A Fairbanks jury found a man guilty of manslaughter Tuesday in connection with his roommate’s death years earlier in North Pole.
The jury also found 37-year-old Aaron Hague guilty of second-degree theft and tampering with evidence, but acquitted him of first-degree murder, after the two-week trial. The body of the victim, 61-year-old John McClelland, has yet to be found. Hague is accused of hiding McClelland’s body after killing him.
The case dates back to at least August 2020. An Alaska Law Department press release says that’s when the victim’s brother, who was living in Michigan, asked Alaska State Troopers for a welfare check on McClelland. He said he’d received odd text messages from McClelland’s phone number, including a request for $8,000, according to the law department, which says McClelland had also stopped showing up for work around the same time.
The release says Hague had been living with McClelland when he went missing, and Alaska State Troopers interviewed Hague that same month. Afterward, Hague reportedly hitchhiked to Anchorage, where he stayed in a homeless shelter. While there, he befriended a man named Anthony Alcorn, took his Ohio ID, and used it to fly to Seattle in October 2020, according to the law department. The press release says Hague then began to live and work under Alcorn’s name in Oregon.
Hague is accused of later luring Alcorn from Anchorage and killing him to preserve his stolen identity, and he’s currently awaiting trial for murder and identity theft charges in Oregon. The Gresham Police Department arrested Hague after Alcorn was found dead in Gresham, Oregon, in March 2021.
About a year after his arrest in the Lower 48, Alaska prosecutors charged Hague in 2022 in connection with McClelland’s death in North Pole.
Testimony from dozens of witnesses during the trial in Fairbanks showed Hague had used McClelland’s debit card following his disappearance, and that he’d filed an unemployment insurance claim in McClelland’s name. According to the press release, Hague told the jury that he had killed McClelland, but that it was in self-defense – a claim the jury rejected.
Hague is in custody with the Alaska Department of Corrections pending sentencing in August. Afterward, he is expected to face trial in Oregon.