Convicted Killer Joshua Wade Claims Three More Murders

The Anchorage Police Department and FBI are investigating claims by convicted Anchorage killer Joshua Wade that he is responsible for three additional murders.

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In 2009, Wade pleaded guilty to the 2007 killing of Mindy Schloss and admitted to the 2000 murder of Della Brown.

Earlier this year, Wade gave law enforcement officials information about three other murders he claims to have committed.

Officials believe two cases involve the unsolved murders of 38-year-old John Michael Martin in 1994 and 30-year-old Henry Ongtowasruk in 1999. Wade also says he killed another man the same night he killed Della Brown, though that victim’s identity is unknown.

Anchorage Police Detective Sergeant Slav Markiewicz says law enforcement is investigating Wade’s claims and reexamining old evidence.

“We keep evidence in every homicide case forever; we don’t dispose of the evidence,” Markiewicz said. “There are new advances in technology, DNA; we may analyze the evidence now in ways that we were not able to do in 1994 or in 2000.”

Markiewicz was unable to go into detail about the claims, as the investigation is ongoing.

Wade had been attempting to get out of his plea agreement in the Schloss case, which could have sent the case back to trial, but he agreed to drop his request and give law enforcement details on the three additional murders if they agreed to transfer him to a federal facility outside of Alaska.

Karen Loeffler, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska, says it’s unclear why Wade requested the transfer.

“When the state came to us and the Department of Law and said, ‘Would you be willing to talk to the federal authorities about taking him,’ my answer was, ‘Who cares? He’s never gonna get out of jail. I don’t care where he serves it,’” Loeffler said. “He’s not getting anything that harms the community from us, so if we can get some closure to someone, our position was, work with the Department of Law, see what they want.”

“He doesn’t get out of jail, I don’t really care what his motivation is, I just care that he never gets out.”

Wade has been transferred to a a maximum-security federal prison in Indiana, where he will serve out the remainder of his life sentence without the possibility of parole.