Anchorage Daily News

The body of another man was found near an illegal campsite in an Anchorage park Sunday, and this time police say it looks as though foul play may have been involved.

The man's body was found on or in a sleeping bag behind softball and soccer fields in city-owned Centennial Park in Northeast Muldoon.

The bodies of seven other men have been found along trails or in wooded areas in Anchorage since early May. Police said none of those deaths appeared to have been the result of foul play, and most appeared to be related at least in part to alcohol or drug abuse.

With officers working a large crime scene cordoned off behind and around Centennial's athletic fields early Sunday evening, Detective Slav Markiewicz said it was not clear how the latest victim died.

"What we can say is that the appearance of the body and the evidence around suggests there may have been foul play involved," Markiewicz said. "In cases like that, we err on the side of caution. ... We treat it as a homicide until we can prove otherwise."

Detectives will know more after an autopsy and a medical examiner is able to establish a definite cause of death, he said.

Police received a report of the latest body at about 11:45 a.m. Sunday, according to APD spokesman Lt. Dave Parker.

Two friends of the dead man discovered the body, Parker and Markiewicz said.

Jimmie Hartley, who is without a roof himself and living out of his truck, said they asked him to call police on his cell phone. He did.

Police said the dead man appeared to be middle-aged, and Hartley said it looked as if he had been beaten. His eyes were blackened and there was blood on his face, Hartley said.

Markiewicz wouldn't discuss details of the corpse's appearance. He said it appears the man had been camping illegally in the park recently.

"We're still in the process of interviewing people and witnesses, but I think the victim has been seen here camping in the area," he said.

He said police were still trying to confirm the dead man's identity and contact his next of kin.

Centennial Park is a big, largely wooded tract in Northeast Muldoon. The city operates a summertime campground for paying campers in one part of the park, which also includes the soccer and softball fields, a picnic area, and about three miles of hiking trails threading through a hilly, wooded area between Muldoon's Boundary Road and the Glenn Highway.

Parker said some homeless people are known to camp illegally in the park, and Markiewicz said officers said they saw one or two tents in the woods around the athletic fields, a few hundred yards west of the area where people in travel trailers and recreational vehicles pay to camp out.

Hartley said this death and the seven others in such a brief period of time -- less than 90 days -- is unnerving and hits close to home for him. He said he worries that gangs or people who don't like Natives might be involved somehow.

"There's something to this, pal," he said.

"Right now I'm homeless. I'm living in my truck. It could have been me ...

"You miss one ... paycheck, you're on the skids. You're evicted, man, your ... bills, your car gets repossessed ... you can't eat."

Hartley said after he called 911 police dispatchers asked him to go over to check on the body. The dead man was curled up on his side, he said.

"He was my height, my weight," said Hartley, who is 54 years old and a medium-sized man.

Hartley said he used to live in the Northeast Muldoon neighborhood, and that the Centennial Park ball fields and picnic areas are popular with families late into hot summer nights, including last night.

He said he's sleeping in his truck these days but doesn't stay in Centennial. Instead, he parks in a legal area near a dump truck he also drives, he said.

Sunday morning, Hartley said he woke up early, got a cup of coffee and drove over to the park. Later he got another cup and some breakfast and sat around reading a book. He wasn't sure of the time the other two people asked him to call police, but guessed it could have been around 11:30.

Find Don Hunter online at adn.com/contact/dhunter or call 257-4349.

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