The Murder of Mackenzie Howard

Who Mackenzie Howard was

Mackenzie Howard, known to family and friends as "Mack", was a 13-year-old Tlingit girl from Kake, a village of about 600 people in Southeast Alaska, roughly 90 miles south of Juneau and reachable only by air or by boat. She had turned 13 a week before her death. Her parents, Kip and Marla Howard, described her as a girl who loved basketball, liked to match her pink and red outfits with her large red glasses, and was known for smiling and cheering up people around her.

The night of 5 February 2013

Mackenzie spent the days before her death helping the community honour Clarence Jackson, a respected Kake elder and Sealaska Corporation board member who had recently died. On Tuesday, 5 February 2013, she helped with his burial. Schools closed early, and the remembrance drew hundreds of visitors from outside the village. Her father last saw her at about 9:45 that evening. Shortly before 11 p.m., she was found dead in the entryway of the Memorial Presbyterian Church, across the road from her family's home. An autopsy in Anchorage confirmed that her death was a homicide.

Waiting for the troopers

Kake had no police department of its own and, at the time, no village public safety officer: the previous officer had left and a replacement was not yet working. As in most Alaska Native villages, criminal matters depended on the Alaska State Troopers, who had to travel from elsewhere. While residents waited, local first responders cordoned off the church, and community members, organised in part by the carver Joel Jackson, guarded the scene through the night. A Juneau-based trooper reached Kake at about 8 a.m. the next morning, with detectives and crime scene investigators arriving some hours later. Later reporting said Mackenzie's body remained at the church for around 11 hours before investigators arrived. Investigators also noted that an estimated 50 to 75 people who had been in the village that night left before troopers could arrive.

The investigation and arrest

The Alaska Bureau of Investigation took charge of the case under Lt. Rex Leath. Investigators conducted dozens of interviews, between 40 and 50 in the first days, and sent evidence to the state crime laboratory. On Saturday, 16 February 2013, troopers arrested a 14-year-old boy from Kake. They described him as "certainly a suspect in the homicide", and said the arrest followed numerous interviews and analysis of physical evidence. Because he was a juvenile, authorities did not release his name. He was taken to Ketchikan, where he was held in a detention facility. His arrest took place on the morning of Mackenzie's funeral.

Legal status

Because the suspect was a minor, the case was handled within Alaska's juvenile justice process, which keeps much of the record confidential. In August 2014 reporting said a hearing was expected to decide whether he would be tried as a juvenile or as an adult. The final disposition has not been widely reported, and this page does not describe him as convicted. Under the law he must be treated as innocent unless and until a court finds otherwise.

Why the case matters

Mackenzie's death became one of the most-cited examples of the public-safety gap in rural Alaska. Most Alaska Native villages have neither local police nor local courts, and Alaska has been described as having roughly one state trooper for every million acres. Responses to serious crimes can take many hours or even days because of distance, weather and limited aircraft. Mackenzie's mother told reporters that people in the village did not really fear the law. After the killing, the state assigned a village public safety officer to Kake, and the case featured in national reporting in 2014, including coverage by the Washington Post, on how slowly help reaches Native communities and how stretched public-safety resources are across the state.

The response of Kake residents, who protected the scene and supported one another while waiting for outside investigators, is also remembered as part of the story. For many Alaskans, the case stands for both the resilience of village communities and the risks created when basic law-enforcement presence is missing.