A caretaker found his body on the living room floor surrounded by blood- spattered walls and a shattered glass coffee table. Uchitel had been dead since Sunday, police said.
An investigation turned up no signs of violence. Anchorage Police Lt. Shirley Warner said Uchitel apparently suffered a drug-induced seizure and bled from his cocaine-damaged nose before he died.
Uchitel, 44, was the founder and owner of Uchitel Construction and MultiVisions, the local cable TV company now owned by Prime Cable. But he was best known as the champion of an Alaska world's fair and a celebration of the 25th anniversary of statehood.
In the early 1980s, he socialized with politicians, newspaper publishers and wealthy business folk, energetically pushing first Expo '84 and then, when the world's fair went to New Orleans, a festival known as Alaska 1984, which never materialized. He had enough pull to make governors return his calls.
But by 1987, he had dropped from sight. An autopsy performed Tuesday showed heavy and long-term cocaine use, Warner said. The cartilage of his nose was disintegrated with traces of the drug still inside. Officers also found cocaine in the living room, she said.
Anchorage Police Department homicide detectives cordoned off the winding drive and wide sloping lawn of Uchitel's West Dimond Boulevard home Tuesday morning as they painstakingly searched for evidence, working under the assumption he was murdered.
From the road, little could be seen except a few outbuildings. Police said the main house was modest in size but expensively decorated and had a spectacular view of Turnagain Arm. A black Maserati sedan with leather upholstery and only 1,000 miles on the odometer was parked in an adjacent garage. A year-round pool was in a separate building and a Corvette was in a second garage.
Neighbors, whose homes on the bluff along West Dimond are equally expansive, said they rarely saw Uchitel. His closest neighbor to the west, Lenore Hedla, said her husband last spoke to him early in the summer when he sought their permission before building a fence on the edge of his lot.
"This is a quiet neighborhood where we tend to think the best neighbor is the one who leaves you alone, " said attorney Ed Reasor, who lives just up the hill from Uchitel. He said it was once a rural medium-income area that has attracted wealthy residents in the past few years.
Lt. Warner said Uchitel's body had many old cuts and bruises that were the apparent result of frequent falls, but the blood that was smeared and splattered on the floor and walls came from his nose.
The man who died alone, ravaged by drugs, faded from public view after publishing full-page ads in both newspapers chastising Alaska politicians, reporters, tax accountants and others for killing his dreams. But friends say that by then he was already caught in a vortex of self-destruction that few would have predicted during his heyday.
The stories Uchitel told of his success had him coming to Alaska in the early 1970s, with some but not much money from his father, a wealthy New Yorker in the nightclub business. Uchitel had a truck and started plowing driveways, including the driveway of a construction company owner, who helped him into the road-building business and the big money it brought. Soon buff and green Uchitel Construction equipment was a familiar sight around town and he remained a major presence in the construction business for a decade.
In 1979, MultiVisions, a company owned by Uchitel, his local partner and some outside investors, won the cable television franchise for Anchorage. Five years later, he sold out for an undisclosed profit estimated to be in the millions.
Capt. Tom Walker of the Anchorage Police Department said investigators learned that Uchitel lived on a monthly income of $20,000 from his investments.
At about the same time he got into the cable business, Uchitel became obsessed with the idea of staging a major international exposition in Alaska. He spoke of these plans in visionary terms, of making Alaska a communications center for the world, of building domed cities and showing the tired old places of the world how a new place was doing things right.
His first plan was to bring the 1984 World's Fair to Alaska. When that failed, Uchitel promoted a lavish party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of statehood, dubbed "Alaska 1984." He was a mesmerizing advocate for his vision and soon scores of prominent Alaskans were serving on his committees. The legislature gave him $4 million for starters, then broke his heart by rejecting a plan that filled 26 volumes.
It was the beginning of the end, friends said Tuesday.
"He had so much of himself in the Alaska 1984 project that when that fell through, something went out of Bob that never came back again, " said Kay Fanning, former publisher of The Anchorage Daily News and a close friend of the old Uchitel.
"He began to retreat from humanity at that time, " said Fanning, who now lives in Boston. "In a funny way, he felt that Alaska let him down. . . . The impression I got was of someone who had heart, who was very, very sensitive and had been very, very hurt. And of course his drug use. I never knew about that first-hand, but I heard about it from many others."
Over the past few years, many friends tried to help Uchitel break with drugs, said Pam Coates, a close friend who now lives in Seattle.
"He couldn't make his dreams happen, " Coates said. "For whatever reason, like so many other Americans, he turned to a substance that made him feel better."
Coates said she spoke to Uchitel several times over the summer. He was in bad shape, but she said she could still feel the old power.
"It's like talking to King Lear, " Coates said. "It's this man who is raving, but there was this stream of lucidity. To me he represented the brilliance of Alaska."
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