An up-close look at Anchorage’s earliest criminals

Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

Claude T. Boyles was one of the more popular men in early Anchorage. The town existed as the operations base for the Alaska Engineering Commission (AEC), which was federally empowered to construct and operate the Alaska Railroad. And Boyles worked as an accountant in the AEC’s telegraph and telephone department, placing him at the young town’s beating social heart. He was vice president of the AEC’s first employee’s association, chairman of the membership committee for the Anchorage Tennis Club and secretary for the Odd Fellows fraternal order.

As one of the more appealing local bachelors, he naturally married one of the relatively few young single women, Nell McInerney. She arrived from Chicago in the summer of 1917. That November, they were married at the Whitney homestead, home to John and Daisy Whitney, the Whitney Road namesakes. Their wedding procession stood out. Claude and Nell raced toward the homestead on a dog sled while the minister followed as best possible in a car.

But Boyles was also one of Anchorage’s earliest criminals. His connections fueled an ambitious embezzlement scheme in addition to a vibrant social life. From August 1916 through March 1918, he stole around $4,750 from the railroad, roughly $107,000 in 2024 money. He folded quickly and confessed to his crimes, for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. As there were no prisons in Alaska then, only small jails, he was shipped to the McNeil Island federal penitentiary southwest of Tacoma, Washington. For decades, Alaska’s most notorious criminals all spent time at McNeil Island, including Charles “Blue Parka Man” Hendrickson, Robert “Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud and Jacob “Russian Jack” Marunenko.

The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent federal agency that collects and preserves historical government records: photographs, audio recordings, videos, maps, reports, letters and every other physical medium. Anchorage once had its own National Archives branch, an unparalleled Alaska research trove, until it closed in 2014 and its holdings were shipped to the Lower 48. Some of that material is now available online via the National Archives catalog. For Anchorage, those records include everything from a 1917 letter complaining about brothels in what is now South Addition to 1950 aerial photographs of the International Airport during its construction.

Most of the McNeil Island inmate photographs from 1875 to 1923 are available online via the National Archives. That time frame covers Anchorage’s fledgling years. The pictures thus document the town’s earliest, most notorious criminals. Their backstories illuminate a darker aspect of a young frontier town, from theft to sex crime to murder.

D.M. Lynch was, like Boyles, well-known about town, though for different reasons. While Boyles was popular, Lynch was more of a notable ne’er-do-well. He had a homestead by Otter Lake, where he made birch syrup and raised livestock. In 1918, he was convicted of selling spoiled meat. In early 1922, he falsely accused Cy Robinson’s dogs of killing his pigs. Robinson paid Lynch for the pigs but then realized that the pigs had supposedly died on a day when his dogs weren’t in town. Lynch was forced to reimburse Robinson.

In an unsurprising turn of events, Lynch did not get along with his neighbor, John H. Thompson. They disagreed over the exact border of their homesteads, and Lynch had made several threats by shotgun over the previous years. The issue came to a head in the summer of 1922 when Thompson planted potatoes in the disputed zone. After an armed and heated standoff, the two men retired to their respective homes. Then Lynch committed what the local newspaper called a “display of shootin’ irons.”

For about two hours, Lynch rained steady gunfire upon Thompson’s cabin. The repeated shots broke down the wood in places so that Thompson and a friend were forced to hug the floor, then slither outside into the underbrush, bullets clipping the bushes and ground around them. From there, they escaped back to Anchorage. For “shooting with the intent to kill,” Lynch was sentenced to three years.

John W. Smith was a simpler type of criminal. A construction boss on the Alaska Railroad, he stole four paychecks and an unspecified amount of money from another railroad employee in 1917. He was convicted of larceny and sentenced to a year in prison.

Information about the prisoner was pasted to the back of each photograph. Long before the proliferation of ID cards, jailors had to be strikingly specific in their physical descriptions. Smith’s description noted five scars and a mole, including their length, size and location. Every prisoner’s description also included a detailed inventory of their teeth. Before dental visits became common, such records were one of the more unique ways of identifying an inmate. As of his imprisonment, the 29-year-old Smith was missing five teeth.

In 1915, John A. Fields was sentenced to a year for larceny. Details are lacking for the specific nature of his crimes, but his photograph highlights an interesting detail. Like many men in the McNeil Island inmate photographs, he is wearing a hat. In 1910s men’s fashion, hats lay somewhere between very common and de rigueur. A bareheaded man out in public would have been in the far minority. Yet, a hat seems at odds with the purpose of an identification photograph.

William A. Henry Jr. was busted for forging a check and a promissory note. In 1922, he was convicted and sentenced to three years. Once again, details that would explain the difference between his three-year sentence and, say, Boyle’s eighteen-month sentence for significant embezzlement are lacking.

Late on July 6, 1916, Alex Takoff watched men play pool at Robart’s Billiard Hall. There not being much else to do, he left to check out the scene at another pool hall. At the corner of Fourth Avenue and F Street, he ran into Jim Kasoff, a fellow Russian immigrant. They exchanged words in their mother tongue. According to Takoff’s deathbed testimony:

“You are bothering me, " snapped Kasoff. “What in hell are you bothering me for?”

“I am not bothering you,” Takoff replied.

“I heard from someone you talk hard language on me,” said Kasoff.

“No,” said Takoff. “I never talk anything of you. Come down and see that friend that say I talk bad of you.”

Then, Kasoff pulled out a .22-caliber Savage automatic pistol and fired several shots, three hitting and mortally wounding Takoff. Coincidentally, there was a performance of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” that same night. When Takoff died the next day, the shooting became Anchorage’s first murder.

The rumor mill ran wild with possible motives. Some believed the Russians had a philosophical or political disagreement dating back to their homeland. Others believed Takoff had murdered Kasoff’s brother several years prior, and the shooting was delayed payback. And a few gossipy locals took the easy route and suggested a woman was at the center of the disagreement, somewhere or somehow.

The likelier theory is more straightforward and sadder. As the town quieted in the aftermath, residents familiar with both parties claimed Kasoff had mistaken Takoff for someone else, that Takoff lacked the unsavory past that might have instigated such grievances. Kasoff, who reportedly did not speak English, refused to account for his actions. Nearly three months later, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, beginning with some time at McNeil Island. Perhaps Kasoff regretted his actions to the extent that he meekly accepted whatever punishment was handed down. Such epic remorse is a romantic reading of the events, possibly true but unprovable. The true motive for Takoff’s death is one of many Anchorage mysteries with answers lost to the degradations of passing time.

The last criminal discussed here requires the most explanation. On May 23, 1918, A. D. Sweet was found guilty of sex with a minor and sentenced to two years in prison. More specifically, he was convicted of illegal oral sex.

American sodomy statutes date back to the colonial period, from a body of laws that targeted unmarried and non-reproductive sex but also explicitly made same-sex intercourse illegal and equivalent to bestiality. The First Organic Act of 1884 copied the laws of Oregon onto Alaska, including an anti-sodomy statute with a penalty of up to five years in prison. As with most sodomy laws, this statute referred to such sex acts as “the crime against nature.”

In 1915, the Alaska legislature revised the existing law to include a proscription on oral sex. The new statute read: “That if any person shall commit sodomy, or the crime against nature, or shall have unnatural carnal copulation by means of the mouth, or otherwise, either with beast or mankind of either sex, such person, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than one year nor more than ten years.”

The ban on oral sex was rarely enforced. In the rare discussions on the topic, one case repeatedly comes up. In 1958, a deputy marshal followed three soldiers and a woman leaving a Fairbanks bar in a cab. Over the course of 4 miles, the lawman observed the woman’s “head went down in a downward motion” before stopping the car. The receiving soldier was arrested with pants still open. The woman was sentenced to eighteen months.

Oral sex remained legally off the table in Alaska for 56 years. In 1969, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the “crime against nature” part of the statute was unconstitutionally vague. Two years later, the Alaska legislature revised the sodomy law, removing the oral sex and “crime against nature” wording. Carnal copulation by means of the mouth was therefore legal, a standing confirmed by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1973. The sodomy statute remained on the books in Alaska through 1980.

Sweet kept the details of his crime and imprisonment a secret from his family. About six months after his initial arrest, while Sweet sat at McNeil Island, his son in California wrote the AEC asking about his father’s whereabouts. “I have written to him but have received no reply to my letters.” My guess is that the son did not hear from the father for another year and a half.

Key sources:

“Bound Over to Grand Jury.” Anchorage Daily Times, June 7, 1922, 5.

“Boyles Makes Confession and Gets 18 Months.” Anchorage Daily Times, May 28, 1918, 1.

Christy v. United States. 261 F.2d 357 (9th Cir. 1959).

“Court Called It Trickery; Robinson Gets Money Back.” Anchorage Daily Times, March 13, 1922, 5.

“District Court Business Today.” Seward Gateway, June 10, 1922, 1.

“Homesteader Charges D.M. Lynch Fired Upon Him.” Anchorage Daily Times, June 3, 1922, 1.

“Kasloff Held for Murder First Degree.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 8, 1916, 1.

Lewis, Howard. “Motive for City’s First Murder Still a Mystery.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 29, 1957, 15.

Mielke, Coleen. McNeil Island Prisoners from Alaska 1900-1950. N.d.

“Murdered in Cold Blood on 4th Avenue.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 7, 1916, 1.

“Popular Young Couple Are Married.” Anchorage Daily Times, November 5, 1917, 10.

State of Alaska v. Charles M. Spencer. 514 P.2d 14 (Alaska Supreme Court, 1973).

“Weekly Progress Reports.” Anchorage Daily Times, April 25, 1917, 8.

“Young Man Writes for Information of His Father’s Whereabouts.” Railroad Record, November 19, 1918, 16.