Anchorage man arrested after turning himself in for 2009 cold-case killing, charges say
Apr. 20—An Anchorage man was arrested Thursday in connection to a cold-case killing nearly 15 years ago after he turned himself into police earlier this month, according to charges filed this week.
John Patrick Labog Dahlquist, 56, told detectives on April 9 that he had fatally shot one man and wounded another at a downtown Anchorage hotel in December 2009, according to a sworn affidavit written by Anchorage police Detective Gary Curtis. Detectives said they connected the statement to the death of 76-year-old Sang Chun.
During the shooting, Dahlquist walked into the lobby of the now-closed Inlet Inn on H Street, asked for the bathroom key and reappeared at the front desk wearing a bandana over his face, the clerk and Dahlquist both told detectives during separate interviews, according to the affidavit. Dahlquist demanded money and told the clerk to get on the floor after he was handed the cash, it said.
He shot the clerk while he was on the ground and then shot Chun, who was also in the lobby, the affidavit said. Chun often walked from his Government Hill apartment early in the morning and would stop at the hotel to read newspapers or watch TV while he waited for his bus to arrive, his family said at the time.
The inn was demolished in 2013. The year before, the hotel had nearly 500 police or fire calls.
In the aftermath of the 2009 shooting, police received tips from the public but were unable to identify a suspect, the affidavit said. A cigarette butt collected in the case was matched in 2020 to DNA entered into a law enforcement database, but investigators determined it belonged to a hotel employee and not the shooter, it said.
The case went cold until earlier this month, when Dahlquist asked employees at an Anchorage bingo center to contact police because he wanted to confess to a cold-case crime, the affidavit said. When an officer arrived, he said people had been following him and "telling him to confess," it said. He repeatedly asked to go to jail and told the officer additional details about the crime, including information that was not publicly released, as he was taken to the police headquarters for an interview, the affidavit said.
Cold-case detectives reviewed video footage from the responding officer's initial interaction with Dahlquist and found the details he provided corroborated evidence and information gathered during the initial investigation, the affidavit said.
Dahlquist was charged on Thursday with first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. He was arrested in Anchorage on Thursday and was scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon.
