Crime & Courts

Tip leads to arrests of 2 suspects in 1995 Anchorage homicide

Authorities say they have arrested two suspects in the beating death of a young man whose battered, shirtless body was found behind a Muldoon service station in November 1995.

Duwaine Price, 49, and Browne Willard III, 44, were arrested Wednesday night in Juneau, where they live, according to Anchorage District Attorney Rick Allen. A grand jury indicted them on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Jerry Dillivan, who was 25.

"They weren't known subjects here. These are guys who lived their whole lives in Juneau," Allen said. That made them hard for Anchorage police to find, even with surveillance pictures, he said.

But they did travel back and forth to Anchorage, the district attorney said.

The arrests solve a cold case and show the power of Crime Stoppers tips, Allen said.

[She went to a Girdwood festival in 1995, then disappeared. Her family is still seeking answers.]

Every few years, police have been reminding the public of the unsolved killing. "Crime Stoppers needs help finding two possible witnesses," said a notice in 1996 that described the men in detail. "It's been four years since the slaying," a notice said in 1999.

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But for most of that time, there was no fresh trail to follow.

Then someone in Juneau thought they recognized someone in the picture, Allen said. Cold case investigators followed up.

"They did a little more digging and collected more evidence and it turns out it was these two people the tipster let us know about," Allen said. "The main message is that Crime Stoppers tips work."

It was a violent death.

Someone from the Texaco station at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Muldoon Road called 911 around 7:20 a.m. Nov. 21, 1995, to report a man's body.

Investigators found he had been beaten to death. At the time, police said they collected evidence from four sites near the Texaco. They found Dillivan's shirt, bloody beer cans and two half-empty liquor bottles.

Early that morning, men bought alcohol from a nearby convenience store and paid for it with bloody money, a police sergeant said at the time.

Prosecutors said the tip combined with DNA evidence for the arrest of Price and Willard.

Price's past includes convictions for robbery, drunken driving and felony assault. Willard has convictions for disorderly conduct, drunken driving, theft and witness tampering. The men made a court appearance Thursday.

[A killer comes knocking: 1985 Anchorage murder remains unsolved]

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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