Friends of a teenage murder victim whose case has remained unsolved in Haines for decades are again asking for a memorial to be placed where her body was found.
Midge McClellan Clark sent a letter to Mayor Tom Morphet in August, asking him to help find a memorial spot for Eileen Wafer, a 14-year-old who was raped and murdered in Haines in 1982. Wafer’s body was found in the bushes along the beach at Portage Cove.
Clark is part of a group of Eileen’s friends who were all teenagers in Haines when she died. She said they have created a group “Friends of Eileen,” but don’t want to take further steps until they have a go-ahead from the borough.
She said she approached city and borough government officials in the late 1980s and again in the early 1990s but was rejected on the grounds that a sign about Wafer’s violent death was not what they wanted visitors to take away from Haines.
The Port Chilkoot cruise ship dock and CIA dock are both in the vicinity of where Wafer was found. Every year, Clark said she goes down to the Port Chilkoot beach and puts flowers in the water in Wafer’s memory.
The waterfront lots in the area are a mix of borough-owned property and parcels owned by the Port Chilkoot Company.
President Lee Heinmiller said he supports the idea of a memorial. A good location, he said, could be borough property near the southeast corner of the harbor parking lot where there is already a fishermen’s memorial.
“The place where her body was found and the fishermen’s memorial is literally 100 yards apart,” Heinmiller said.
But, if the borough were to balk at putting a memorial for Wafer on its own property, Heinmiller said he’s open to the idea of it going in on Port Chilkoot land instead.
Clark said the ideal would be a memorial spot that is easy to access.
“We’re all getting older and not everybody is in the greatest shape,” she said. “We don’t want to have to hike to get to it.”
She pictures a bench, maybe a place the people could hang flowers – but she’s open to other ideas and willing to work with the borough on whatever would need to happen to get it done.
“I’m not asking for the city to pay for anything, we’re just asking for the right to move forward,” Clark said. “We’ll do the fundraising, we’ll do whatever.”
In an email, Morphet said he supports a memorial, “including mention of her rape and murder and the unsolved status of this case, for the purposes of truth, warning, and the potential for helping bring some kind of resolution.”
Clark is also seeking reflection from the community, and a potential resolution.
“She deserves to be remembered and if it was somebody local who did it, they deserve to see that sign to drive them crazy every f****** day of their life,” she said.