This Web site started as the brainchild of UAF journalism professor Brian O’Donoghue, who has been investigating the 1997 murder of John Hartman since the fall of 2001. That, not coincidentally, was when O’Donoghue left a job as editorial page editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. At the newspaper he had seen the Hartman case surface again and again in letters to the editor with questions about the police work, the trials and the conviction of the four accused men. Those letters continue to this day.

With his position at UAF, O’Donoghue has found the time to look into the case himself. “It’s one of the reasons I took this job,” he says. He also has involved his investigative-reporting students in a painstaking reconstruction of what took place the night of the murder and in the trials.

In the spring of 2004, the staff of Extreme Alaska started creating this site as an in-depth resource for anyone interested in the case. It went online in November of 2004.

If you have any information about the murder of John Hartman, the four men accused of murdering him, or anyone else that may have been involved, please contact Brian O'Donoghue.

Back to top