Missing Indigenous list grows to 359; 16 new Anchorage cases labeled 'unknown'

Sixteen Anchorage police cases were added to Alaska's list of missing Alaska Native and American Indian people this quarter, each with the same word in the column for circumstances: "unknown."

The additions are in the Alaska Department of Public Safety's third-quarter report, posted Oct. 21. It lists 359 Alaska Native, American Indian or unknown-race people as missing as of Sept. 30, up from 355 in the second-quarter report Alaska News covered Sept. 3.

The report defines "unknown" only as "unable to determine circumstance," and says the investigating police agency decides each case's category. It does not say why the 16 new Anchorage cases were not classified as suspicious or not suspicious. Most of the people were last contacted between July and September. Four of the 21 people added this quarter were born between 2009 and 2011.

Sixteen people also came off the list, including 11 Anchorage police cases. The report does not say whether they were found alive, found dead or removed for another reason.

Most of the people on the list disappeared outdoors. Of the 359, 267 are what the report calls environment cases, non-suspicious deaths in the wilderness, on waterways or the ocean, or in aircraft crashes, where remains were not located. The oldest case added this quarter is one of them, a person last contacted in 1963.

Twenty cases are classified as suspicious, down one from June. Eleven of those people are women and nine are men. It is the only category in which women outnumber men.

The report's homicide charts, which it labels preliminary Alaska Department of Health data, count 18 victims this quarter, 12 men and six women. The second-quarter charts counted 10. The captions do not say whether the counts include only Alaska Native and American Indian victims.

The report came out the same week a federal judge in Anchorage convicted Brian Steven Smith of lying to obtain U.S. citizenship. Smith is serving a 226-year state sentence for murdering two Alaska Native women, Kathleen Jo Henry, 30, and Veronica Abouchuk, 52.

The list covers the state department and seven municipal police departments. Of the cases in the report's table, 305 belong to the state, 46 to Anchorage police, eight to Fairbanks police and one to Seward police. The report's chart and table do not fully agree, and the report says its contents "are dynamic and subject to change."

Alaska has no mandatory waiting period before someone can be reported missing, the report notes.