Sunday, July 6, 2008
Decade of Doubt
John Hartmanâs 1997 murder remains divisive for the Interior
CONTENT WARNING
This series contains references to vulgar language and violent acts that may be objectionable to some readers and that parents may find inappropriate for their children.Editorâs note: This series is the product of a six-year investigation by former Daily News-Miner reporter Brian OâDonoghue and his journalism students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with support from the News-Miner. Part one of seven.

Court officer Cheryl Jasper, bottom left, escorts the four men accused of killing John Hartman into Fairbanks Superior Court for their arraignment in October 1997. From left are Eugene Vent, George Frese, Marvin Roberts and Kevin Peas
The victimâs waist straddled Ninth Avenueâs curb. His head rested on the pavement.
âLook, look,â cried the front passenger of the approaching Cutlass that Saturday, 0ct. 11, 1997.
The time was about 2:45 a.m.
âThereâs a little boy.â
Drawing closer, the driver noticed puffs of breath rising in the early morning chill. The youngster looked bruised and battered but alive.
The woman who first spied him began getting out. Friends stopped her; what if those responsible were still around?
The group roared off seeking help.

John Hartman, a linebacker for the cityâs youth league Redskins, had ambitions of landing a college foot-ball scholarship, according to friends, before his murder in October 1997.
Police swiftly arrested four suspects. Marvin Roberts, Eugene Vent, George Frese and Kevin Pease stood trial and were convicted in 1999. They are serving prison sentences ranging from 33 to 79 years for the teenagerâs slaying.
A decade after Hartmanâs murder, Alaska courts still wrestle with the case. The Alaska Supreme Court has agreed to review Peaseâs conviction. This week, a lower court is scheduled to hear Ventâs claims of new evidence.
Procedural issues dominate these ongoing court reviews.
Itâs the larger questions about the integrity of the system that trouble Athabascans tied by family and heritage to three of the convicted men.

The late Shirley Demientieff leads 2003 protest march in support of the four men convicted of murdering John Hartman in October 1997.
âWe call forth and challenge the legal community and the institutions to revisit this case,â said Jerry Isaac, president of Tanana Chiefs Conference, speaking this March at a rally supporting the men convicted of Hartmanâs murder. The chief executive of the Interiorâs largest Native nonprofit corporation criticized the prosecutionâs use of âquestionable evidence.â
Don Honea, ceremonial chief of more than 40 Interior villages, is characteristically blunt about the message he and others see delivered in the Hartman verdicts. âThose boys were railroaded,â he said, adding that Natives feel âthey donât have a chance if they go against the white system.â
Fairbanks Police Chief Dan Hoffman counters by noting that Pease, who isnât Alaska Native, received what amounts to a life sentence. âThat defendant was treated no better, or no worse,â the chief said last spring.
For his part, chief prosecutor Jeff OâBryant draws confidence from the collective nature of those verdicts, which stemmed from not one but a series of trials. âThirty-six different people, looking at all the evidence â three different times,â OâBryant said in an interview several years ago. âBasically, arguably, coming to the same general conclusion.â
This seven-part series offers no proof of guilt or innocence. It does document gaps in the police investigation that raise questions about the victimâs last conscious hours. It points out that the group convicted of the teenâs murder may have been prosecuted with forms of evidence identified later in national studies as contributing to some wrongful prosecutions elsewhere. And it shows how rulings from this stateâs courts have undermined Alaska Native confidence in the justice system by keeping juries from weighing all thatâs known about the crime.

Attorney Dick Madson addresses the Alaska Court of Appeals on May 6, 2003, in the Rabinowitz Courthouse in Fairbanks. Madson failed to persuade the panel that his client, Marvin Roberts, deserves a new trial. From left are Judge David Mannheimer, Chief Judge Robert Coats and Judge David Stewart.
Among the seriesâ observations:
- The police investigation remained focused on suspects flagged through a pair of confessions, subsequently retracted, despite lab tests that yielded no supporting evidence.
- Jurors remained unaware that state crime lab experts couldnât match Freseâs boots with photos of Hartmanâs bruises. Though it bore the labâs logo, the suggestive exhibit presented at trial was a non-scientific photo overlay assembled by police and the district attorney. Recent studies have shown that evidence lacking forensic merit often figures in convictions that are later overturned.
- Detectives referred to fictitious evidence throughout the interrogations that yielded confessions from Vent and Frese. Employing such trickery on suspects who profess no memory of a crime, while standard practice in 1997, today draws specific cautions in the nationâs standard-setting criminal interrogation manual. The revisions reflect lessons learned from re-examining tactics used in obtaining confessions later proven false in cases that sent innocent people to jail.
- The stateâs case strongly relied upon identifications made by an eyewitness standing 550 feet from a robbery. The distance raises the possibility of witness misidentification, which has emerged as the leading common denominator among hundreds of errant murder and rape convictions.
- Police paid scant attention to the last person known to have been with Hartman. Chris Stone, a 14-year-old self-described methamphetamine addict, had been hospitalized following a similar assault only weeks prior. And jurors never heard about Stoneâs attention-getting entrance into Carrs-Foodland about the time Hartman lay dying in the street. Also, no one involved in the Hartman case had access to Stoneâs sworn statement, sealed in an unrelated juvenile proceeding, suggesting, under one interpretation, awareness of his friendâs plight.

Above, supporters of the four convicted men rally Oct. 12, 2007, in front of the Rabinowitz Courthouse to bring continued attention to the 10-year-old case of four young men found guilty of beating 15-year-old John Hartman to death. Many people continue to voice the innocence of the four men.
All of this has contributed, in the eyes of many, to a decade of doubt.
Swift arrests, shaken spirits
Two days after Hartmanâs fatal beating at Ninth Avenue and Barnette Street, four current and former basketball players from Howard Luke Academy, a predominantly Alaska Native alternative high school that has since closed, faced murder charges. Bail was set at $1 million apiece for 20-year-old Frese, 17-year-old Vent, and Pease and Roberts, both 19.
At a news conference that day, Fairbanks Police Lt. Paul Keller explained that detectives had statements from two of the young men acknowledging their own roles in Hartmanâs death and implicating the others. âAfter the physical assault, he was sexually assaulted,â the detective said.
Police hadnât found ties between the suspects and the victim or determined any motive for the crime. Keller characterized the murder as an act of ârandom street violence.â
Prior to the crime, locals drew a sense of security from the Interiorâs daunting winters and relative isolation. Savagery of this sort was more commonly associated with Los Angeles, New York and other major population centers. Most perceived Fairbanks and its surrounding urban community of roughly 52,000 as fundamentally different, a special place united by shared hardships and rooted in a self-reliant frontier heritage.

At right, Don Honea, a Ruby elder and ceremonial chief of more than 40 Interior villages, vents frustration to reporters following the 2003 appellate hearing in Fairbanks. Honea contends white suspects would never have been convicted on such evidence.
Hartmanâs brutal murder downtown prompted civic leaders to convene a rare town meeting. âIâm not satisfied to live in a community where someone cannot walk down the street without getting assaulted or killed,â then-Borough Mayor Jim Sampson declared.
Local officials caught an earful.
âYouâre ruining the most beautiful place Iâve ever been to,â said Southside resident Jada Humphrey, chastising authorities for not confronting violence sooner.
âGod help you people if something happens to my daughter in this town ⊠because youâve done nothing.â
Speaking on behalf of the police, Lt. James Welch asked for the larger communityâs help. âIâm not asking for people to be vigilantes,â he said. âIâm asking for people to get together.â
Native activist Shirley Demientieff challenged others to join community policing efforts. She also announced plans for a candlelight walk, honoring all victims of violence. The route she proposed â starting at the hall where the suspects were among those attending a Native wedding reception and ending at the intersection where the white victim lay dying â aimed at diffusing racial tensions heightened by the crime.
Being Athabascan, Roberts, Vent and Frese possessed family scattered up and down the Yukon River. That kindled regional interest in the Hartman case.
âWhat happened to âinnocent until proven guilty?ââ wrote Carla K. Bonny, a non-Native resident of Tanana, in a letter published in the Daily News-Miner two weeks after the arrests. Like many others in her Yukon River village, she was sure there was more to the story. âSuch violence sickens everyone I know in this village,â she wrote. âBut none of us know what happened that night, and wonât know until evidence is presented at trial.â
Others rendered swift judgment.
âAs for Hartmanâs assailants,â Jackie Dupree of Fairbanks wrote the editor that same week, âI say let the punishment fit the crime. This incident represents a good argument for the death penalty.â
Opinions harden
Clad in orange jail suits and handcuffed to their waists by chains, the four suspects shuffled past TV cameras into the courtroom for arraignment on Oct. 21 1997. A defense attorney blasted the chains as âgrandstandingâ and âprejudicial,â but they remained in place. The security stemmed from the âhigh-risk personsâ involved, the officer heading the detail said, protecting against violence or escape attempts.
Three of the accused relied on public defenders. Roberts, too, came from a family of limited means, but friends and relatives in Tanana and Ruby rallied to his support. The villages raised $10,000 in a single weekend and retained Dick Madson, a local defense attorney best known for representing Exxon Valdez skipper Joe Hazelwood.
Legal battles raged through the winter of 1997, into summer, and through the following winter.
In February 1998, indictments were dismissed against three of the four suspects because the district attorney failed to inform grand jurors of potential alibis.
Only Roberts ever made bail. While that was short-lived, the prospect of accused murderers walking freely about town sparked more outrage.
âWell, Fairbanks, Alaska, looks like open season,â wrote Mary Carter in a letter to the editor. âWe are truly savages now. We can roam the streets raping and beating men, women, girls, boys â doesnât matter, whichever you prefer is fair game.â
Describing herself as âembarrassed with Alaskaâs justice system,â the Healy resident said it was âtoo badâ the victim couldnât have another 24 hours with his mom.
Comments of that sort offended supporters of the men accused.
âWe arenât some Third World country where you can be locked up on a whim,â fired back Fairbanks letter-writer Adrienne Grimes, a former classmate of the suspects. âWould you like to know what horrifies me? Itâs the judgmental way in which my fellow citizens are behaving.â
The dismissals were still being processed when a grand jury charged Frese with another felony stemming from an incident two weeks prior to Hartmanâs murder. Several tourists said he had pulled a gun on them during a confrontation near the Westmark Hotel. His friend Pease provoked it, they said, by spewing vulgarities at women in the group. When one of the men in the group gave chase, Frese allegedly rolled up on a bicycle and pointed a pistol at the irate touristâs head.
At the time, police questioned others they picked up near the hotel but made no arrests. Three weeks later one of the Westmark tourists notified police he recognized Frese and Pease in news coverage of the murder case. Only Frese was charged.
In summer 1998, a pair of juries took turns with the Westmark case. The first trial ended when a juror locked himself in a bathroom rather than continue deliberating. The juror told the News-Miner he felt the tourists conspired against the murder suspect.
Tried a second time, Frese was found guilty and received two years in prison. âI look into your eyes and see a truly troubled young man,â Judge Ralph Beistline observed during sentencing.
Frese offered no apology. âJust because I was convicted of this doesnât mean I did it,â he said of the Westmark incident.
Meanwhile, preliminary arguments about the Hartman case reached the Alaska Supreme Court. Indictments were reinstated, a victory for the state. The defense, likewise, prevailed when courts suppressed portions of both confessions. Every development commanded headlines. Lacking fresh images, local broadcast updates inevitably featured aging file video of the Hartman suspects wearing those chains.
In November 1998, Superior Court Judge Niesje Steinkruger began selecting a jury for Freseâs murder trial. He would be the first Hartman suspect prosecuted.
Ninety-eight jurors were called; more than 40 were excused for possessing âsubstantial knowledgeâ about the case. By the fourth day, a jury and alternate were seated, but the judge remained doubtful.
Citing the possibility of âhidden prejudice,â Steinkruger dismissed the panel and ordered the Frese trial moved to Anchorage, 350 miles south.
Changing venue to ensure fairness in a Fairbanks criminal proceeding hadnât been necessary in more than 20 years. The prosecutor protested, lamenting the expense associated with transporting and housing witnesses and court personnel so far away. But Steinkrugerâs ruling stood.
In February 1999, she presided as Frese was tried and convicted by an Anchorage jury.
Judge Ben Esch took the gavel for Ventâs trial that July, followed by Roberts and Pease. All were found guilty by jurors from Alaskaâs largest city. All maintained their innocence at sentencing in February 2000.
âIâm a scapegoat for officers of the law,â said Pease, who portrayed himself as wronged by the system.
Citing Peaseâs extensive and violent juvenile record, escalating from armed robbery at the age of 16, Judge Esch handed him 79 years. âItâs a question of when the homicide was going to occur,â he told Pease, ânot if.â
Mounting Discontent

John Hartmanâs mother, Evalyn Thomas, right, listens at an Alaska Superior Court hearing in February 1998, after testifying that she did not think the four men accused of murdering her son in October 1997 should be allowed out on bail.
In May 2003, the stateâs three-member Court of Appeals convened for the first time ever in Fairbanks. The hearing concerned Robertsâ application for another
trial based on emerging information about Hartmanâs companion Stone and post-trial retractions from Arlo Olson, another prosecution witness.
Madson, all but officially retired, continued to represent the man he described as, perhaps, his only âabsolutely, totally, 100 percent innocent clientâ in 40 years as a defense attorney.
By then, simmering anger over the Hartman verdicts found expression in sporadic protest marches and in annual resolutions from village and regional tribal groups, most notably Tanana Chiefs Conference, the nonprofit social service provider serving more than 40 Interior Alaska villages.
As early as 1999, the tribal council of Tanana took stands supporting hometown favorite Roberts. The council initially called for âunbiased justiceâ through a better police investigation. By 2001, hardening attitudes colored resolutions from village and regional Native organizations. âThe racist attitude prevalent in Alaskaâs legal, judicial and public communities created a true conspiracy that has deprived these young men of their freedom ...,â stated TCC Resolution 2001-39, requesting a federal racism inquiry.
Mixing in the hallway after that 2003 appellate hearing, supporters of the Hartman defendants compared impressions, drawing hope, or despair, from the justicesâ vocal tones and facial expressions.
Native elder Honea, who had flown in from Ruby for the hearing, cut to the chase.
âMost of the people down there,â he said, âthey think that if it had been all white boys doing this â they would have got off.â
Chief Hoffman, a patrol sergeant at the time of Hartmanâs murder, had little direct involvement in the investigation. While he declined to discuss specifics of a case he termed arguably âthe most notorious in Fairbanks history,â the chief acknowledged last spring that the murder and its aftermath pose challenges for a department striving to build confidence among the entire Fairbanks citizenry.
âThe fact that three out of four of the defendants were Alaska Natives tended to generate a lot of questioning along those lines,â he said.
Hoffman largely devoted his first year as chief to preparing for the influx of some 3,000 delegates to the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention, which was coming back to Fairbanks after a lengthy absence. And it paid off. Not a single report of âserious victimizationâ marred the delegatesâ weeklong gathering at the Carlson Center in 2005. The supportive local police presence contributed to the organizationâs return to Fairbanks in 2007.
Even as the chief personally extended a hand in 2005, the Hartman case intruded.
âThese children are innocent,â declared Demientieff, the Fairbanks Native activist, who was leading a lunch-hour protest outside the conventionâs main door. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű two dozen picketers slowly circled her, parting the flow of delegates in and out of AFNâs convention. Most carried hand-lettered signs. âRetrial: Yes!â proclaimed one. âAlaska Natives Standing Up for Justice,â read another.
âWe come from all walks of life and we believe in them,â shouted Demientieff, referring to the group convicted in the Hartman case.
The chief, who was related to the late activist by marriage, paused to talk.
âOh Dan,â he recalled Demientieff saying, as she often did at such times. âThis isnât directed at you.â
Hoffman didnât take offense. He and Demientieff, who died in January 2007 of lung cancer, had their differences over the Hartman verdicts. But the pair werenât far apart concerning whatâs best for their town.
âHow can I fault someone,â he said last spring, âfor wanting to stand up and say, âLetâs make sure weâre all on an even footing here. Letâs make sure justice is indeed done fair, straight, and across the board.ââ
It isnât unusual for courts to take years digesting fundamental questions about evidence, interrogation practices and the reliability of witnesses, all of which are present in the Hartman case. The agitation outside the courtroom distinguishes this case. That can be traced to Roberts, whose character inspires faith among those who know him.
He owned the car police say was used in the crime.
Itâs also Roberts, alone among the defendants, who professes to have a time-referenced alibi.
Thatâs the nugget many find hard to overlook.
Tomorrow:
Brian OâDonoghue is a UAF assistant professor of journalism. Former students Sean Bledsoe, Rachel Dutil, Gary Moore and Nate Raymond contributed to this report.

In fall 1997, Gerry Roberts took this riverboat, shown outside his home in Tanana in 2004, down the Yukon River on an extended moose hunting trip with his 19-year-old son, Marvin. Within days of that trip, Marvin Roberts faced murder charges in Fairbanks.
Same streets, different lanes
Paths tragically cross
That Friday in October 1997 held promise for John Hartman. The 15-year-old and his new sweetheart planned to exchange gifts during her morning class break.
Marvin Roberts, 19, entered the weekend renewed by a traditional hunting trip with the father he hadnât known, a welcome, if temporary, escape from the choices confronting a disappointed scholar.
Arlo Olson, 20, then visiting from Kaltag, his Yukon River village, began partying mid-afternoon with a cousin attending the șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. The cousins shared a pot pipe with friends in the bushes behind Lola Tilly Commons.
Hartman, Roberts and Olson â three young Alaskans embracing adult freedoms.
All were about to collide through a life-shattering crime â the first, murdered for no apparent cause; the second, jailed and convicted with three others in the slaying; the third, destined for the misery that dogs life as a reputed snitch.
Hartman and Roberts had several things in common.
Both spent good portions of their childhood in single-parent households.
Both had mothers who scraped by selling pull-tab cards.
Both came from homes occasionally rocked by alcohol-related troubles.
And while both came of age in Fairbanks, they moved in circles â one white, one Native â that seldom overlapped.
âBirthdayâ tokens
Lean and athletic, Hartman played linebacker for the Redskins, a club team in the cityâs youth league. He had suited up for the previous Arctic Bowl, where his team earned bragging rights as the league champions. âHe would try anything for us,â his coach of three years, Ken Ferringer, would later say.
The amiable teen known as âJGâ talked about landing a college football scholarship. For now, he was a âhome schooler,â according to family, making up a class he needed to complete middle school.
That fall, Hartman had become a morning fixture at the McDonaldâs restaurant on Geist Road.
Credit a girl for the restaurantâs lure.
Elishiva Corning, âShevaâ to friends, was a freshman across the street at West Valley High. Corning had a long break between classes at around 11 a.m. Most weekdays, according to friends and relatives, she and her new boyfriend got together at McDonaldâs. That Friday, Corning and Hartman planned on swapping âbirthdayâ gifts. His birthday had come in September. Hers was months away yet. No matter. The planned show of affection wasnât subject to the calendar.
Waiting for his girl, Hartman shot the breeze with Chris Stone.
Wouldnât name names

Chris Stone, a friend of John Hartmanâs, would come to play a vital part in the Hartman trial.
Chris Stone hadnât seen much class lately even though he was enrolled as a freshman at the school across the road. An assault a couple of weeks earlier had landed him in the emergency ward.
At the hospital, Stone initially said he âcouldnât remember what happened,â Trooper Richard Quinn noted in his report.
Follow-up efforts proved futile. Stone refused to cooperate, the trooper wrote, âstating that it would just happen again.â
He closed the case.
In the aftermath, Stone assured friends he was recovering, albeit in a manner no doctor would prescribe: He skipped school and hadnât been home for at least a week, relying on friends for places to crash.
Before visiting McDonaldâs that morning, Stone and another friend, Lathrop sophomore Elijah âEJâ Stephens, smoked crystal meth, a form of methamphetamine.
The drug use came as no surprise to EJâs mom.
"Yeah. It was just the newest thing, back then,â Melissa Stephens said in a 2003 interview. âThey were all trying to make it in their basements.â
Such was the life of Chris Stone, then five months past his 14th birthday.
Family exception

Ten years after the murder, Mary Reynaga has fond memories of her âguy friend,â John Hartman.
By all accounts, Hartman had more going for him.
Lathrop student Mary Reynaga got to know Hartman through a girlfriend. âHe was someone you could trust.â
Hartman and several friends were forming a band. The Sentinels was the working name, according to Trent Mueller, who figured to be the outfitâs drummer.
A true baby of the family, Hartman was the youngest of four boys. His closest siblings were twins, born five years before.
âJG, he was kind of my favorite,â said his oldest brother, Christopher âSeanâ Kelly, who shared a love of comics with the kid brother seven years his junior.
âIâd be over at someoneâs house and trade a lid of pot for a pile of comics,â he recalled in a 2004 interview. âI gave them to JG.â
Hartman shared his older brotherâs fondness for getting stoned, friends and family agree. But he reportedly shunned booze and harder drugs.
Hartmanâs mom, Evalyn Thomas, worked low-end jobs keeping a roof over her brood. For a time, sheâd managed the Yukon Quest store downtown, where JG playfully staffed the souvenir counter.
Thomasâ second marriage had dissolved a few years before in a series of domestic violence orders. Sheâd recently been arrested on a drunken-driving charge for the second time in five years.
Hartmanâs oldest brother, meanwhile, owned a lengthy criminal record. In 1995, the year Kelly turned 21, he faced, among others, felony forgery, theft and burglary charges.
JG seemed to benefit from such examples and generally steered clear of trouble.
He had a reputation as a kid more likely to calm situations than get in anybodyâs face.
âWhen he did get pissed off,â Reynaga said, âheâd just go sit quietly and steam about it. Then, heâd just be done. You know? I never saw him fight anybody.â
Explosive relationship

Arlo Olson, of Kaltag, showed promise as member of the Yukon- Koyukuk Academic Decathlon Team.
Only two years earlier, Arlo Olson had made the front pages of his Bush school districtâs yearbook pictured in coat and tie, one of two students kneeling in the front of the regionâs Academic Decathlon Team.
He came from a mixed household. His mother is Athabascan. His father, Glenn Olson, is a white teacher who advanced to superintendent of the Yukon-Koyukuk School District, overseeing 10 village schools including Arloâs K-12 school in Kaltag, a Yukon River village with fewer than 250 residents.
Drinking and a troubled relationship undercut Olsonâs youthful promise.
A drunken scuffle at a village dance in January 1996 marked the first of many episodes of domestic violence between Olson, then 18, and his younger sweetheart.
In July 1997, the young woman awakened another Kaltag household. She was intoxicated, half-naked and screamed for help. Olson showed up, punched his girlfriend, according to the criminal complaint, then grabbed âthe hair on her head and dragged her across the street back to their house.â
Charges were pending as the young couple visited Fairbanks. Olsonâs girlfriend wasnât drinking. She was pregnant.
Wore âDesert Stormâ suit
After Hartmanâs girlfriend returned to class that Friday, he and Stone ambled downtown. They visited the borough library, an outdoors store and, finally, the Five Aces pull-tab shop, where JGâs mom worked.
âI was busy. I had like eight or nine customers,â Thomas told the News-Miner later that week. âHe asked me if he could have like $5 to go to McDonaldâs at Bentley Mall.â
Thomas wasnât paying close attention, but she noticed, as a mother would, that JG wore his Desert Storm-pattern outfit, a recent birthday gift. âHe had just gotten that jacket and pants about two weeks before,â she later testified. âIt was the first time I saw him wearing it.â
She recognized Stone, though he wasnât part of her sonâs usual circle.
Thomas gave her son $5, perhaps $10. It was her understanding JG might grab a bite to eat and then head back across town for a babysitting job. Heâd be spending the night with John Durham, a friend who lived in that area.
Caught between cultures
Roberts, like many contemporary Athabascans, grew up calling two very different communities home.
Marvin was 2 and his sister, Sharon, 6, when Hazel and Gerry Roberts split up. She and the kids left Tanana, a village of just more than 200 residents, mostly Native, located where its namesake river flows into the Yukon.
They moved to Fairbanks.When relatives from the village werenât staying with Hazel in town, she and the kids were often visiting her sister Kathy in Tanana. Marvinâs village connection deepened the year he turned 13.
Troubled by his motherâs drinking in Fairbanks, he moved in with his religious, tea-drinking auntie.
That fall he attended Tananaâs K-12 school.
By then, Gerry Roberts was busy raising another family, distancing the teenager from his dad though both were again living in the same village.
Hazel Roberts cleaned up her act, and Marvin returned home to finish high school at Howard Luke Academy. It was an alternative school, smaller than Fairbanksâ other high schools, and boasted the districtâs largest percentage of Alaska Native students.
The setting suited Marvin, who earned recognition as a News-Miner âstudent achieverâ in May 1996.
âMarvin Roberts plans to make a couple of million dollars,â stated the article, which cited the influence of âThe Count of Monte Cristo,â his favorite book. âIt shows how anybody in the pits can get to the top of the world,â Roberts told the reporter.
Along with studying business, Roberts said he planned to learn Japanese, âbecause it would open up so many possibilities for me after college.â
The article described Robertsâ involvement in a Native dance groupâs performance at a gubernatorial ball. It noted he was co-captain of the schoolâs basketball team.
Home video from that yearâs graduation ceremony shows Roberts grinning as he was summoned for the salutatorianâs speech. He rose from a folding chair attired in dark gown, cap and dangling tassel. A gold sash circled his neck, attesting to his academic success. Taking the podium, he bantered with Tisha Simmons, a girl in a wheelchair who narrowly out-pointed him for class valedictory honors.
Mirth faded as Roberts solemnly faced the crowd.
In a firm, practiced voice, he praised the schoolâs teachers for instilling the tools necessary for success. He thanked his mom.
Then he touched upon the hazards ahead.
âEvery choice we make is important,â he said, surveying his classmates, âbecause it often determines what our future pathway will be.â
Roberts left the graduation stage to applause. His stride and rolling shoulders conveyed relief and a bit of a swagger.
Wrong turns, missed chances

Hazel Roberts, mother of Marvin Roberts, one of the four convicted, listens to speakers during a rally Oct. 12, 2007, in front of the Rabinowitz Courthouse in Fairbanks. The rally aimed to bring continued attention to the 10-year-old case of four young men found guilty of beating 15-year-old John Hartman to death.
Not long after graduation, Roberts received an official letter â a mistake had been made. The school had miscalculated grade point averages. Roberts should have been named class valedictorian.
It meant more than bragging rights. A foundation associated with Doyon Ltd., the regional Native corporation for the Interior, awarded a $500 scholarship to the valedictorian of the academy named for an esteemed Athabascan elder.
When Roberts and his mother inquired about the prize, they were told it was too late; the award had already been claimed.
âIt really bummed Marv out,â recalled Hazel Roberts.
In his graduation speech, Roberts had warned that life after high school might come as a âwake up call.â
He called that right.
The boy whose schoolwork garnered praise dating back to elementary school lasted a single semester at UAF. âHe wasnât ready for college,â Hazel said of her son. âHe needed a break after all those years working so hard.â
Marvin, likewise, rationalized that he simply needed time off.
A year later, Roberts hadnât gone back.
And heâd given up his job as a youth guide with The Riverboat Discovery tourism operation.
He had enjoyed explaining trapping, fish wheels and other aspects of life in Interior villages.
But Marvin couldnât pass up his Uncle Patâs offer to fight wildfires with the crew out of Ruby, a smaller village perched on a sunny bluff about 120 miles downriver from Tanana.
Drawing on the pay earned chasing sparks and eating smoke, Roberts invested in new clothes, complete with designer shades. He got ahead on payments for the Dodge Shadow parked outside his motherâs home in South Fairbanks.
That fall, Roberts called his father out of the blue and asked to go hunting.
In a 20-foot open riverboat, propelled by a 45-horsepower kicker, father and son followed the big river 270 miles downstream to the village of Koyukuk, then upstream another 120 miles on a tributary.
Not long after graduation, Roberts ingrained through a lifetime threading logjams and the Yukonâs braided channels. Marvin caught up on years of lessons missed reading currents, sandbars and shallows. Days passed as the pair stalked through forests. Nights, they warmed by a campfire.
Nearing the tripâs end, the hunters șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűed a long night on the river. Their moose-laden boat had become stuck on a sandbar within sight of village lights.
Even that annoyance suited Marvin.
He got to know his dad.
Hurtling toward each other
Later that afternoon Hartman and Stone caught a ride to Noahâs Rainbow Inn, a cheap motel located directly below the UAF campus.
Their destination was Room 244 where Stoneâs buddy, Elijah âEJâ Stephens, had the babysitting gig watching his uncleâs toddlers.
Olson and his girlfriend, meanwhile, spent the early part of the evening âemptying the refrigeratorâ at his grandfatherâs apartment in Golden Towers.
Afterward, they set out with friends for the wedding reception at the Eagles Hall.
Friday marked Robertsâ second day back from the hunting trip.
His friend Dan Huntington called, suggesting they check out the reception. Everyone would be there. Roberts offered to drive.
Huntington had called from an apartment in Birch Park, the home of a younger kid from Robertsâ old basketball team. Roberts didnât need directions to Eugene Ventâs place.
After years of sharing the same streets with nary a passing glance, young lives were about to tragically intersect.
Brian OâDonoghue is a UAF assistant professor of journalism. Former students Casey Grove, Gary Moore and Theresa Roark contributed to this report.
ABOUT âDECADE OF DOUBTâ
This seven-part series offers no proof of guilt or innocence. It does document gaps in the police investigation that raise questions about the victimâs last conscious hours. It points out that the group convicted of John Hartmanâs murder may have been prosecuted with forms of evidence identified later in national studies as contributing to some wrongful prosecutions elsewhere. And it shows how rulings from this stateâs courts have undermined Alaska Native confidence in the justice system by keeping juries from weighing all thatâs known about the crime.
Among the seriesâ observations:
- The police investigation remained focused on suspects flagged through a pair of confessions, subsequently retracted, despite lab tests that yielded no supporting evidence.
- Jurors remained unaware that state crime lab experts couldnât match Freseâs boots with photos of Hartmanâs bruises. Though it bore the labâs logo, the suggestive exhibit presented at trial was a non-scientific photo overlay assembled by police and the district attorney. Recent studies have shown that evidence lacking forensic merit often figures in convictions that are later overturned.
- Detectives referred to fictitious evidence throughout the interrogations that yielded confessions from Vent and Frese. Employing such trickery on suspects who profess no memory of a crime, while standard practice in 1997, today draws specific cautions in the nationâs standard-setting criminal interrogation manual. The revisions reflect lessons learned from re-examining tactics used obtaining confessions later proven false in cases that sent innocent people to jail.
- The stateâs case strongly relied upon identifications made by an eyewitness standing 550 feet from a robbery. The distance raises the possibility of witness misidentification, which has emerged as the leading common denominator among hundreds of errant murder and rape convictions.
- Police paid scant attention to the last person known to have been with Hartman. Chris Stone, a 14-year-old self-described methamphetamine addict, had been hospitalized following a similar assault only weeks prior. And jurors never heard about Stoneâs attention-getting entrance into Carrs-Foodland about the time Hartman lay dying in the street. Also, no one involved in the Hartman case had access to Stoneâs sworn statement, sealed in an unrelated juvenile proceeding, suggesting, under one interpretation, awareness of his friendâs plight.
All of this has contributed, in the eyes of many, to a decade of doubt.