Cold Case Cracked: Michigan Tipster Christopher Popps Charged in 1993 Alaska Murder

More than three decades after a Fairbanks auto‑shop worker vanished without a trace, a surprising twist finally put the case back on the map. In January 2025, Alaska State Troopers received a cryptic, anonymous tip from someone who claimed responsibility for a 1993 murder. The tip, as unsettling as it was, turned out to be the key that unlocked a cold case everyone had long thought was unsolvable.

Investigators from the Alaska Bureau of Investigation’s Cold Case Unit rushed to the scene, but winter kept them at bay – the area was buried under snow and daylight was scarce, Trooper spokesperson Austin McDaniel told Alaska Public Media. When the snow finally melted in May, officers discovered human remains tucked inside an old barrel on a steep embankment near Mile 47 of the Steese Highway.

The remains were quickly identified by the Alaska State Medical Examiner’s Office as Patrick Orville Dearth, 34, who had been reported missing in November 1993. His death was ruled a homicide, a grim confirmation that the missing‑person report had, in fact, been a murder case all along.

From there, the investigation took an unexpected turn. The anonymous caller – later identified as 54‑year‑old Christopher Popps of Michigan – had apparently been making a series of tips to various Alaska law‑enforcement agencies, each one claiming he was the one who killed Dearth.

Popps and Dearth had worked together at the same auto shop in Fairbanks, and according to Trooper McDaniel, an altercation at the shop escalated into a shooting. “Based on our investigation, we determined there was an altercation at an auto shop, which led Popps to shoot Dearth,” McDaniel said.

It remains a mystery why Popps waited more than thirty years to come forward – or rather, to let the police hear him. Whatever his motives, the confession was enough for a grand jury in Fairbanks to indict him on two counts of second‑degree murder on June 25, 2026.

Michigan State Police arrested Popps near Kalamazoo on July 16, 2026. He is currently being held in Kalamazoo County awaiting extradition back to Alaska, where he still has not been assigned counsel and no further court dates have been set.

The case is a stark reminder of how a single, seemingly anonymous whisper can crack open a mystery that has haunted a community for generations. For the family of Patrick Dearth, the discovery brings a painful closure – and for law‑enforcement, it underscores the relentless, if sometimes serendipitous, nature of cold‑case work.