As Wade promises details about additional murders he claims to have committed, the family of one of his alleged new victims says they’re feeling their loss once again … and they’re angry Wade won’t face new charges or a trial for the murders.
Arlene Soxie lives in Nome. She says her son Henry Ongtowasruk was 30 years old and living in Anchorage when he was killed in 1999. She says she first heard about the connection to Wade in February.
“One of the detectives was talking to Joshua Wade and he confessed that he was the one that killed my son. They were able to get in touch with one family member. And that is how they contacted us. And it was like he died all over again.”
While investigators try to corroborate Wade’s claims, it’s still unclear whether he could face new charges. That, Soxie says, is not justice.
“I was wishing that there would have been a trial for the murder of my son. And I was told that there would be no trial because he’s in prison already. It seems like the law is for the people who have committed the crime and not for the family members who are left suffering.”
As for Wade, in exchange for the confession he asked prosecutors transfer him out of Alaska for the rest of his life sentence. Soxie says the idea her son’s alleged killer could bargain information to get anything at all offends her.
“It angered me. My son can’t speak for himself and to know that people in the governing system, or the law, allow things like that, it’s not right either,” she said.
Whether Wade’s claims on the additional murders prove true or false, he’ll still remain behind bars for the rest of his life: he’s been transferred to a maximum-security federal prison in Indiana, where he will serve out the remainder of his life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Matthew Smith is a reporter at KNOM in Nome.
