Police search continues for Joshua Wade

As the search for Wade continued across Anchorage, court papers from two domestic-violence cases and interviews with former employers and his most recent housemate show Wade has moved through a series of manual labor jobs and a troubled relationship with a woman much older than himself.

Wade, 27, is well known to police. They charged him with the September 2000 rape and killing of a Native woman whose body was found in a Spenard shed. In 2003, after a sensational trial, a jury acquitted Wade of murder and all other charges except tampering with evidence. He got out of prison in late 2004.

Now police want to question Wade about the 52-year-old Schloss, who's been missing since Aug. 3 and whom they believe to be dead. Wade, they said, lived for some time in a house next door to hers on Cutty Sark Street in South Anchorage.

Shane Phillips, Wade's roommate there, said Wade moved in only about two weeks before Schloss disappeared. He was quiet, a talented artist who kept to himself, mostly watching TV and listening to rap music, Phillips said. When he talked at all, it was usually to complain about work.

Phillips' lawyer, Rex Butler, said the teenager is a good kid who hasn't done anything wrong. "Shane has been caught in the center of a storm because of Josh's baggage," he said.

Though Phillips had never met Wade until he moved in and knew nothing of his past, their fathers knew each other. Phillips, 18, said his mother thought the older Wade would be a mature influence on Phillips and another teenager who was also staying in the home.

Phillips said a small group of his friends were at the house on Aug. 3, the last day Schloss was seen. Wade spent that night in his room, alone, Phillips said. Wade was scheduled to work the next day, Saturday, but Phillips doesn't know if he did.

On Sunday, Phillips saw Wade again and noticed nothing out of the ordinary about him, he said.

Phillips described Schloss as "a really nice lady" and said it never crossed his mind that Wade could be involved in her disappearance until Aug. 18, when detectives knocked on the door with a search warrant. Wade had left only about six hours earlier, he said.

One of the items police seized was a winter jacket of Wade's, in which they found an ATM receipt from Schloss' bank card.

Police say Wade used the ATM card on Aug. 5, two days after she was last seen, and again on Aug. 6, both times withdrawing the maximum allowed $500. They also said his DNA was detected on the steering wheel of Schloss' car, which was found Aug. 9.

FBI agents also are looking for Wade, who has been charged in federal court with several fraud crimes linked to his use of her ATM card.

A woman who lived with Wade off and on over the last two years petitioned an Anchorage court in April 2005 to order him to stay away from her.

"On the evening of April 6, 2005, Josh held me against the bathroom closet door, using his fist punching the door, leaving 2 holes," Ruth E. Andrews wrote in papers asking for the protective order.

Andrews, who was 42 at the time, 17 years older than Wade, claimed Wade broke her phone, stole things from her and destroyed property.

The court ordered him to stay away from her for 20 days. Four days after filing the petition, however, she told the court Wade was out of her life and that his personal items had been removed from her house.

"He is not a threat to me," she wrote.

Four months later, Wade and Andrews applied for a marriage license, according to public records. Attempts to reach Andrews on Thursday were unsuccessful.

In early February this year, Wade got a job as a dish washer and janitor at The Bradley House, a restaurant on Old Seward Highway. He did his work well enough, owner Bernadette Bradley said Thursday.

Neither Bradley, the chef who hired Wade nor any of the staff knew of Wade's past, Bradley said.

Soon after he got that job, Andrews was back in court seeking another protective order. She said that they were living together and that Wade was roughing her up and "throwing me around when I asked him to leave," court records say. "Josh exhibits his bad temper."

Sometime around the middle of March, Wade quit his job at the restaurant, Bradley said. He told her he had found a better job at the Cattle Company, a Midtown restaurant.

Contacted Thursday evening, a manager at the Cattle Company referred questions to corporate offices in California, which were closed.

While living on Cutty Sark, Wade got a job with Diamond Masonry, an Anchorage company. He was employed as a hod carrier, mixing and moving mortar for the bricklayers, said Bryan Aafedt, a company foreman and owner.

"I shook his hand once," Aafedt said. "He was a nice kid. I saw him for all of 30 seconds."

Aafedt said Wade worked a week or maybe two. During that time, the company may have worked on 30 jobs at various locations.

At some point, word got around that Wade had a criminal past and an association to a brutal murder, and then a day or two after that, he stopped showing up for work, Aafedt said.

Some of Wade's friends also worked at Diamond Masonry and still do, he said. Police have come to work sites several times to interview employees about him, Aafedt said.

"Police have talked to them 50 times," he said.

Despite the police focus, Wade's friends refused to believe he had anything to do with Schloss' disappearance, according to Aafedt.

That is, until the news broke Wednesday that authorities now say Wade used her ATM card and left traces of his DNA in her car.

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Find Peter Porco online at adn.com/contact/pporco or call 257-4582. Find Megan Holland at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.