Woman found stabbed to death in Midtown sanctuary

Family and friends of Brittni Giliam became concerned Tuesday evening and went looking for her after she was gone for longer than expected, according to Anchorage police Lt. Dave Parker. They called police around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday after they found her body in the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary, a park between 36th Avenue and Tudor Road on the east side of the Seward Highway. She had been stabbed in the chest, police said.

Police have not ruled out suicide, Parker said. Homicide detectives are investigating, he said. The medical examiner is performing an autopsy. Parker would not say whether a weapon had been found at the scene.

Ken Lambertsen, a bishop at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that she attended, said Giliam lived with her family in South Anchorage but she and a roommate were housesitting on Helvetia Drive in the Geneva Woods neighborhood. The house backs up to the McDowell Sanctuary, a swampy wooded area with a small pond. Giliam and friends hiked Mount Baldy around dinner time Tuesday and she returned to the Geneva Woods home around 10:30 p.m. Afterward, she went for a walk. Evening walks were common for her, Lambertsen said.

When Giliam didn't return home, her roommate got concerned and called her father. The two of them found Giliam's body in McDowell Sanctuary.

On Wednesday morning, the trail to the McDowell pond was quiet. Near a pond viewpoint, a small piece of police caution tape remained from the night's investigation.

Giliam worked at The Alaska Spine Institute and, according to her blog, often rode her bike on a trail through the sanctuary on her way home from work.

She graduated from East High School in 2005. Giliam attended Brigham Young University but hadn't completed her degree there, Lambertsen said. She planned to start studying aromatherapy in the fall.

Giliam loved to travel, Lambertsen said. She visited Australia, South America, Europe, Fiji and Mexico, he said, trekking and doing volunteer work.

"She had an endless supply of friends who loved hanging out with her and she loved hanging out with them," he said. "You could not say enough good about Brittni Giliam. You just can't say enough. There was a purity about her that was just beyond belief."

East High track coach Lisa Keller kept in touch with Giliam after high school. She described Giliam as sweet and uncommonly thoughtful.

"She thought very deeply about things and was very sensitive," she said. "She wasn't a surface person at all. She was a deep kid."

Keller ran into Giliam just a few weeks ago. Keller said she seemed upbeat. Giliam had a large, involved, very active family, Keller said.

"You always have kids when you coach that stick with you. She was one of those kids," Keller said.

On a blog she kept, Giliam often wrote about her religion and family. She shared photos of hiking in Alaska and Australian beaches from a study abroad program she attended. She shared a muffin recipe.

In her last entry on Monday, she wrote about the sanctuary, posting a picture taken near the place where her body was found:

"Life always comes around full circle. Always," she wrote. "Everyday on my bike ride home from work, I stop at a bird sanctuary down the street from my house. It's a place where I unwind, reflect, and seek for peace."

She ended the blog post with a picture of her favorite flower, a forget-me-not.

Find Kaylin Bettinger online at adn.com/contact/kbettinger or call her at 257-4349. Reporters Kyle Hopkins and Julia O'Malley contributed to this story.