Man confesses to Butte murder

By ANDREW WELLNER

Frontiersman.com

PALMER — An Anchorage man turned himself in Sunday, confessing to the murder of an elderly Butte man.

According to a press release from Alaska State Troopers, at 5:11 p.m. the Anchorage Police Department contacted troopers to report that Thomas M. Cottam Jr., 23, of Anchorage, had walked into Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility and turned himself in.

“Cottam said this occurred about three hours prior at (Steven Garcia’s) farm,” Trooper Investigator Jason Feiser writes in an affidavit filed in court Monday.

According to Feiser, the story that Cottam laid out was that Garcia, 81, had picked him up six days prior as a hitchhiker. Garcia took Cottam where he was going and told him if he needed work he could come work on Garcia’s farm.

Cottam took Garcia up on the offer, staying in a tent on Garcia’s property and later in the house.

According to a Frontiersman report from 2008, Garcia ran a farm growing berries on the Old Glenn Highway.

“Cottam said on 5/18/14 he was inside (Garcia’s) house. (Garcia) came into the house with a machete and attacked Cottam. Cottam said he ‘blacked out’ and when he ‘came to’ (Garcia) was on the ground dead and Cottam was holding the machete,” Feiser writes.

He told troopers he then dug in Garcia’s pants and took his wallet then loaded up Garcia’s dog into Garcia’s vehicle and left for Anchorage. He said he took the wallet because Garcia owed him $32 and he needed money to run. He said he was planning on trying to get to Kodiak, but a friend in Anchorage told him to turn himself in.

Troopers talked to that friend, who said that in Cottam’s recounting of the story to him, Garcia came into the house with the machete over his head and Cottam got behind him, slashing the man’s throat and stabbing him multiple times.

During a search of Garcia’s house, troopers found the machete and a butterfly knife, both with blood on them.

For his part, Cottam was completely unharmed. Feiser writes that some minor scratches were already healing and that Cottam told him he’d gotten them not from a knife fight but from working on the farm.

Cottam was arrested at 5:05 a.m., Monday. Troopers charged him with first-degree murder. As of Monday afternoon, he was listed as an inmate of the Anchorage Jail.

Mat-Su Borough Property Records list Garcia as owner of multiple contiguous parcels of land off the Old Glenn Highway on the south side of the Knik River.

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