Alaska’s unsavory personalities brought to life for an eighth straight year at ‘Cemetery Stories’

The dead came to life last Sunday evening as local actors dressed in period-appropriate costume portrayed the lives of notorious Alaskans buried at the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.

It was the 8th annual presentation by The Cemetery Players Theatre Group – an Anchorage-based group led by Audrey and Bruce Kelly – which works with the Pioneers of Alaska-Anchorage and local actors to present the checkered, cheeky, colorful and often comical lives of infamous Last Frontier folks buried at the park cemetery.

Audrey portrayed Muriel Pfeil born in 1899 arriving in Anchorage in 1925 as a schoolteacher. She rose to the role of principal before leaving her teaching career behind to marry Emil Pfeil.

“A woman was expected to quit teaching once she got married. It was just the way it was,” she said while seated in an older wooden chair wearing a black dress typical of a widow’s mourning with a white color and a cameo pin. She clutched a photo of the family members whose loss she lamented to the gathered crowd.

Hers first was the tale of happy young couple raising three children that became achieving adults.

But then Emil died in a horrific plane crash on Lake Spenard in 1954. Years later, Muriel, the couple’s youngest daughter named after her mother, returned from her job on the East Coast to be closer to her widowed mother. She opened a travel agency renting space from Anchorage real estate mogul, Neil Mackay. The two married in 1968, but as Audrey’s version of the older Muriel said Sunday night, “I knew that wasn’t a happy marriage.”

But in 1973 grandson, Scotty, was born and Muriel thought, “now with a baby, maybe it would make things better.”

It didn’t.

Two years later, a divorce preceded a nasty custody battle.

Muriel (the daughter) got custody.

Yet something about Mackay left the daughter uneasy.

“She always told us that if something should happen to make sure that her brother got custody of Scotty,” Audrey playing Muriel said. “None of us expected what happened in 1976.”

On a September morning, the divorced mother went to work as usual. At the end of the day, when she turned the key to start her car, a bomb exploded and killed her instantly.

Mackay was the prime suspect. It was a sensational case. But guilt was never proven and Mackay’s visitation rights with Scotty continued.

During one court-approved visitation, he did not return Scotty to his mother’s family. The young child was missing for weeks. As it turned out, Mackay had taken him to the Marshall Islands.

Another custody battle ensued and Mackay won. He took five-year-old Scotty from his grandmother and uncle to live in Hawaii. But the court sided against Mackay in terms of who would foot the $142,000 legal bill.

“I knew that wouldn’t sit well with him either,” Audrey, playing Muriel, said. “But I had no idea the depths of his anger nor that he would take it out on my son.”

Robert was driving home from work in 1988 when a car pulled alongside him and five shots were fired at him. He fought for his life for weeks but ultimately died.

Two trials occurred: The first ended in a mistrial; the second in acquittal.

Mackay died in 1994 and Scotty briefly returned to Anchorage.

The elder Muriel lived to 101 dying in 2001.

“I thought about them every day: Emil, Robert, little Muriel and Scotty,” Audrey, playing the elder Muriel, said. “I had hoped that during my lifetime justice would be served; that Mackay would be held accountable. I guess that is what the after-life is for.”

Then Audrey clutched an oval photo frame gazing longingly and lovingly at it as the gathered audience broke into applause.

Such went the evening as hundreds of cemetery visitors walked from gravesite to gravesite where local actors presented the oral stories of the dead in a theatrical format known as “breaking the fourth wall” in which actresses and actors interact directly with the audience.

Such was the case as actor Nate Benson played Dick Francis near the graves of Frank and Helena Jenkins.

All three were miners near Talkeetna and major players in the Cache Creek Murders in 1939.

The Jenkins’ weren’t well-liked folks, according Benson, playing Francis.

“I am actually buried over in the Masonic section of the cemetery, but I am over here because of my association with two of the most hateful, most despicable people that ever lived,” Benson playing Francis said.

As he retold the tale of how the Jenkins couple unsuccessfully sued him for contaminating their hydraulic-powered gold claim site with waste running from his that was upstream from his pick ax operation, Benson jumped at the gathered crowd demonstrating how Helena fought a group of drunken miners in a bar.

The Jenkins couple and one of their hired hands were later found beaten and dead. Francis was the first suspect, but he was found dead in his cabin with a bullet in his head and a pistol in his hand.

The murders made national headlines with investigators from the FBI office in Juneau taking first crack at solving it. Later, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI in Washington, D.C., took interest in the case and sent a special set of investigators to what was then considered remote Alaska.

Of course, there are many more details but the story ends with two caveats: Upon further medical investigation, it was discovered there were two bullets in Francis’ head.

“Now you tell me how I could have done that,” Benson playing Francis asked the crowd Sunday night.

The second wrinkle that perhaps would relieve Francis of the guilt of the murder of the Jenkins couple is that another man by the name of John Clark, who had been snooping around town highly interested in the daily workings of the Jenkins’ gold claims, was spotted hauling a very, very large bag that he was struggling to move on his own but refused to accept any help in doing so.

“Now, we all conservatively estimated that the Jenkins hauled 6,000 ounces of gold out that season,” Benson playing Francis said. “But when the officials went to check their cache, they found only 200.”

He went to say that since he’s been “hanging out” at the cemetery, he’s picked up some newfangled lingo.

Something about a cold case.

He is told that means someone reopens an investigation to find out what really happened.

“I sure hope someone does that for me sometime,” Benson playing Francis said. “I sure would like to have my name cleared and be able to finally ‘rest in peace.’”

Other stories told included that of Corrine Green, an orphan from Yakima, Washington, whom at age 29 left her son with her aunt when Green went “north” to start a brothel in Anchorage.

Played by Shae-Lisa Anderson, Green didn’t skirt the issue that leaders of the newly-developed railroad industry forbade its workers from indulging in drinking and gambling, but had no problem with supporting the “world’s oldest profession” by officially establishing a red-light district in downtown.

“We all got along just fine,” she said with a wink.

Not all residents of the burgeoning town appreciated the brothels.

Families complained that children were being bothered on their way to school.

“A meeting was called and the citizens told the police chief to enforce the law,” Anderson playing Green said with a knowing smile and a little chuckle. “Well, Mr. Sturgus (the police chief) was shot a couple days later.”

The gathered crowd giggled as Anderson playing Green continued her story.

Much to her own surprise, Green fell in love – with a soldier.

The two married and the infamous madam was upstaged at her own wedding as her groom chose for his best man his boyhood pal from Detroit: Joe Louis, the heavyweight champ, known as the Brown Bomber.

Happily married, she became a “respectable” woman.

“Oh, I do like that word, ‘respectable,’” Anderson, playing Green, said.

In 1950 at just age 50, Green had a heart attack and died in her home.

“All my life, I was always told that there wasn’t anything more desirable than a reformed, well, you know,” Anderson playing Green said as she batted her eyes and looked playfully at the crowd. “Well, good night.”

Stories at the Cemetery is scheduled for yet another presentation his summer on Aug. 12 at 6 p.m. This time the event will be presented in one location on stage instead of having attendees roam the cemetery from grave to grave.

People are encouraged to bring their chair for the event.

“We opted for a stage presentation in August so that people who might have a difficult time walking around the cemetery can still enjoy hearing these fascinating stories,” said Audrey as herself.

Contact Audrey or Bruce Kelly via email at: abkelly@alaska.net.

Learn more about the Pioneers of Alaska-Anchorage online at: www.pioneersofalaskaanchorage.org.