Alaska News

Federal task force says it nabbed fugitive in disguise in teen drug death

A federal fugitive task force says it arrested an Anchorage man Friday night in Peters Creek who was in disguise and on the run from federal charges related to the heroin overdose death of a 14-year-girl.

Max Raymond Jewett, 36, now is being held on two federal charges that accuse him of supplying the heroin another man is accused of injecting into the girl. He was scheduled to be in court Monday afternoon for a bail review.

Jewett was spotted leaving a residence in Peters Creek with a woman he was known to associate with, said Rochelle Liedike, deputy U.S. marshal for Alaska.

Law enforcement officers from U.S. Marshals, Alaska State Troopers and Homeland Security were stationed nearby and pulled him over, Liedike said.

He gave a fake name and looked much older than they expected, too, she said.

He had grown out his hair and painted his hair and beard gray, with Halloween-type costume paint, she said. He also had popped out his partial dentures so that his front teeth were missing, she said. "His persona was one of an older man with possibly some brain damage."

Authorities were able to identify him largely through a tattoo on his calf, she said.

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The U.S. Marshals Alaska Fugitive Task Force had been searching for Jewett since his indictment on Aug. 23. Agents have looked in Anchorage, Peters Creek and Talkeetna, Liedike said. Property records show he owns a condo in Anchorage.

A federal grand jury indicted Jewett on two charges and Sean Michael Warner on six charges. Warner also faces state charges, including manslaughter, in the girl's death though the state case will likely be dismissed while the federal charges go forward.

Both men are accused of drug trafficking conspiracy resulting in death and distribution of heroin resulting in death. Warner, who is accused of injecting 14-year-old Jena Dolstad with heroin, faces additional federal counts including other drug distribution charges and maintaining a drug house near a school. Jena died in December 2011.

Reach Lisa Demer at ldemer@adn.com or 257-4390.

By LISA DEMER

ldemer@adn.com

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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