The mother of a teenage murder victim whose case for years was considered a “cold case” is offering reward money for information on other unsolved homicide cases, including the 1982 murder of Eileen Wafer of Haines.
Karen Foster and the Homicide Reward Fund are offering up to $20,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder of 14-year-old Wafer.
Foster is the mother of Bonnie Craig, an 18-year-old college student from Anchorage killed in 1994. Her case stalled until 2006, when a DNA sample linked Kenneth Dion, 41, to Craig. An Anchorage jury convicted Dion on June 15 of raping and killing Craig.
Foster originally founded the Bonnie Craig Homicide Reward Fund to help draw in tips on her daughter’s case. Now that the case is over and a conviction won, Foster said she and the committee heading the fund wanted to use the money to draw out information about other cold cases.
“We don’t need the money for Bonnie, anymore,” Foster said this week from her home in London, Ontario. “We’ve been thinking about this for a while and now with the trial over and the conviction won, we wanted to do this for other girls.”
Foster did some research and contacted the Alaska State Troopers Cold Case Unit to come up with four cases that the fund wanted to draw attention to. The cases include: Shelley Connolly, 16, who was raped and murdered in Anchorage in 1978; Jessica Baggen, 17, who was raped and strangled in Sitka in 1996; and Ann Saephan, 15, who was shot in the head in a parking lot in Anchorage in 2003.
And Eileen Wafer of Haines.
Wafer was baby-sitting her younger brothers at home the evening of June 10, 1982. When her mother returned to the house later that night, the young boys were sleeping, but Wafer was gone. Her family reported her missing. Four days later, her older brother and a friend found Wafer’s partially clothed body in bushes along the beach at Portage Cove, just several hundred feet from where she lived. An autopsy ruled she had been strangled.
Alaska State Troopers investigators theorized that Wafer knew the person who came to her house the evening she was home with her brothers and coaxed her to step outside. But investigators have never formally named any suspects in her death.
Investigator Jim Gallen said offering reward money for information is an investigative tool that can be helpful, especially in cold cases.
The unit has continued conducting interviews in the case over the years, Gallen said. And it helps that investigative and questioning methods have changed since Wafer’s death. Having DNA from the crime scene could eventually lead to finding Wafer’s killer, just like it did in the recent Craig case.
And that is one of the reasons Foster said the committee chose Wafer’s case as one that could benefit from the reward offer.
“It’s another case – like Bonnie’s – where there is DNA on her killer and we could probably get a conviction if we could figure out who this guy is,” Foster said. “My heart goes out to all those girls’ moms and I want their killers found.”
Anybody with information on Wafer’s case is asked to call Investigator Tim Hunyor at 269-5766 or Investigator Jim Gallen at 269-5078 at the Cold Case Unit in Anchorage.