Michelle Rothe, a 32-year-old Caucasian woman, was found as partial remains on September 6, 2003, when the tide at Turnagain Arm near Anchorage’s Oceanview neighborhood yielded what was left of her. Investigators determined she had been killed weeks earlier, in the summer of 2003, and concluded the water carried her remains to shore. There was no missing persons report for Michelle, which complicated establishing a precise timeline; detectives worked backward from friends’ last recollections and placed the likely time of death in June into July 2003.

Anchorage police later noted similarities between Michelle’s case and the June 2003 discovery of 22-year-old Desiree Lekanoff along the same stretch of water: both were young women, both were found as partial remains on the same inlet, and both deaths fell within a narrow seasonal window. Those parallels prompted investigators to treat the cases in connection, but the investigation did not produce public identifications of suspects. Years later the file remains open; no arrests have been announced and the deaths remain unsolved.

Did anyone in Anchorage or the Turnagain Arm area in summer 2003 recall seeing Michelle, her car, or anything out of the ordinary that spring or early summer?