The first line of suspects in Muriel’s murder – the ones we talked about in the previous episode – can be roughly placed in the “speculative” bucket. Even, you might say, the deeply speculative bucket. As in… One by one, most of these folks eliminated themselves from consideration.
And then back in Fairbanks… In mid-November of 1977, another abandoned vehicle was destroyed by an explosion. The wrecked station wagon had been left alongside the road when it was bombed at 1:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Troopers in Fairbanks were investigating what was now the second successive car bombing in the city.
An exhausted Police Lt. Ralph Christianson, of the Anchorage police, compared the characteristics of the two Fairbanks bombings, and reluctantly noted, “The only real similarities are that both vehicles were station wagons, and they were both bombed.”
Christianson confirmed that four investigators were working fulltime on the case and that interviews of possible witnesses continued. The officer added that his agency has been going through travel manifests between Fairbanks and Anchorage. They were looking for possible suspects. “We’re also considering using a polygraph to test certain people who may be involved,” Christianson said. He declined to name any possible suspects.
“We’re still interviewing possible witnesses,” in Anchorage, Christianson said. That was because, besides the businesspeople located in the area surrounding the parking lot, many windows of the Captain Cook Hotel, located a short distance away, overlooked the bomb site. “We’re still tracking many of those people down,” he said. Other investigators were still sifting through evidence, much of that at a secure Anchorage Police garage.
And so it went. Indeed, there were some interesting leads coming in.
One of them was word that during her European sojourn, Muriel Pfeil had a relationship with Joachim Peiper.
Formerly a lieutenant colonel in an armored division of the Waffen SS during the Second World War -- we’re talking full on Hitler stuff here -- Peiper was ultimately held responsible for a massacre of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. On 17 December 1944, Peiper’s armored battalion encountered a convoy of 30 American vehicles near Malmedy, Belgium. The American Battalion was quickly overcome and captured – then ordered to stand in a meadow before the Germans opened fire on them with machine guns. Eighty-four soldiers were killed. Their bodies left in the snow. It was characteristic, apparently, of Peiper’s aggressive style of command. So… At war’s end, Peiper was put on trial before a military tribunal… And convicted as a war criminal...
During the summer of 1976, Joachim Peiper was residing in a lodge in France. Townspeople, having previously learned his identity, warned him to leave. He refused. And so on Bastille Day, July 14, 1976, he was murdered when his lodge was blown up by what some characterized as a “high velocity explosive.” [Except the details are incorrect – Peiper’s house was fire-bombed. It was Muriel Pfeil who was killed by an explosive device.]
Less than two months later, on September 30, 1976, Muriel Pfeil was murdered in Anchorage. Were they related?
