Is your car missing? It might be in Eklutna

EKLUTNA — Authorities have found about 30 abandoned cars — in good condition — in a wooded area near Eklutna.

Some appeared to be registered to owners in Wasilla.

The Anchorage Police Department, with other police agencies, is working to figure out how and why that many cars wound up on 10 acres of forested land.

According to a police press statement, more than 40 law enforcement officials from several departments — APD, but also the Wasilla Police Department and Alaska State Troopers — combed an area near the old Eklutna Lodge late last week, checking license plate numbers and police records. The vehicles are of a variety of makes and models.

“Detectives say the vehicles don’t appear to be derelict or junked vehicles; they’re in very good condition and it’s unclear why they would have been left in the woods,” APD Spokeswoman Anita Shell wrote in a press release.

But the question remains: Were any of them stolen?

“The first information we got was that they were stolen. Now they’re checking to confirm with owners and registered owners to see if the vehicles indeed were stolen,” said APD Lt. Dave Parker. “They didn’t find anything that blatantly was stolen or was listed as stolen.”

Anchorage police say the case began back on Dec. 8, 2009, when a passerby spotted a vehicle abandoned in the woods near the old Eklutna Lodge. They say officers went to investigate and found the vehicle was stolen, then came across another stolen vehicle. They charged the man living there, John Wayne Morris, 36, with three felony theft counts.

In the intervening months, Anchorage police say they worked to get search warrants for the surrounding property. Those warrants were finally executed Thursday.

The search included a house, cabin, motel and bar and grill in the area. The wooded area stretched from the Glacier Water Plant all the way to the old Matanuska Electric Association power plant.

Officers are working to track down registered owners, many of whom appear to be Wasilla residents, Shell wrote.

Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney with the Palmer Police Department said he wasn’t among the officers who helped track down all the abandoned cars. Still, he said he’d been aware of the area for a while.

“We’ve heard grumblings for a long time that was a location that may have been a possible location for where stolen items were either stored or transferred,” he said.

Asked if he could shed any light on whether they were stolen; if maybe there’d been a recent spike in car thefts in the Valley, Turney said he hadn’t heard of one.

Shell said anyone who has had a vehicle stolen and hasn’t yet reported it should do so. Also, police want to hear from anyone who may have had a license plate stolen. A couple of the vehicles on the property had the wrong plates on them. And the mismatch was somewhat sneaky — the plates were registered to vehicles very similar to the cars they were found on.

“So people who have their front plates or back plates missing, call those in too,” Shell said in an interview.

But, she said, if your car was stolen and you’ve already let law enforcement know, there’s no need to call that in just yet. Detectives still need to go over all the vehicles and find their Vehicle Identification Numbers. They plan to call the registered owners.

“At this point in time we think it might be a little premature,” she said. “If people can be patient, we’ll be contacting them.”

As for who owns the land, Parker said some of the land is privately owned and some of it belongs to the Eklutna Native Corp. The people living there were on the private property side. But they didn’t own the land, Shell said; they were essentially squatters.

“You have a landowner that lives out of state, two people that live on his land that have not paid rental for several months that he has tried to evict unsuccessfully,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.