April 20—An Anchorage man was arrested Thursday in connection with a cold-case murder nearly 15 years ago after turning himself in to police earlier this month, according to charges filed this week.
John Patrick Labog Dahlquist, 56, told investigators on April 9 that he fatally shot one man and wounded another at a downtown Anchorage hotel in December 2009, according to an affidavit written by police Detective Gary Curtis. Anchorage. Detectives said they linked 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 with a bandana over his face, the clerk and Dahlquist both told investigators during separate interviews. to the affidavit. Dahlquist demanded money and told the clerk to get on the floor after he was handed the money, the report said.
He shot the clerk as he lay on the floor 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, stopping 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 received almost 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 to DNA entered into a law enforcement database in 2020, but investigators determined it belonged to a hotel employee and not the shooter, the report said.
The case lingered 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 followed him and told him to confess. 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 police headquarters for an interview, the affidavit said.
Cold-case detectives reviewed video footage of the responding officer’s initial interaction with Dahlquist and found that the details he provided corroborated evidence and information gathered during the initial investigation, the affidavit said.
Dahlquist was charged Thursday with first-degree murder and attempted manslaughter. He was arrested in Anchorage on Thursday and was scheduled to appear in court on Friday afternoon.
