ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A Kipnuk man was sentenced Tuesday to a composite sentence of 263 years to serve for 17 counts of sexual assault and sexual abuse of six children between 2006 and 2013. The court ordered that Paul was not eligible for discretionary parole.

According to the Alaska Department of Law, this sentence appears to be the longest sentence handed down for sexual assault and sexual abuse in the history of the State of Alaska.

The man is 37-year-old David Paul. He was convicted of 28 counts following a three-week jury trial held in Bethel in August. At sentencing, the convictions merged into 17 counts. Those included five counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, six counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, four counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault.

In May 2021, one of the victims came forward as an adult to report Paul’s prior abuse committed against them. That victim also reported observing Paul sexually abusing a separate victim. During a several-month-long investigation, additional victims were identified and interviewed. These additional victims disclosed that Paul also sexually abused them when they were children.

Paul was arrested in October 2021.

During the trial, the jury heard emotional testimony from all six victims, who explained that they initially did not report the abuse as children because they were scared and did not think anyone would believe them.

Several of the victims gave impact statements at sentencing. They told the court about the lifelong impact of Paul’s crimes on them. Each expressed that Paul stole their childhood.

In the press statement from the Alaska Department of Law, one victim told the court that they had spent years blaming themself.

“I have spent years thinking it was my fault for not protecting my brother. I blamed myself for not knowing how to tell my mom at such a young age. I did not ask for this. Today I no longer blame myself, because what happened in the dark has come to the light,” the victim stated.

Assistant Attorney General Bailey Woolfstead emphasized the number of victims, the length and continued nature of the sexual assaults and abuse, and Paul’s manipulative and predatory behavior. She argued that his actions required the court to permanently remove Paul from the community to ensure that he never harmed another child.

Bethel Superior Court Judge William Montgomery stated that Paul constituted a “worst offender” under the law.

“The amount of damage that has been inflicted is unspeakable … I see no potential for rehabilitation for Mr. Paul. If Mr. Paul is out and about in the community he poses among the most severe threats to the community in the YK Delta, his behavior and criminal history has demonstrated such,” Montgomery said.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Montgomery stated his intent was to ensure Paul is never released from prison.

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Alaska didn’t solve who killed 23-year-old Eunice Whitman, but its justice system did manage to lock up the wrong man for seven years, ProPublica reports, in a gripping investigation of two eerily similar murders that police have not linked. Whitman of Bethel, Alaska, was found in May 2015 on tundra at the end of a heavily-trafficked boardwalk: stabbed in the throat and chest, clothes removed and placed nearby. Police quickly arrested her boyfriend, Justine Paul, telling the public her blood was on his clothes. A grand jury indicted him 11 days later. The case then stalled for years as the supposed key evidence quietly crumbled: state lab testing showed the blood on Paul’s clothes matched him. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges in 2022. By then, Paul had spent seven years in jail awaiting trial.

His defense attorney, former prosecutor Marcy McDannel, came to believe police had focused on the wrong man while overlooking others. Male DNA on Whitman’s body did not match Paul, the four men who found her, or a registered sex offender seen in the area. A defense expert later identified at least a dozen people who, he argued, should have ranked as higher-priority suspects than Paul based on their proximity or past contact with Whitman. Among them: a man with a history of violence on the same boardwalk; an ex-boyfriend she named in a restraining order; and a man who had Whitman’s phone and a bandaged hand a week after her death. None were charged; two are now dead.

McDannel kept digging after Paul’s release and zeroed in on another possibility: convicted killer Samuel Atchak. Nine months before Whitman’s murder, 19-year-old Roxanne Smart was found in the nearby village of Chevak, also partially nude on the tundra, stabbed in the throat and torso, her clothing arranged close by. Atchak confessed in that case, saying he surprised Smart from behind before making her blackout, and is serving 115 years. In a 2022 prison interview, he coolly analyzed Whitman’s killing, theorizing about the attacker’s motive and method (surprise from behind with a “chokehold.”) He also recalled being in Bethel on the weekend of the killing, on a flight stopover.

State troopers later told McDannel that travel and medical records ruled Atchak out in Whitman’s case but did not share the underlying documents; Atchak has declined new interviews. Public pressure resurfaced in January, when an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous people posted about Whitman online, prompting calls to police. In March, Alaska’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons unit took over the case and says it is starting from scratch. However, Whitman’s family says they still haven’t been re-interviewed—and still don’t know who killed her. While officials concede “unacceptable” delays in the case, citing heavy turnover among rural prosecutors, they maintain that everyone acted properly.

The Alaska Division of Elections has shared information about the state’s registered voters with the administration of President Donald Trump after a monthslong legal review, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom said Tuesday.

The decision to share Alaskans’ data comes as the Trump administration has sought to compile a nationwide voter roll, raising concern among some election observers over how the administration would use the information.

The U.S. Department of Justice first requested the voter information from the Alaska Division of Elections in July, according to documents shared by the lieutenant governor’s office. Dahlstrom — who as lieutenant governor is charged with overseeing Alaska’s elections — released the records to Trump administration officials this week, only after what her office called a “thorough” legal review of the request.

The Justice Department in July requested a copy of the state’s voter registration list, including a list of people registered to vote in Alaska who were “determined to be non-citizens.”

Voting by non-citizens is extremely rare in Alaska, the Division of Elections has said based on recent voting records.

Trump for years has falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens are voting illegally, stoking efforts by the GOP to put the threat of noncitizen voting at the center of its political strategy.

Responding to the July Trump administration request, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher in August shared with the Justice Department the publicly available statewide voter registration list, which includes the names of voters and their party affiliation, but does not include identifying figures such as Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers.

Later in August, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon responded to the state insisting that the state provide a list of registered voters “including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.”

Dhillon wrote the information was needed to assess Alaska’s compliance with voter registration maintenance provisions of the National Voter Registration Act.

Before joining the Trump administration, Dhillon was contracted by the Alaska Republican Party last year to oversee a recount of votes cast on an Alaska ballot measure seeking to repeal the state’s ranked choice voting and open primary system. The ballot measure, which was supported by the Alaska GOP, narrowly failed.

In her August letter, Dhillon demanded the state respond to her request within a week. The state’s response came four months later, on Dec. 19, after the Division of Elections signed a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department seeking to protect the information it was sharing.

“The timeline was driven by our commitment to ensuring that any data shared complied fully with Alaska law and protected voter privacy,” said Kelly Howell, a spokesperson for Dahlstrom, in an email.

“When the DOJ made its request in August, we immediately began a thorough review in consultation with the Department of Law and had further discussions with the DOJ,” Howell wrote. “This was necessary to confirm that we had the legal authority to release the requested information and to identify any safeguards needed to protect sensitive voter data. That process takes time, and we wanted to be absolutely certain before moving forward.”

Howell said that the memorandum of understanding signed between the state and DOJ is “common practice for data transfers between government entities.”

The Trump administration has sued numerous states for refusing to share voter registration information with the Justice Department. Several Democratic attorneys general raised concerns last month over the possibility that the Justice Department was sharing voter information with the Department of Homeland Security.

Dahlstrom is one of a dozen Republicans running to be Alaska’s next governor. Gov. Mike Dunleavy is termed out from seeking reelection.