Alaska News

Prosecution says DNA points to murder suspect

A portrait of Bonnie Craig lit up a courtroom projector screen Tuesday, showing the 18-year-old college student in a floral-print dress. Her brown hair hung past her shoulders. She flashed a smile.

The teenager's face is a familiar one to longtime Anchorage residents who saw it plastered on the sides of buses and on posters after Craig's mysterious death almost 17 years ago. This week, a man named Kenneth Dion is on trial, accused of her rape and murder.

With a jury finally seated for what's expected to be a three-week trial, a cold-case prosecutor on Tuesday laid out the state's case against Dion, 41, and retold the story of a long-unsolved death that rattled Anchorage.

Craig was found dead Sept. 28, 1994. Her body was in McHugh Creek about 10 miles down the Seward Highway from where she lived in South Anchorage. Police said she'd been raped, killed and dumped off a 30-foot cliff. A medical examiner found semen inside her.

"I think the whole community was outraged when Bonnie was murdered, and they haven't forgotten," said Craig's mother, Karen Foster, at the courthouse Tuesday. "I kind of a gave up on it all.

"Thank goodness for DNA," she said.

DNA EVIDENCE

ADVERTISEMENT

In 2006, a DNA sample from Dion -- who was serving time in New Hampshire for armed robbery -- linked him to the 1994 killing.

Dion was living back in his home state after two failed marriages and a short Army career in Alaska, and the sample matched the semen found inside Craig's body, Assistant Attorney General Paul Miovas said in his opening statement to the jury.

There's a 1-in-27 quadrillion chance that the sperm is not from Dion, Miovas said.

"Quite frankly, I don't think there's going to be a dispute that's his sperm, that that's his DNA," Miovas said. "His contention is that it was a consensual encounter, that we just don't know what happened."

But when Alaska investigators questioned Dion in New Hampshire, he said he'd never seen Craig before, Miovas said.

Likewise, the girl's mother said she'd never seen or heard of Dion before he was extradited and brought to Alaska.

"Bonnie was a sweetheart. She didn't hang with people like that," Foster said.

Miovas described Craig to the jury as a hard-working freshman at the University of Alaska Anchorage who had a boyfriend attending the University of California in Berkeley. She spent late nights studying and held down a 30-hour-a-week job at Sam's Club, Miovas said.

Craig also had a morning routine, Miovas told the jury. She usually walked to a bus stop before her 7 a.m. class and rode a public bus to UAA. A man who was driving by will testify he saw her walking to the bus stop sometime after 5 a.m. on the day she died, Miovas said.

She never got on the bus.

"Unfortunately, that's the last time anybody saw Bonnie alive and saw where she was going or what she was doing," Miovas said.

BOTTOM OF A CLIFFA woman at McHugh Creek spotted the body in a pool of water about 2:15 p.m.

There were about a dozen cuts on Craig's head, including one at the base of her skull bad enough to kill her, Miovas said. An autopsy report said she couldn't have suffered the injuries simply by falling down the cliff, the prosecutor said.

"There's a leaf above the cliff with Bonnie's blood on it, one drop," Miovas said.

But after hundreds of interviews, the homicide investigation stalled, Miovas said. There was no connection to Dion until the DNA sample, he said.

Now the state has its man, Miovas told the jurors.

"You speak for Bonnie Craig, you speak for the court system, you speak even for Kenneth Dion," Miovas said, pointing to the murder defendant. "In the end, I'm going to ask you to speak the truth and hold this man guilty, because he killed Bonnie Craig."

ADVERTISEMENT

It will be the defense's turn to tell Dion's side of the story as soon as this morning.

Hints of a defense theory surfaced earlier Tuesday as Dion's attorney, Andrew Lambert, questioned potential jurors who had not yet been seated.

Lambert asked the potential jurors, one by one, if they believed a person could suffer fatal wounds from an accidental fall down a cliff. He asked if they thought a person could have injuries during consensual sex, foreplay or masturbation.

The suggestion: that Craig might not have been murdered, as police have said for years.

"If you've heard the media say for 17 years this is a murder-rape, how does that affect your thinking?" Lambert asked one potential juror.

The trial continues today before a jury of 11 men and four women, including alternates, with Lambert's opening statement followed by detailed evidence from prosecutors.

Reach Casey Grove at casey.grove@adn.com or 257-4589.

By CASEY GROVE

casey.grove@adn.com

Casey Grove

Casey Grove is a former reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. He left the ADN in 2014.

ADVERTISEMENT