wayavana knew the tiny Gnome PD couldn't handle this case alone.
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We needed to preserve the scene as best we could for the Alaska Bureau investigation team that would come up.
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So they covered everything, the road, the trail, and Sonia's body. They worried about weather and about grizzly bears.
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Officers took shifts guarding the site. It was going to be a while before the cavalry came.
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Solving crime in Alaska is a little different than in the lower 48, isn't it? It is.
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Eric Burroughs was the case officer for the Alaska Bureau of Investigation. In the investigative world, they talk about the first 24, the first 48 hours,
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and how important they are to a case, which is true. But in many times, in cases that I had to respond to, as well as other troopers,
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the first 24 or 48 hours might just be getting to the scene. All of that sounds like it's a good place to commit a murder if you're a murderer.
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It's called the last frontier state for a lot of reasons. It's not like the big city at all.
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The crime lab and its investigators are based in Anchorage, more than 500 roadless miles from Nome.
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Criminalist Carrie Cathcart caught the first flight out. As soon as she got to the scene, she saw clues.
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There was a blood pool kind of close to her body. We could tell a vehicle had driven through that.
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The tire had obviously gotten blood on it. The tire tracks were still there, so we documented those.
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We could tell, like, one of the treads looked different than the other tread. Suggesting that it had three of one kind of tire and then one of another?
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Yes. There was at least one tire that looked different than the other. They found more evidence that a vehicle had recently been down Dredge 5 Road.
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There was a paint transfer on a branch on that same road. and it was a little bit higher to suggest that an SUV or a truck of some kind had driven through there And it was a very faint light blue paint transfer So you looking for a blue vehicle with mismatched tires
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Correct. That's probably your killer. Yeah. Then Cathcart got to Sonia's body, naked except for one sock,
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bruises on her face and chest, and a single bullet wound in the back of her head.
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Right then, any doubts about whether this was a murder evaporated. And then I'm guessing police come to you and say, who could possibly have done this?
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Who didn't like her? What problems was she having? Yeah, but she had no enemies.
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I mean, there was other girls that were possibly jealous of her, but there was nobody in general
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that I could think of that would even want to do something horrendous or hurt her.
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Even the night Timmery reported Sonia missing, the night police seemed so disinterested,
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no police had asked her to write up a list of Sonia's friends. And now that Sonia had been found dead, the one friend cops were most interested in was Kunik, real name Daniel Angusuk.
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He always had a hot-headed, I'm tougher than you type of attitude. but underneath all that was a big Kunick teddy bear.
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ABI investigator Eric Burroughs says Kunick's teddy bear core was not always evident.
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He had a girlfriend. They believe they had a child together. There were domestic violence issues
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between him and his girlfriend. He had a temper. Of course, all this was already known
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by the known police department. And so he becomes a person of interest initially that they want to talk to.
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And that wasn't just because of Kunik's temper or his interest in Sonia. Police also learned he drove a blue truck with one tire that did not match the other three.
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In terms of his truck, it's not just that one of the tires is mismatched, it's that the correct tire is mismatched.
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Correct, yes, exactly. That couldn't be a coincidence. or could it? Coming up. We pulled a tarp out,
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just a significant amount of dried blood on it. There was also three rifles and one of those had blood on the end
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and he had blood on his tennis shoes. The evidence against Koenig seems to mount.
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Was this Sonja's killer? Sonia Ivanov didn't live to her 20th birthday. A killer had made sure of that.
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Her family made sure Sonia was brought home to Unalakleet for the final goodbye.
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We weren't going to have an open casket because of her cruising. And we were like, no.
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And she liked her makeup. And she liked to look good. And so I did her makeup, and that's how we were able to do an open casket.
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You did it. I did it. I recognize that as an act of love, but that had to be brutally difficult.
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It was very hard. It was all hard. There was so many people, not just from the village, but from surrounding villages.
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We held her service. Was that the school gym? That would be the same gym in Unalakleet where Sonia had drained her first jump shots.
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What did she like about basketball? I think the camaraderie with her teammates is what she enjoyed.
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And she was super tall, 5'11"? She was 5'11". While her family mourned Sonia, law enforcement kept working.
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Criminalist Carrie Cathcart processed the scene on Dredge 5 Road. And aside from the tire tracks and the blue paint transfer, she found no usable forensic evidence.
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Even Sonia's clothes were missing. There was no foreign DNA. She didn't have anything underneath her fingernails.
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that wasn't hers. And there was just a lack of evidence. The rape kit was negative.
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The rape kit was negative. Meaning no evidence of sexual assault. What evidence they did have pointed straight at Koenig.
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On the floorboard of his truck, they found what looked like obvious drops of blood.
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And using a chemical that lights up green in the presence of blood, they saw a lot more.
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They towed his truck to Nome PD, and we examined it and we pulled a tarp out and what appeared to just have a significant amount of dried blood on it.
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As if somebody had driven through a pool of it. Right, yeah. And there was also three rifles just behind the driver's seat
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and one of those had blood on the butt end of the rifle and he had blood on his tennis shoes.
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As Cathcart worked on the blood evidence, Gnome Officer Byron Redburn, his tape recorder in hand, went to Kunick's apartment.
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I haven't talked to her in almost two weeks. Last time I've seen her physically was Friday when she was on her lunch break,
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and I didn't even say hi to her. And that's the last time I've seen her. Kunick told Officer Redburn he was 70 miles outside of town the night Sonia disappeared.
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I took off Sunday afternoon, a little bit after 3, and we'll get back to him Monday evening.
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He said he was hunting Friends who could back up his story. Then Redburn noticed something that looked like evidence.
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Do you notice a scratch on your back? Where? Koenig said that came courtesy of his baby mama.
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Redburn took Koenig to the hospital. Great, you want to just drop your pants. Where his body was examined with the help of a nurse.
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We're just going to check if there's any secretions. Redburn told Kunick the nurse would take a sample of his DNA.
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That way they'll have some comparison things to compare to whatever they do find with Sonia.
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And if the two don't jive, then that's good for you. But if they do jive, then that's not good for you.
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How can it... I wasn't even in town when anything happened. Officer Redburn told Koenig his truck matched the forensic evidence found at the scene.
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There's been some things coming up that make you and your vehicle interesting. And what's that?
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It turns out there's a bunch of tire impressions out there. They're similar to the tires that you wear on your car.
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And what's that? Do you mismatch tires? I have mismatch tires. It's blue painted the crime scene, okay?
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The most important questions for Koenig were about all that blood police found in his truck, in its wheel well, and on his gun.
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Is there any reason that anybody would be finding any blood on their vehicle? No.
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Later on, Koenig explained how there might have been blood. He said he'd run over a rabbit, which didn't die immediately.
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Hit her down the head. So I could put it to sleep. His story, that blood on his shoes and truck was from the rabbit.
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Or, if not the rabbit, maybe from a porcupine. Hunick said he shot one while hunting.
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We did not think it was a credible story. We thought it was made up. And he drove a blue truck, and it had a mismatched tire on it, and he knew that area, and he knew Sonia.
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Correct, yes. Everything lined up. Police had the perfect suspect. I mean, didn't they?
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Coming up, an intriguing new clue. A witness who saw Sonia that fatal night. She speaks to the driver, gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way, north.
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When Dateline continues. Sonia Ivanov was seven years younger than her sister Christina.
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When Sonia was alive, Christina and her husband Tom felt protective of her. After her death, they felt a burden on them to find her justice.
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And so, one week after the murder... You showed up at the police department with a picture of Sonia and stuck it on the wall.
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I wanted to put it up on the wall. My intention was that we didn't want to lose focus of, this is who you're working for.
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Tom's gesture did not go over well. He says one officer shouted at him and wanted him to leave.
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They just redid the police station with new drywall, and he's in my ear just yelling at me.
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That didn't keep Tom from visiting the Nome PD again and again. I would go every day about 8 o'clock in the morning.
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I wanted to make sure that they knew we were still here. Although they didn't tell Tom, Gnome PD was pretty confident they already had their man,
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Koenig. Or at least they were confident until the blood work came in. The blood on his gun, the blood on the truck, the blood on his shoes, it's not human, none of it.
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All, yeah, all the blood was animal blood. And the tire treads at the scene do not match the tires on Koenig's vehicle.
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The tire tracks did not match either. And the blue paint on Koenig's truck wasn't the same as the blue paint that had rubbed off on a bush on Dredge 5 Road.
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His story had seemed literally unbelievable. And yet... Turns out Koenig was telling the truth.
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He was telling the truth. Every odd detail actually checked out. They found the porcupine right where he said it was.
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Within like a mile or so. So he's off the hook. He's off the hook. Which cow leaves you with no one.
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Yeah, it was back to zero. After Koenig was cleared, no other blue truck with mismatched tires popped up.
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And while the case had been all hands on deck at the beginning, that didn't last.
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It was just as Sonia's family had feared. The investigation started to slow down.
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A week after Sonia went missing, only two of the eight gnome officers remained on her case.
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Byron Redburn, who had interviewed Kunick early on, and Brian Wayovana, who was among
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the first officers at the scene when Sonia's body was found. I thought they would assign one of the other officers who were there a little longer, but
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when they said that I was assigned to that case Sonia case I was humbled I felt honored Christina and Tom were encouraged because Brian was a friend
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Then, almost immediately, Wayavana started feeling frustrated. He says Redburn, who worked days, wasn't sharing any information with him.
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And Wayavana was stuck on the night shift. Not a great time to interview potential witnesses.
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After 3 a.m., after the bars closed, I worked alone, and I thought, how am I going to work on this?
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Eventually, Officer Wayovana, who describes himself as a laid-back Type B, did something very Type A.
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I told my dispatcher, oh, f*** this, I'm tired of not knowing anything. I'm going to start this whole case over.
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I got the folder that had all the information. That review of the file, that's all in the middle of the night.
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Yeah. So maybe working the night shift was good for you. Yeah, and maybe not knowing anything was good for me too,
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because basically I just thought, well, I'm just going to do my job. In the case file was a handwritten note about a tip that had never been checked out.
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I don't know when that note was written or who wrote it, but it was there and I thought, man, we got to look into this.
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A woman named Florence had called in after hearing of Sonia's death, saying she had important information.
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Guayavana decided he'd talk with Florence. And so nearly four weeks after Sonia vanished,
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when he was back on the day shift, Guayavana grabbed Chief Ralph Taylor and a tape recorder.
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I said, hey, Ralph, let's go for a ride. You sent this case in a whole new direction.
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I just gathered information. The witness's full name was Florence Habros. She said on the night Sonia disappeared,
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she and her sister had been out on the porch smoking when Sonia walked right by them.
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Florence said her sister knew Sonia a bit, so they all waved. Florence said she also saw a car that night,
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and although Florence could not tell who was behind the wheel, It was clear the driver had an eye on Sonia.
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He started slowing down, slowed down, slowed down. The car drove off, only to reappear at the next corner, where it intercepted Sonia's path.
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Florence was close enough to hear Sonia's voice. She said, what's going on? And he started rolling down his window down.
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She speaks to the driver, gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way, north.
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That's the direction of Dredge 5 Road, where Sonia's body was later found. Florence said she looked at the time.
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I went inside and chip-conned. My sister had a watch. It was 1.26 a.m., a little less than half an hour after Sonia told Timmery, peace out.
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So if Florence's story was true, hers was the last reported sighting of Sonia. That alone was significant.
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Much more significant was this. According to Florence, it wasn't just any car Sonia Ivanov had gotten into.
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It was one Sonia had to have recognized. Coming up. Someone with that kind of information, they have to be courageous to speak up.
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The tip that turns the case upside down and then gunfire on the tundra. He says, a shot rings out and then another one.
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Was the killer hunting a new target? September 2003, as the fall chill settled into Nome,
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the investigation into who killed Sonia Ivanov seemed finally to be getting a little warmer,
00:34:22
all because of a tip that was nearly ignored. I thank God for cigarette smokers who don't smoke in their house.
00:34:32
The smoker was Florence Habros, who'd been outside at just the right moment to see Sonia getting into a car.
00:34:42
Happened right here. And it upended this investigation. Not just because Sonia got in the car,
00:34:49
but because of what Florence saw on the car. Actually, on the door. It was a decal.
00:34:55
And the decal said, Nome Police Department. The police officer stopped on the site.
00:35:03
She said, what's going on? Way of on anew, Florence's call to the cops about one of their own could not have been easy to make.
00:35:12
Someone with that kind of information, they have to be courageous to speak up. Right after that, you tell your chief, we can't investigate this anymore.
00:35:23
This points right back at Nome PD. We need to let the troopers know, you know, be transparent.
00:35:30
They have deeper pocketbooks than we do and more manpower. And they're not implicated in the murder.
00:35:39
Exactly. The Nome police chief called in the Alaska Bureau of Investigation to take over the case.
00:35:48
Tom and Christina didn't know any of the details, but they definitely saw that the troopers had returned.
00:35:55
There was people everywhere One of the things that strikes me is that you get the feeling you could drive from one end of Nome to the other in just a couple of minutes I mean this is a real small town
00:36:07
It is. ABI case officer Eric Burroughs knew one thing before he landed in Nome. Sanya's killer had left very little evidence behind.
00:36:17
And that made Burroughs think. You thought your murderer was evidence-aware, whoever they were.
00:36:23
From the very beginning, yeah, because of the missing clothing. This is not a scene like in a hotel room or a bedroom where you might expect to find somebody unclothed.
00:36:32
This is out in the wilderness, in the tundra. You take the clothing because there's the transfer, blood transfer, fiber transfer.
00:36:42
You get rid of the clothing because the murderer might have left something on it.
00:36:46
Absolutely. Burroughs' first priority was to figure out who was driving the police car Florence said she had seen.
00:36:54
How many other police vehicles are there that have that same similar look? And who else is authorized to take vehicles out, maybe take home cars, maybe when they're not on duty?
00:37:03
The Nome PD had three Ford Expeditions, and they had a practice called hot seating vehicles.
00:37:10
They only had three, so no one had a take-home vehicle. So this investigation suddenly goes from just about everybody in Nome being a potential suspect
00:37:18
to two officers who were on duty that night. Correct. The two officers on duty that night were Matt Owens and Stan Piscoya, each driving his own cruiser.
00:37:30
Owens had been on the Nome force about three years, and he was the officer who'd gotten prickly when Tom tried to hang Sonia's photo on the police department wall.
00:37:40
Piscoya also had about three years on the force. And he was the officer Timmery had described as not taking her seriously on that first day.
00:37:49
We needed to essentially start the investigation over. Starting over with the two officers.
00:37:56
And it was arranged for the two officers to come to Anchorage for an interview and polygraph.
00:38:01
And then, before either officer could get to Anchorage, one more strange thing happened in Nome.
00:38:10
One of the town's three police SUVs disappeared. It was shortly after midnight on September 23rd,
00:38:18
when a sergeant noticed the cruiser called 321 wasn't at the police department. He radioed the officer on duty, Matt Owens, and asked if he knew where it was.
00:38:30
Owens said he did not. And when he couldn't find it anywhere else, the sergeant called the chief.
00:38:37
It was late September when the sun here sets around 9 p.m. So they were looking in the dark for the stolen cruiser.
00:38:47
Pretty soon there's a fairly large mobilization for Nome. For Nome, yes. That search leads here.
00:38:54
It does. At 2.51 a.m., Officer Owens called in. He radios that he finds the vehicle at a place called the Bessie Pit.
00:39:04
It's a gravel pit. it's actually just across the road from where Sonia's body was found.
00:39:11
Two minutes later, Owens called in again, this time urgently. He radios the shots fired.
00:39:18
And so now that all the other officers are concerned, they flip on their lights, they're running code,
00:39:24
and they're responding to the scene as quickly as they can. By the time the next officer arrived, everything was quiet.
00:39:30
Owens later recounted what happened. He says, a shot rings out. and then another one, and he runs off into the tundra.
00:39:40
After the other officers arrived, Owens came out of the pit and made his way back up here to the main road.
00:39:46
And that's when he confessed something to his chief, something that maybe a lot of other officers would not have.
00:39:51
Owens said he was really scared back there, and he thought a lot about his four-year-old son growing up without a father.
00:39:57
Owens said he'd realize something about himself. Maybe he wasn't cut out for police work after all.
00:40:03
They searched, but couldn't find any culprit. And, ominously, they also couldn't find the Remington 870 shotgun that was kept in the back of 321.
00:40:14
They did find broken glass. Someone had thrown a rock through the driver's side window.
00:40:20
A CSI didn't find any fingerprints or DNA, but there was one obvious piece of evidence.
00:40:28
Underneath that broken glass on the driver's seat was an envelope for the cops. Oh, one more thing.
00:40:36
It was from Sonia's killer. Coming up. Inside that envelope, an ominous threat. You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone.
00:40:48
I will also shoot you in the head if you get close. That's like something out of a movie.
00:40:53
It is. When Dateline continues. Gnome, where the northern lights have seen strange sights.
00:41:19
This among them. I watch every move you make. Investigator Eric Burroughs is reading from a note found inside Nome Police Unit 321.
00:41:32
Pigs, I hate cops. It's a message, apparently typed by Sonia Ivanov's killer. And it's not a thank you note.
00:41:43
You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close.
00:41:49
That's like something out of a movie. It is. the notes suggested the killer had stolen a known police vehicle the night of the murder and used it to lure Sonia to her death As you can see it was easy for me to take your pig car keys right there
00:42:07
It was not her fault. She thought I was a pig, and s*** just happened. She was just a person, and I just wanted to see if I could that night.
00:42:17
If the note wasn't convincing enough, the author included proof, a souvenir of the murder.
00:42:24
Inside this envelope is essentially a sort of ID with Sonya's picture on it. Burroughs soon learned that a theft of a known police vehicle was not out of the realm of possibility.
00:42:37
What we found out, these vehicles are not necessarily controlled. They'd be left in front of the police department.
00:42:43
They'd be unlocked, maybe keys in the ignition. At the same time, he was skeptical of the note and the story it told.
00:42:51
There's not that many officers in Nome. Everybody knows who the officers are. The evidence says she leans into the vehicle and talks with him like she knows him.
00:43:02
And if it's some unknown person who's just stolen the vehicle, she's not going to react in that way that she was familiar with the person.
00:43:10
Correct. She would not have got in the vehicle willingly. Burroughs suspected the note and the whole 3-2-1 episode
00:43:17
might be an attempt to take the heat off of one or both of the officers who'd been on duty the night of the murder, Matt Owens and Stan Piscoya.
00:43:28
Both were scheduled to head to Anchorage to be interviewed and polygraphed on August 24th.
00:43:34
That was the day after the 3-2-1 incident. Owens said he was shaken up by getting shot at,
00:43:40
so instead of getting on the plane, he went to see a therapist who worked with the police department.
00:43:45
That meant Officer Stan Pascoya was the first to sit down with the ABI. Which vehicle were you driving that night?
00:43:54
I don't remember which one. I think it might have been a new expedition that I'm not real sure.
00:44:02
Investigators dug for details. Do you remember anything significant from that night, Sunday the 10th to Monday the 11th, over that shift?
00:44:10
That night we were busy. He said he handled a domestic violence call with Matt Owens.
00:44:16
The suspect tried to fight the officers and Piscoya had to pepper spray him. After this arrest and this fight with this guy, did that take up the rest of your shift or did you have anything else going on?
00:44:28
I think I finished all our paperwork before the bar closed at 1.30, quarter to 2.
00:44:35
Remember, the eyewitness saw Sonia get into a police car at 1.26 a.m. Stan says he was a gnome PD doing reports during the time of Sonia's disappearance.
00:44:49
And that's verifiable? As verifiable as you can with what is written in the dispatch log.
00:44:54
Did you stop and talk with Sonia that night, and did you give her a ride somewhere?
00:44:58
No. Pascoya said he didn't kill Sonia, and he never saw her that night. Who could you absolutely vouch for for not having done this, besides yourself?
00:45:08
The officers. Meaning it was no one at the Nome PD. Thanks for coming in here to see us.
00:45:16
Yes, sir. Five days later, Matt Owens made the trip to Anchorage. How was your flight?
00:45:21
It was a little rough. A little turd. A little bit of weather? Yes. As they had with Pascoya, ABI investigators asked Owens about the night Sonia was seen getting into a police car.
00:45:33
I want you to run down your ship from August 10th to 11th for me. Okay. Owen's recollection of the night Sonja disappeared wasn't much different from Pascoya's.
00:45:43
He said it was just another night in Nome, some patrolling, some paperwork. And that domestic violence call he and Pascoya went on that turned into a brawl.
00:45:53
He hits me upside the jaw. It's pretty damn hard. My hat goes flying, my glasses are off, and I'm trying to restrain him.
00:46:01
Like Pascoya, he said they brought the suspect to jail and then went their separate ways.
00:46:08
You don't know what time that was? It's in the dispatch lot, sir. Owen said he headed out on patrol, then to bar closings around 2 a.m.
00:46:17
About an hour later, he drove Pascoya home, then returned to the police station.
00:46:23
Just walked back in and was going to sit down and write some report and heard this.
00:46:29
what sounded to me like a gunshot. Owen said he went back out and patrolled Nome for about an hour,
00:46:35
trying to figure out where the gunshot sound came from. He couldn't find it. Then dispatch sent him on a call, and then he came back to the PD.
00:46:45
At 7 a.m. when his shift ended, Owen said he picked up the sergeant. He picked him up, drove to my house, and I got out, and he got the driver's seat.
00:46:55
Nothing Owen said put him anywhere near Sonja Ivanov. Even so... Did you pick up Sonja while you were on duty that night?
00:47:06
Give her a ride somewhere? Sonja had never been in my patrol car, my personal car, never anywhere like that.
00:47:12
You know, Stan and I are obviously not the ones that are doing this. Both officers' stories lined up.
00:47:20
Both maintained their innocence. Investigators felt certain. One of them was lying.
00:47:28
Coming up. On August 11, 2003, did you give Sonia Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle?
00:47:35
No. In August of this year, did you shoot Sonia Ivanov? No. Two officers put to the test which one was telling the truth.
00:47:54
Do you need a drink of water or anything? Officer Matt Owens didn't know it, but while he was talking to the ABI in Anchorage,
00:48:07
investigator Eric Burroughs was checking him out back in Nome. What was his reputation within the Nome PD?
00:48:14
His reputation was he didn't necessarily follow the rules. They felt that he would do the right thing in a tense situation with shots fired.
00:48:24
He would be adequate for backup. He didn't always do the right stuff, but, you know, he was an okay guy.
00:48:31
Burroughs also learned Owens liked the night shift and requested to stay on it. And on those night shifts, Owens liked company.
00:48:40
He would often bring a friend with him for an unauthorized ride-along. They had spoken to Owens on multiple occasions about not doing that anymore.
00:48:50
Did that seem to make any difference? No. Burroughs had heard Matt Owens liked to pick up women.
00:48:57
And after interviewing some of them, he discovered Owens seemed to be using his patrol unit like a dating app.
00:49:04
We're talking about these women in his vehicle as ride-alongs, but it's really more than that, right?
00:49:09
I mean, they're not just observing the scenery when they're with him. The initial information that we had is that he was having sex with them on duty.
00:49:16
And the stories you were hearing were that the women were doing this willingly, or that he was using his uniform and his standing as a police officer to coerce them?
00:49:27
It sounded like that it was probably being done willingly, because these women were seen in his vehicle.
00:49:33
They're not in the back of the vehicle being arrested or under restraint. They appeared to be there on their own volition.
00:49:41
Key to what Burroughs heard was this. some of the women said Owens would follow them in his patrol car while they were walking
00:49:49
and then drive ahead of them to cut them off. I guess what's significant about this is that the story that Florence and her sister tell
00:49:59
about the police unit traveling around the block and intercepting her is the same story that other women later told you about Matt Owens.
00:50:08
Yes, that's correct. Burroughs also found out Owens and Sonia were not complete strangers.
00:50:16
Sonia worked nights at the hospital. So if he were to bring in somebody who needed to get stitched up,
00:50:23
they might have crossed paths. Their paths are going to cross. He knew who she was.
00:50:28
Burroughs relayed this information in real time to his colleagues in Anchorage who were questioning Owens.
00:50:34
On your time in Nome, is Sonia a person that you would know if you saw her on the road?
00:50:42
or is she like a complete stranger to you? She would definitely be, it's somebody I know who she is.
00:50:50
Owens admitted he knew Sonia from the hospital but said that was all. If I brought a drunk up there for a time of 47 or something like that
00:50:58
and there wasn't a nurse down there, I'd go up to the nurse station and say, hey, can you get me a nurse down here?
00:51:02
Other than that, I don't think I've ever spoken two words for the girl in my life.
00:51:05
He also admitted he brought civilians on ride-alongs. Would it be unusual for you on a patrol night to pick up women or meet women or give people a ride?
00:51:19
No, definitely it's not unusual. I do have people that ride along with me, both male and female.
00:51:26
It wasn't the men the ABI wanted to know about. I would have looked at somebody and come up and said that they know that you've picked up girls before.
00:51:33
off-duty or on-duty and that you've taken girls, you know, gone to different places with girls
00:51:39
and had sex with them when you picked them up? On-duty? Mm-hmm. Oh, that'd be crazy.
00:51:45
I'm not going around picking up women. On-duty or off-duty? I mean, even when I'm off-duty.
00:51:48
Not even once? Not that I know of, no, sir. I don't remember not one single time.
00:51:52
That's not me to do that. The interview was really part one. In turn, Piscoya and Owens
00:52:01
were each strapped to the polygraph. Is your last name Pesquoia? Is your last name always?
00:52:08
Then came the money questions. On August 11, 2003, did you give Sonia Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle?
00:52:16
No. In August of this year, did you shoot Sonia Ivanov? No. Testing over. Please succeed.
00:52:25
Thank you, Matt, for going through that with me. I've got to take a little bit of time to run through this,
00:52:29
see what it tells you. What do you suppose that would be? Coming up. Has there been females in there that I've given rights to?
00:52:41
Yeah. More questions for Officer Owens, the women in his patrol car. Why do we need to talk about my sex life?
00:52:49
And those gunshots on the tundra. Does any part of the story he tells about being shot at make any sense to you?
00:52:56
No. When Dateline continues. Stan Pascoya and Matt Owens, the two known police officers on duty the night Sonja Ivanov
00:53:15
was murdered, had both agreed to be polygraphed. Stan Pascoya flies to Anchorage, does an interview
00:53:22
with you guys, takes a polygraph, and is cleared. That's correct. That left Owens. How does Matt
00:53:31
Owens do on the polygraph? He failed. To my amazement, you didn't pass those polygraphs.
00:53:37
The mood in that room changed. ABI investigators read Owens his rights. You have the right to
00:53:45
remain silent. Do you understand that right? Yes, sir. Owens continued to say he had nothing to do
00:53:50
with Sonia's murder. Sonia, as again I said yesterday, has never been in my patrol car He did admit he given rides to other women Has saw a pretty clear pattern of behavior that matched Sonia disappearance
00:54:10
Owens did not. And he didn't understand why that looked exactly the same to you?
00:54:15
No, he would say, what does my sex life with women have anything to do with her getting into a vehicle?
00:54:21
Why is my sex life a part of this investigation or whatever? Why do we need to talk about my sex life?
00:54:27
Because when your sex life happens on duty, my sex life does not happen on duty.
00:54:33
I mean, it doesn't. Owens also denied having anything to do with the theft of Vehicle 321.
00:54:40
So every time you know that I staged that cop car, how did I do that? Does any part of the story he tells about finding that police vehicle
00:54:48
and being shot at make any sense to you? No, it doesn't. Heads up your own highway.
00:54:55
Like I said, what's the bike brake lights? Brake lights only flash if somebody's pressing on the brake pedal.
00:55:02
Within a minute, you're down behind the vehicle and you notice the tailgate is up and the shotgun is missing.
00:55:07
Suggesting that somebody stopped the vehicle, immediately got out and got the shotgun, and they're armed.
00:55:12
Right. In all the training any police officer has done, this is not a normal situation.
00:55:18
This is a dangerous situation. But as you come up on the driver's side, are you checking it for occupants?
00:55:25
Not really. I can't say as I am. He doesn't clear the vehicle. He doesn't pull out his flashlight.
00:55:30
He doesn't pull out his firearm, even though he says he just saw brake lights. Which would be standard protocol.
00:55:37
Absolutely. Burroughs says that what Owens claims he did after being shot at also makes no sense.
00:55:45
He runs off into the tundra. There is all kinds of abandoned equipment, rocks, piles of gravel in the immediate area.
00:55:53
Great for taking cover and returning fire if necessary. Still, no matter what investigators believed, they needed proof.
00:56:02
And they didn't have it. He's not facing any charges. Not at this point. Matt Owens had not been charged with any crime.
00:56:10
Even so, his life was in free fall. He returned here to Nome, but not to work. The police department had put him on administrative leave.
00:56:18
He was in the midst of a messy divorce and a custody battle over his four-year-old son.
00:56:22
He was living in a friend's spare room. More importantly, Matt Owens was the prime suspect in the biggest murder case Nome had ever seen.
00:56:32
The ABI continued to investigate. They spoke with Owens' soon-to-be ex-wife, who mentioned a phone call from Matt.
00:56:41
Owens calls his ex-wife. He has their son, and he says that he needs to drop off their son
00:56:47
because there's a missing girl. He has to go into work early, and it doesn't look good.
00:56:53
She said the date of the call was easy to remember because it was August 12th, Matt Owens' birthday.
00:57:02
As for the time, she said it was before she left work, around 4.30. And at that point when he makes that call,
00:57:10
Sonia hasn't even been reported missing yet. Yes. The walls were closing in. Burroughs heard from a woman who spent time with Owens,
00:57:20
who said he wanted her to leave Alaska soon with him. The ABI wasn't going to let that happen.
00:57:29
October 25, 2003. Two and a half months after Sonia Ivanov was killed, Matt Owens was arrested for her murder.
00:57:39
The next day, Tom and Christina went to his arraignment. We weren't prepared for the greeting we got.
00:57:46
Which was what? Oh, man. We were met with hostilities, for sure. Because a police officer's been arrested for a murder, and people are angry at you?
00:57:58
They were angry. He didn't do this. Officer Wayavana says it was members of Owen's mostly white church who spoke up on his behalf.
00:58:08
They had their opinions, and they voiced them. They weren't afraid to voice their opinions.
00:58:16
The lack of respect on their part was easy to understand if you're Native. For Timmery, just out of high school when her best friend was killed,
00:58:26
Owen's arrest was stunning. You instantly recognized that name? You already knew him?
00:58:32
I mean, I knew him as a police officer. Did that make any sense to you? No, it didn't. I was confused.
00:58:39
Because these guys are supposed to help us. They're supposed to protect us. They're supposed to be the ones keeping us safe.
00:58:46
Two days after his arrest, Matt Owens was fired by the Nome PD. It wasn't long before some of the women of Nome came forward to say that for quite a while,
00:58:56
Matt Owens had been doing the opposite of protecting and serving. Coming up. Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward.
00:59:08
These are women who wound up in his patrol car, not by their own choice. That's correct.
00:59:13
New accusations and new evidence. We start digging and literally we treat it like we're panning for gold.
00:59:20
What would investigators find? The arrest of Officer Matt Owens shocked many citizens of Nome,
00:59:39
but by no means all of them. ABI investigators soon began hearing troubling stories
00:59:46
about Owens' long nights on patrol. Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward
00:59:54
that want to say something because they felt safe These are women who wound up in his patrol car not by their own choice That correct In one case one of them was arrested
01:00:05
and then he sexually assaulted her. It could have been an arrest or just like, hey, do you need a ride to your home?
01:00:11
He's on the grave shift. It's the middle of the night. Owens denied the sexual assault allegations,
01:00:16
including those from a woman who says that after he forced her to have sex, Owens told her,
01:00:22
No one will believe a drunk Alaska native over a police officer. So here's the really awful thing.
01:00:29
Owens may actually have judged the situation accurately. The six women who came forward after his arrest told stories that ranged from stalking to rape.
01:00:39
One said she'd gone into the police department to file a complaint. Another said she'd mentioned Owens' behavior to someone else at the PD, and nothing ever happened.
01:00:47
Eric Burroughs was running a murder investigation with a lot of missing pieces. For example, investigators found the shotgun from Unit 321 but got no usable forensics from it.
01:01:01
And on the cruiser itself, no DNA or prints that would connect Owens to the theft or to Sonia.
01:01:08
They hadn't found the clothing Sonia was wearing the night she died or the weapon used to kill her.
01:01:14
and each missing piece was a problem. When you're conducting an investigation, I describe it like this.
01:01:22
Imagine that you have three or four jigsaw puzzles and all the pieces are thrown into a box.
01:01:28
You don't have any idea what the picture is. You're trying to grab all these pieces
01:01:33
and you hope that you can get enough of the right pieces to make a picture that everyone can see and understand.
01:01:41
The hunt for missing pieces sent Burroughs and his team to an actual hunting camp called Coffee Creek, 70 miles north of Nome.
01:01:52
Matt Owens was known to go there. He was observed burning some gloves that were virtually new.
01:01:58
Burroughs wondered if Owens torched his gloves, what else could be found there? We start digging up into the fire pit and literally we treated it like we were panning for gold.
01:02:09
and we got some water and we put some of the ashes in a bucket, swirl it around and get rid of the ashes and see what we could see.
01:02:18
And I found an eyelet to a shoe. Like where the laces go through? Where the laces go through, yeah, an eyelet to the shoe.
01:02:26
It had obviously been in the fire and it was corroded and stuff, but I could make out Skechers.
01:02:30
Sonia was wearing Skechers. She was wearing Skechers shoes on the night she disappeared.
01:02:35
They moved the entire ash pit to Nome. and went through it for days. The result?
01:02:42
More eyelets from Skechers, metal parts from a bra, and a metal button with a logo tilt.
01:02:49
Then Burroughs turned to Christina for help. He did come over to the house and showed me a picture of stuff they had found in a fire pit.
01:03:00
Could you identify any of that stuff? I did. They were the brand of jeans that my sister wore.
01:03:05
Presumably anybody could have burned stuff there It doesn't have to be Matt Owens
01:03:10
Right, so it's not this smoking gun evidence that says Aha, Matt, this is yours Then, in the same burn pit
01:03:17
They found a key And it could be connected to Owens It was for his uncle's post office box
01:03:25
The hunt for the murder weapon was equally painstaking So we knew from the autopsy
01:03:32
That the bullet was a 22 round. Which means it's from one of several possible guns.
01:03:40
Right. At the crime scene, investigators cut back the plants. And we actually found the bullet casing, or the shell.
01:03:48
Which told you what? It's an automatic as opposed to a revolver where it's going to stay in the weapon.
01:03:55
That narrowed down the list a bit. Nome Police Officer Byron Redburn suggested investigators look for the gun
01:04:02
in the Nome Police Evidence Room. So we go up to the Nome PD Evidence Room. The evidence locker and the evidence room key is in one of the sergeants' mailbox.
01:04:12
Anybody can get it. So pretty much anybody could help themselves to anything in the evidence room
01:04:16
and not get caught. As long as they get into the police department, yes, essentially.
01:04:23
In evidence, they found this. A Jennings .22. The firearms analysis gave us a list of guns.
01:04:30
The Jennings .22 was one of the guns on the list. Was it possible Owens or someone else had secretly borrowed the gun
01:04:38
and then replaced it after they'd used it to commit a murder? That was possible, yes.
01:04:44
However, it was hardly, and forgive me here, a smoking gun. No forensics linked Matt Owens to the Jennings,
01:04:52
and his service weapon wasn't a .22. investigators did manage to tie up one loose end,
01:04:59
the truck with the mismatched tires. So this guy and his girlfriend just happened to park out here
01:05:05
just because they need to answer nature's call. And they don't realize that they're, what,
01:05:11
just a few yards from Sonia's body? Correct. It was entirely unrelated to the murder.
01:05:18
While investigators were working the case, Matt Owens was working on bail. Officer Matt Owens is locked up on a murder charge and gets bail.
01:05:30
Ridiculous. In a town of 3,500 people. That was sickening. After two months in jail, Owens got what he wanted, supervised release.
01:05:41
He also hired a respected and aggressive attorney and began to prepare his defense.
01:05:47
This isn't reporting. This is harassment. We let you take your picture. Now beat it.
01:05:53
Coming up You were working the night that Sonia was murdered right Yes sir I was Officer Owens takes the stand and the defense points to someone else
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He has an obvious and huge motive. Was the wrong cop on trial, when Dateline continues.
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When Sonia stepped into that patrol car that night, it was like she was stepping into her own car.
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The trial of former Nome police officer Matt Owens began on January 18, 2005, 17 months after Sonia Ivanov's murder.
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Investigators had assembled evidence like pieces of a puzzle. Now it was Prosecutor Rick Svobotny's job to show the finished picture to the jury.
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He put on nearly 70 witnesses, laying out a circumstantial case against a man once trusted with a badge.
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There was Matt Owens' call to his ex-wife about a missing woman, before Sonia was reported missing.
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His incredible story about finding 321. and how Owens had ample time to kill Sonia and then cover his tracks.
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On the morning, Sonia died. The defendant is unaccountable for over five hours. Timmery testified about the last time she saw her best friend.
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When you left, did you leave together? Yes. Three witnesses testified they'd seen Sonia passing by on foot that night,
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tracing her path from the time she left Timmery until Florence Habro saw her get into a police car.
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Where was Sonia when the window came down? On a passenger seat. What was the strongest part of your case, do you think?
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Coffee Creek. Where Owens was seen tossing gloves into a burn pit. They went through it, and they came up with physical evidence.
01:08:11
The tilt jeans button. The sketcher's eyelets. and the key link to Matt Owens. After the prosecution built its case, the defense tried to tear it down.
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Owens' attorney called a witness who said he saw Sonia speeding past him in a blue pickup on Monday night,
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half a day after the prosecution's timeline had her dead. I had gone down to Subway, and when I went in the door, there was a missing person's photo on the door.
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It just struck me like that looks like the girl that was in that pickup. Haven't you said nobody will ever make me say it was her?
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I don't know that I've said it that way, but I won't say that it was her. I've already pointed that out.
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I've said that I wasn't 100% sure it was her. Under cross-examination, the state's firearms expert admitted the gun found in the evidence room
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was probably but not absolutely the murder weapon. As for the mailbox key from Coffee Creek, the defense put on the mailbox owner, who said Owens never had a key.
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And then, staring down the barrel of a murder charge, Matt Owens took the stand in his own defense.
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You were working the night that Sonia was murdered, right? Yes, sir, I was. He told the jury his ex-wife had her dates wrong.
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His call about the case was a week later than she thought. he did acknowledge an interest in Sonia.
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He admitted looking her up on the police computer. That's right. I think from day one when he had Sonia's name run by the dispatcher,
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she was a young, attractive girl, and he wanted to know something about her because maybe something could happen.
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On the witness stand, Owens did admit he had run Sonia's name just to make sure she was of legal drinking age.
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That was just a matter of curiosity because you didn't see her in the bar or she wasn't in the bar at the time.
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Well, it was a disagreement that Officer Stotts and I had about her age. The sex-based allegations from the six women who came forward were all ruled inadmissible,
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so Owens didn't have to answer for them at trial. Under oath, Owens insisted he didn't kill Sonia Ivanov,
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and he had nothing to do with the theft of 321. Then his attorney presented an alternate theory of the case.
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A cop may have killed Sonia, but it wasn't Matt Owens. The defense suggested Officer Byron Redburn should have been a suspect.
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And who was it communicated and coordinated with the troopers about the Ivanov case?
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Officer Redburn. He was the one who thought the murder weapon might be found in the evidence room.
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If Redburn, for whatever reason, killed Ms. Ivanov, he has an obvious and huge motive.
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A motive, the defense argued, to frame Matt Owens. They told the jury Owens had reported Redburn for punching a suspect.
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Redburn carried a grudge about that, they said. And he was even angrier, because Owens was having an affair with Redburn's daughter.
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Because he's furious about Matt's relationship with his daughter, Jennifer Shannon.
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The defense did not offer any solid evidence pointing to Redburn. And in case the jury didn't find him to be a convincing suspect,
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the defense offered the original one for good measure. Who does she have relationships with that could lead to homicidal action?
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Well, Kunick comes right to mind. It would be incredible. In his closing argument, Prosecutor Svobodny told the jury that Sonja's killer was Matt Owens
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and only Matt Owens. after more than 40 hours Deliberation. The judge called everyone back to the courtroom.
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Counsel, I received a note from the jury which reads, the jury is deadlocked and cannot reach a unanimous decision.
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The judge declared a mistrial. Matt Owens walked out the door while Sonia's parents' hearts ached.
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It was hard. And to go through a second trial was just this hard. something you don't want anyone to go through.
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After the trial, Owen's attorneys asked for a change of venue. And so when the second trial began, seven months later,
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it was in Kotzebue, a plane ride away from Nome above the Arctic Circle. The person who killed Sonia was what police call evidence aware.
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The prosecution's case was a virtual carbon copy of the first trial. No telling if it would result in an identical outcome.
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Then, after prosecutors had rested and the defense began putting on its witnesses,
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ABI investigator Eric Burroughs got a phone call about new and possibly explosive evidence.
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You'd never heard that. Never had heard that. He relayed the new information to the prosecutor.
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And he said, you need to get on a plane, you need to go down to Nome. And I said, but we've already rested, what are we going to do with this?
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And essentially he's like, you let me handle that part, you do your investigator part.
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Coming up. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments. The race is on to find a crucial new witness.
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Then, tears in the courtroom. This time, there would be a verdict. Investigator Eric Burroughs hurried back to Nome,
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trying to gather new evidence in the last moments of a murder trial. He knew he faced long odds,
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but he also knew Nome gave him one big advantage. Nome is a small town, and sometimes it seems that everyone knows everyone.
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Take Officer Brian Wayovana, for example. He was friends with Sonia's family. He was also the first to uncover evidence that a police officer might have been involved in her murder.
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Now, during Owens' second trial, Wayovana was chatting with a neighbor, and that neighbor told him something potentially explosive about Matt Owens.
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He asked did it ever come up in trial that Charlotte Calandrelli saw Sonia ID in Matt bedroom It was one of those jaw moments like
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Charlotte Calandrelli had rented a room to Owens after he and his wife split. Burroughs believed Charlotte was probably talking about the same gym car that was found in police vehicle 321.
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so it could tie Owens both to the murder and the subsequent cover-up. If true, that would be huge for the prosecution.
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That is, if the judge would allow it into evidence. I mean, this is third-party hearsay, right?
01:15:28
Yeah. Burroughs had to trace the new information back to its source. He first spoke with Officer Wayavana's across-the-street neighbor,
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a guy named Dealey Blackshear. It came up that she had seen in the area where Matt was, in their house.
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The area where he was living? Yeah. She saw a woman's wallet and Sonia Ivanov's ID card.
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Crucially important was when Charlotte saw Sonia's ID. Before the patrol car shooting.
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Meaning before Sonia's pool ID showed up on the front seat of 321. Now remember, Blackshear's story was still hearsay.
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You're going to go find Charlotte and get her to repeat that story on the stand.
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Ultimately, yes. Burroughs knew the Calandrellys were old family friends of Owen's,
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and he worried Charlotte would just deny everything. So he obtained a warrant. Well, Charlotte, I may have opened my mouth and spoken at a turn.
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which allowed him to record a phone call from Dealey Blackshear to Charlotte Calandrelli.
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The conversation that I remember, we were concerned that we had seen along with Matt's other stuff.
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We had seen Sonia's ID or rec card. And my recollection is that she said, I'm going to go tell the lawyers today.
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Well, Charlotte said she never did tell anyone except Dealey because she thought she'd seen in the paper that the cops already had the ID.
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So I didn't think any more about it then. Here's what's crucial. She did not deny seeing Sonia's ID.
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Back in Kotzebue, the prosecution asked the judge to put Charlotte Calandrelli on the witness stand.
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And the judge agreed. Except, just as Burroughs had feared, when Charlotte testified.
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Did you see Mr. Owens with any identification of Sonia Ivanov? No. She denied everything.
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Did you see him with a wallet of Sonia Ivanov No So the prosecution played the tape of Dealey Blackshear conversation with Calandrelli Then the attorneys laid out their arguments She got into a known patrol car
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driven by the defendant. And this is the wrong man. This is the wrong cop. Once again,
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the case went to a jury. This time there was a verdict. We the jury, Julian Pantleton sworn to try the above-entitled case,
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find defendant Matthew Owens guilty of the crimes murder in the first degree. For Sonia's family, there were tears, not quite of joy, but maybe of relief.
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We're happy that he got his guilty verdict for being a cold-blooded killer. Investigator Burroughs believes Owens had his eye on Sonia for a while,
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and that when he saw her walking alone that August night, he thought, Now's my chance.
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He gets her to get into the vehicle, like he's done with so many others. He probably starts propositioning her about sex.
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And somewhere in there she says, not only no, but I'm going to tell. Matt Owens had picked the wrong victim.
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She was outspoken. If you made her mad, she would tell you. Whatever Owens had planned for her, she was not going to just sit there and suffer.
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No. Nope. Matt Owens was sentenced to 101 years in prison. Owens would not speak on camera, but in a statement sent by his brother told us,
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He did not kill Sonia Ivanov, and he denies engaging in stalking or abusing women in any way.
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He also said he couldn't get a fair trial in the Nome area. Ever since the murder, Sonia's story has echoed through Nome.
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When former Nome police chief Michael Heinzelman first arrived in 2018, he'd never heard of Matt Owens or the murder of Sonia Ivanov.
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That changed quickly. We went to a city council meeting and we had people standing up
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telling about how they did not trust the police department and that they remember that a police officer had murdered
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one of the Alaska Native ladies in town. I thought to myself, we're going to have a lot to really gain the trust of these folks.
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Not only did Heinzelman have to overcome that history, he took over a department with a dismal record of handling sexual assaults.
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An internal review found 460 open cases in Nome, mostly involving Alaska Native women.
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Today the Nome PD has moved into a new building and Heinzelman told us it a new agency too One that knows it has to serve all of the people of Nome Though there are no sworn Alaska Native officers or investigators there is an Alaska Native victims advocate who focuses
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on domestic violence and sexual assault. Like the people in Nome who've never forgotten
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Sonia's story, Christina and Tom also have trouble trusting. They've raised their children
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with warnings. To be very cautious with anybody. Including police officers. My message was that
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evil comes in different forms. You always got to watch out. Timmery says she's still haunted.
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I had to stop going to college because every police, anybody in uniform, scared me. I mean,
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I didn't know who I could trust. She's moved back to Unalakleet. She feels a little safer there.
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Even so, you don't get over losing your best friend. You have some guilt about this, don't you?
01:21:33
Yeah. I think, what if I just would have stayed with her and just walked home? We should have just walked home together.
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You said it yourself. you felt safe. She clearly did too. I mean, this isn't on you.
01:21:52
It's just something that I I really regret. You didn't do anything wrong here. Yeah.
01:22:03
Thank you. He's on you. Let's go get some more action. Sometimes Timmery takes herself
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back to the before times. when she and Sonia were both alive and both carefree. She brought that camera on a lot of ball trips.
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She watches and re-watches the one tape she still has. She was tall and beautiful and made everybody laugh.
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She was a loving and caring person and goofy. She had a big heart. And we sure do miss her.
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Sonia, where'd you go? That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.