Anchorage murderers need to wise up

This week, Anchorage media was briefly abuzz when investigators from that city’s police department traveled along the Glenn Highway near Long Lake and found human remains they say are linked to a murder in that city.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Not the first time this year, in fact.

In early April, FBI divers descended on Matanuska Lake where they recovered the body of barista Samantha Koenig, whose disappearance had riveted that city for most of the winter.

We could go down the list of remains of Anchorage murder victims found in the Valley — Mindy Schloss, Terrell Houngues, Judi Burgen — but it’s a long, depressing list we’d rather not revisit.

What is it about the Valley that makes Anchorage murderers think it is the perfect place to hide their victims?

The killer who heads south out of town is rare indeed. We can count the number we recall on one hand. Not so for killers who’ve headed north.

And it’s not a new phenomenon. After all, one of the favorite spots of Alaska’s infamous serial killer, Robert Hansen — dubbed the butcher baker — was the Knik River.

We’ve talked to investigators about this before and they are similarly baffled. But all of them seemed to indicate that whatever the killers’ motivations, it’s not the smartest of moves. Bodies deposited in the Valley seem to have a way of not staying hidden.

Maybe the criminals are just lazy. The second they see a stretch of highway without any head lights they stop and find a spot. An investigator once gave us that theory — if criminals weren’t inherently lazy, he opined, they’d be working for a living rather than stealing and doing drugs.

To us, though, the phenomenon has something in common with a story we once heard about a Valley homeowner who woke up and stepped outside one morning to find an Anchorage resident had set up camp in his driveway.

Anchorage residents seem to think that once across the Matanuska River, there’s nothing out here — just miles and miles of public land and a plethora of places no one visits, ever.

But that is not the case, and as the Valley population continues to grow, it will be even less true.

With any luck, Anchorage’s criminal element will realize this and, eventually, hikers and bicyclists won’t have to stumble upon the macabre evidence of Anchorage crimes. In fact, frankly, we’d prefer folks just stopped killing each other.

But we also realize that hoping for criminals to stop being stupid and lazy is as futile an endeavor as hoping the Matanuska winds will cease to blow.