Skull of Wasilla woman found outside Anchorage

INDIAN — Alaska State Troopers say a skull found near Boretide Road off of the Seward Highway just outside Anchorage may belong to a Wasilla woman missing since 2010.

According to an AST press release posted Thursday evening, a hiker reported finding the skull at 10:54 a.m., Feb. 9.

“Troopers responded to the area and initial assessment of the location and of the skull resulted in finding clothing that belonged to a female,” according to the press release.

Troopers say evidence seems to indicate the skull belonged to Nichole M. Millsaps, who was 26 when she went missing in late May 2010. They have not yet made a positive identification and continue to investigate.

Millsaps’ disappearance was the subject of a flurry of court documents filed in 2010 in both federal and state court.

In state court, Joe Reese, who was facing charges related to a Valley methamphetamine lab, was offered immunity if he could tell troopers where Millsaps was.

“You’re going to look back on this day as going to be a turning point in your life. Today, Dec. 7, (is a) turning point in Joe Reese’s life,” Tony Wegrzyn, then a trooper investigator and now a sergeant, told Reese in a transcript of a jailhouse interview later filed in Reese’s drug case.

Reese told troopers that he knew Millsap’s boyfriend, and that he knew Millsaps and the boyfriend were south down the Kenai Peninsula when she disappeared. They were going to catch the ferry and head out of state. But they didn’t. The boyfriend came back, but Millsaps never did.

“I was supposed to ride with them, but I decided to stay,” Reese told Wegrzyn, Palmer trooper drug crimes investigator Mike Ingram and Palmer drug crimes prosecutor Rick Allen. “If I would have went, things would have been different, I’d like to think.”

But Reese didn’t know quite as much as troopers thought he did. He knew that he’d been told Millsaps had been killed at a campsite along the highway, but he didn’t know which one. He said he saw the boyfriend with blood on him, and he saw him burn the clothes he was wearing when he got back from the trip south.

Reese told troopers the boyfriend had told him Millsaps had gone crazy right before she was killed.

“And I watched that happen right in front of my eyes, so it wasn’t too (expletive) farfetched for me to believe it,” he said.

But Reese said Millsaps also used to take her boyfriend’s drugs, cut them with other substances, sell them and not bring back any money. He said that Millsaps’ “hustle” was to shoplift, but she was trying to quit.

“She was getting hot all over the place, even in Anchorage,” Reese said.

The boyfriend, whose name comes up in most of the documents, was eventually arrested on federal charges related to manufacturing methamphetamine. Troopers got his cellmate to agree to talk to him about Millsaps.

Recordings of those interviews wound up being introduced as evidence in the boyfriend’s criminal trial because, while he didn’t talk much about Millsaps, he did say incriminating things about his meth activities.

Eventually, it seems, the trail went cold.

The boyfriend served time and was released from the federal case, but apparently didn’t stay out of trouble. As of Friday morning, he was listed as a resident of the Anchorage Jail.

As for Joe Reese, prosecutors fought against giving him immunity.

“The state’s offer was clear and unambiguous: give us Nichole’s body and we will give you immunity on the ‘meth lab,’” Assistant District Attorney Kerry Corliss wrote at the time. “Due to Reese’s nonperformance, the state was under no obligation to make due on its promise to grant Reese immunity.”

In May 2013, all charges against him were dropped. Prosecutors say he had entered a guilty plea and was about to receive his sentence and go to prison when he died that year.*

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

*A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that charges against Reese were dropped because he won his court fight rather than because he died.