One September day 12 years ago, forensic scientist Chris Beheim walked slowly across the dirt and rocks at McHugh Creek, looking for traces of blood at the place where Bonnie Craig's raped and beaten body was found.
From the beginning, the investigation was like no other.
The city was captured by the death of the 18-year-old college student; Beheim was shocked at the savageness of the crime and angered that the killer was still out there.
He is a scientist, but this case was always more than swabs and samples and DNA parsing. It was personal.
Beheim's wife and stepson knew Bonnie from Service High School. And, like his whole family, the girl loved classical music and played in the orchestra. She lived nearby.
It was all a long time ago, but Beheim, who went on to become boss of the state crime lab, never forgot.
Then one November day last year, he sat down in the lab's library for a routine scan of automated returns from the national DNA database and realized he was looking at a match for the unidentified semen found on Bonnie's body. It was from someone in New Hampshire.
"Immediately, I recognized the case number, " he said Tuesday, still sort of breathless, like a little kid bursting at the seams.
"I mean, I've been involved with thousands of cases over the years, having been there since 1978, but this is a case number that is etched in my memory."
He had to focus on reacting like a scientist, on controlling any unseemly excitement. He wanted to call Alaska State Troopers investigators. He wanted to call a former colleague who worked with him on the case. He wanted to shout it out to the world. Instead he followed protocol.
Within minutes of the discovery, lab staff was on the phone to New Hampshire authorities, asking them to confirm the match by checking the codes and profile numbers on the DNA for a Kenneth Dion, doing time there for robbery.
When New Hampshire authorities said there was no mistake, Beheim went straight to trooper boss Col. Julia Grimes. "Needless to say, she was very, very happy, " he said.
Beheim, who retired in January, had parented the crime lab from its infancy in the late 1970s, when it did little more than simple drug detection, to its sophistication today, which includes participation in the national database known as CODIS: The FBI's Combined DNA Index System, a collection of DNA profiles from criminals, relatives of missing people and unidentified remains.
And samples taken from the victims and scenes of unsolved crimes. Like the murder of Bonnie Craig.
"This is why we built the database, " Beheim said. "It's the only way to solve these cases when the trail has gone cold."
Over the years since Bonnie's body was found floating in McHugh Creek, troopers presented scores of samples from suspects to the lab for analysis.
"We lost count of how many elimination samples we did, when the police would send us either a saliva or a blood sample that they wanted to see if it matched, " said Leanne Strickland, who worked at the lab until she retired several years ago.
Semen found on Bonnie's body was frozen and preserved so it could be analyzed for many years. Over time, as local law enforcement's technical capabilities improved, investigators would take a little bit of the preserved cells for more advanced testing, hoping to learn more about Bonnie's killer.
When first tested in 1994, the profile of DNA found on Bonnie could eliminate 99 of 100 people. By 2000, when it was among the first samples sent to CODIS, advanced testing could effectively tie it to a single person.
The national database has mushroomed over the past few years. From just 20,000 profiles in 1999, it has now grown to more than 4 million, according to the FBI. Alaska inputs DNA data from felons, those who commit violent misdemeanors and juveniles who have committed serious crimes.
Daily News reporter Megan Holland can be reached at mrholland@adn.com.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.