Searchers can't find human remains, but security cameras show victim entering hotel — and not leaving
State Department of Public Safety investigators have concluded that an elderly Valdez woman who’d been missing since early last month died in a Nov. 12 fire in Glennallen.
The Valdez Police Department issued a missing persons alert for 86-year-old Mary Jo Evans on Nov. 11. That came after her family members told officers they hadn’t seen her since the week before.
After the police department said they had “exhausted all investigative leads” on Evans’s whereabouts, they reached out and asked the public for help locating her.
Then on Nov. 12, the Caribou Hotel in Glennallen burned to the ground.
Alaska State Troopers got a tip last week about a badly burned car matching the description of Evans’s vehicle in the hotel parking lot.
Troopers then took over the case and confirmed the car was Evans’s.
On Friday, investigators with the state Department of Public Safety and the state Fire Marshal’s Office began searching for human remains in the burned-out hotel. But they were unsuccessful.
Troopers said in a dispatch issued Monday that “due to the duration and intensity of the fire” the investigators weren’t able to locate any human remains.
The dispatch said investigators believe Evans died in the fire, because security cameras show her entering the hotel on the night of Nov. 11.
But the Trooper spokesperson said there’s no evidence that she ever left the hotel.
The spokesperson said there were no other victims, because Evans was the only hotel guest who was unaccounted-for after the fire.
The Trooper dispatch said investigators believe the fire was accidental in nature. Meanwhile, the investigation continues.
