EP 58 Alaska cold cases, a family tragedy and the book that helped him process it all with Glen Klinkhart

Glen Klinkhart is a former homicide detective, and in 1981 his older sister was sexually assaulted and murdered at their home in Anchorage, Alaska. She had thrown a party at her house and after everyone left, a nineteen year old classmate returned. To cover up his crime, he burned down their house. He was later caught and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Glen says that we can intellectualize why people commit heinous crimes as much as we want to, but the reason is ultimately very simple: People do it because they want to. Now, that choice might be corrupted by other things like anger, deviancy, mental illness or drugs, but at the end of the day it’s a conscious choice. The outcome of which is devastating to all those it affects. He says that, so often, the crime perpetrated on someone becomes their identity. It becomes all consuming and can result in a lifetime of guilt and bitterness. But recently, Glen has found ways to let go of those feelings. One of them is digitizing all of his dad’s 35 mm slides. He’s going through so many family photos and it’s giving him the opportunity to see his sister through a whole new lens, as the beautiful young woman she was. Years ago, Glen was teaching a homicide class and one of his students asked him if having a murdered sister made him a better detective or did it make the job more difficult. He’d never thought about it before that moment, but he’ll always remember his response. He said, “You don’t have to have a murdered sister to be a good homicide detective, but it helps.” That became the first sentence in his true crime memoir, “Finding Bethany.” The book details his upbringing all the way to him becoming a detective for the Anchorage Police Department, with a focus on finding a young woman named Bethany Correira. He says that, in addition to his sense of duty to her and her family, working Bethany’s case — a case that had so many similarities to his sister’s —  also helped him process his sister’s murder.