What happened
Five people were shot to death at several Anchorage locations in 2016 before investigators knew the attacks were connected.
The investigation
The break came after James Dale Ritchie shot a police officer and was killed in the resulting gunfight. Ballistic testing linked the handgun he carried to the earlier homicide scenes.
What the courts or investigators concluded
Police later announced that the evidence established Ritchie as the killer in all five deaths, closing the cases without a criminal trial.
Why the case remains significant
The investigation demonstrates the value of ballistic comparison and also why police sometimes withhold knowledge that crimes are linked when revealing that fact could cause an offender to discard a weapon.
Case context
Crime by Region organizes cases geographically so readers can move from one file to other investigations from the same country. For unresolved or contested cases, the wording above reflects the distinction between confirmed events, investigative theories and findings actually established in court.