The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement

“a story of a brutal crime, a broken justice system, and after a long 15 years, redemption in a frigid Alaska town. A powerful story of a wrong made right, or as right as it can be.”

This is a book for hardcore true crime fans, those who want all the details of the crime, the investigation, the suspects, the trial, and the aftermath. Especially the aftermath.

It was an investigation so bloated with flaws—questionable confessions, false testimonies, hidden and/or misconstrued evidence, as well as outright negligence—the case was ultimately named 2016 Trial of the Year by the criminal division of the Alaska Department of Law.

It started in 1997 when 15-year-old John Gilbert Hartman, "JG" to friends and family, was brutally beaten on a downtown Fairbanks, Alaska street. First responders on the scene, who found him with severe head injuries and his pants around his ankles, were uncertain whether the boy was beaten or hit by a car. Two days later, John Hartman, a popular, handsome schoolboy, ceased breathing in Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.

Arrests were quickly made by Fairbanks Police Department detectives. Two classmates of the dead boy, George Frese and Eugene Vent, were interviewed while intoxicated and without parents or lawyers present. Short hours later, the two boys confessed to the crime (they both eventually recanted) after which investigators claimed that two other boys, Marvin Roberts and Kevin Pease, were also involved.

"Police weren't looking for anyone else, Chief Detective Keller informed the press. He offered little detail beyond the crime's location, Roberts's role as the getaway driver, and the suspects' ties with Howard Luke Academy, Fairbanks's predominantly Native alternative school."

At the time, author O'Donoghue worked in the newsroom of a local newspaper, the News- Miner, where he urged the cops and court reporters to answer two important questions:

"What was Hartman doing out and about at 3:00 a.m.? And how was it that his mother and older brothers didn't notice the kid was gone the better part of a day?"

Answers weren't forthcoming, and local news reports were all but scripted to fan the flames of an already controversial case. Three of the four suspects—Roberts, Vent and Frese—were Athabascan Indians with strong family ties in local villages up and down the Yukon River.

The arraignment of the four accused boys turned into a regional sound and light show:

". . . Cameras flashed, and videographers jostled for position as the four accused approached the courtroom single file, clad in orange jumpsuits. Each gripped portions of the long chain binding them together using hands cuffed to their waist. . . ."

Bail was eventually set at $1 million apiece. All four of the accused maintained their innocence, but the court ordered sentences ranged from 33 to 97 years.

A regional Native Council spoke out publicly: "It is widely known within the Native communities that these agencies routinely treat Alaska Natives with a degree of prejudice that often leads to injustice and repeated violations of their Civil Rights."

Shortly after sentencing, author O'Donoghue quit his newspaper job to teach journalism at University of Alaska Fairbanks. With questions and gossip still swirling about the case of the Fairbanks Four, John Hartman's murder became the main topic of conversation in the class. Consequently, O'Donoghue put his students to work reviewing the case. Students read volumes of reports and documents including police interviews, investigative reports, and court records about the case and the investigation. The students eagerly formed teams dedicated to focusing on various aspects of the investigation. Despite a couple of false starts, the teams found a lot of stones remained unturned.

The Alaska Innocence Project was founded in 2006 to assist people who have been wrongfully imprisoned. In the years following the Fairbanks Four's conviction, the Project, under the leadership of Executive Director William B. Overly, an attorney in Anchorage, the group picked up the Fairbanks Four case. Their re-investigation revved up when new evidence was discovered. The boys, now grown men, were eventually released from prison in 2015.

Roberts recalled the night of his interrogation and how the police ratcheted up the pressure:

". . . They put me in a little room. Then, I don't know, maybe three or four officers, not at one time, . . . they'd switch officers, I think, and try to do the good cop-bad cop routine. And they just keep grilling me. Kept grilling me . . . And I just kept saying, 'I'm innocent. I don't know what you're talking about.' It dawned on me I'm a suspect in something I didn't even do. . . ."

This is a story of a brutal crime, a broken justice system, and after a long 15 years, redemption in a frigid Alaska town. A powerful story of a wrong made right, or as right as it can be.