A sympathetic shooter and botched prosecution: How did Lovely Lois get away with murder in 1960s Anchorage?

Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

We begin with a reminder. There was once a well-known musher named Charlie Cannon, certifiably Alaska-famous in his time. He even had a brief affair with the national spotlight when he drove a dog sled in President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 inaugural parade. With his bearded, weather-bitten face haloed by a parka, he was every bit the archetype outsiders expected of an Alaska sourdough, in pictures that ran in newspapers across the country. When he returned north, “nearly half” of Seward turned out to welcome him.

He split time at his Anchorage and Lake Louise homes with this vivacious wife, Ruth. In 1955, Ruth Cannon disappeared from their Lake Louise cabin. Charlie waited two months to inform the authorities, conveniently prompted by the arrival of Ruth’s mother. After weeks of investigation, Charlie broke down. He failed a lie detector test twice, then confessed to shooting Ruth in the back of her head. He burned her body in a pyre over two days and scattered the ashes on the still-frozen lake.

A few more weeks passed, then Charlie accompanied several officers back to Lake Louise, where he calmly reenacted the murder. He showed them the new 12-foot-high smokehouse directly over the fire site, built to obscure the evidence. The lake had long since melted, meaning no ashes to collect. The Anchorage Daily Times quoted one officer saying, “He did his job well.” There were no other theories or suspects. However, when a grand jury convened that December, they deliberated for only 45 minutes before declining to indict him. Charlie Cannon was released from jail as a free man. He never faced a trial and resumed his life as a prominent Alaska musher.

[He reenacted his wife’s killing in 1955 and confessed — but a grand jury refused to indict him]

[The enigmatic life and mysterious death of Matanuska Valley schoolteacher Zelda King]

Alaska has a long, ugly history of intimate partner violence. Per the 2020 Alaska Victimization Survey conducted by the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center, 57.7% of female respondents reported experience with intimate partner violence, sexual assaults or both. Charlie Cannon is far from the only man to get away with killing his partner.

This context raises larger questions of public safety and gendered iniquities, inquiries that lack acceptable answers. But there is a simpler, more easily resolved question. What would it take for a woman to get away with murder in Alaska? So, for the ladies, I offer the tale of the Lovely Lois.

Lois Elaine Harris was a young immigrant to Alaska by way of Pennsylvania. She was an exotic entertainer, a stripper, a topless go-go dancer and many other things besides. Whatever ambitions, attributes and hobbies she possessed, her occupation would define her public reputation. Lovely Lois was her stage name, and she was a standout, consistent presence in late 1960s Anchorage, making a circuit of all the finer nightclubs like the Embers, Club Penguin, Club Oasis, Personality Lounge, Pink Garter, and Bonfire Lounge. All of these are interesting places where the walls were liberally painted with colorful backstories. And before everyone asks all at once, I’m sorry, but no, I do not have a picture of her at work. Please stop asking.

There were more popular entertainers of her ilk on the Anchorage scene. The stars of that sky featured the notoriously flexible Miss Wiggles and the more monumental Big Bertha. Miss Wiggles could strip down to a G-string and pasties while upside down, on her head upon a chair, usually in accompaniment to some hot jazz. She married local bail bondsman Fred Adkerson. Her real name was Velma, but everyone called her Wiggles, even her pastor and now her headstone at the downtown cemetery.

Big Bertha was advertised as a 275- to 300-pound go-go dancer. She was such an area celebrity that the local papers covered her marriage, though they still referred to her as Big Bertha. The Lovely Lois wasn’t in the class of these luminaries, but she was a big enough deal to be an advertised feature, even performing with Miss Wiggles. Lois had skills and a certain appeal, is what I’m saying.

And the 23-year-old Lovely Lois was married to a 48-year-old mechanic named Bill Harris. As perhaps suggested by the age gap, their relationship possessed some structural concerns. The couple was prone to frequent, heated arguments. Lois would later claim that Bill physically abused her.

Their friend circle — his friend circle — included several drug dealers and hardcore narcotic addicts that offered limited social assistance. One of their closer confidantes was James Abner Holt, whose arms were riddled with collapsed veins from needle use. On Nov. 30, 1967, Holt was murdered in Fairview. The assailant fired four bullets through a pillow to muffle the sound. That case was never solved.

About two months later, on Feb. 1, 1968, Lois and Bill were arguing in their trailer home in back of Bill’s garage, off the Seward Highway and a little way south of Fairview. They had been married for only six weeks, but Lois was young, vulnerable and in a dangerous world, a long and winding road from home. The decisions of her past, many of them picked among poorer alternatives, dimmed and limited her future. This was before no-fault divorces. In many ways, she was trapped.

That afternoon, she decided that enough was enough. She took their automatic pistol and fired two shots into Bill, who tumbled through the door and collapsed outside, still alive but leaking, so to speak. His dog, at least, was loyal, standing guard over the bloody site. When the state troopers arrived, Lois was inside the trailer. The first trooper through the door asked her what happened, and she bluntly stated, “I shot him.”

Bill was declared dead upon arrival at Providence. Lois was tossed into the city jail with a $100,000 bond. Though she had swum in deep, dark waters previously, this was her first legal offense, the first with charges at least.

There she sat for four months. The prosecutors initially sought a first-degree murder conviction, and though she admitted to shooting Bill directly after the incident, she pleaded innocent. The evidence was clear, but as the trial approached, the district attorney’s office was open to a deal. They lowered the charges to manslaughter, murder in the third degree, and Lois changed her plea to guilty.

The district attorney’s office worried that a jury would be sympathetic to Lois’ case. Given the preestablished fact that Mr. Harris married a stripper 25 years his junior, it will come as no shock to learn that this was not his first marriage. Prepare yourself, Lois was not even his first wife to shoot him, although she was the first to actually cross the finish line. It is easy to imagine a jury choosing not to throw the book at a young woman led astray by an older, nasty man.

And when it came to sentencing, wouldn’t you know it, Superior Court Judge Ralph Moody was also in a generous mood. He announced in court that Lois’ background, young age and her positive attitude were weighed against the passionate moment when she murdered her husband. Instead of 10 years in jail, he sentenced her to only four months, time served in other words, plus five years’ probation.

There were the usual stipulations — she couldn’t own a gun during the probationary period — but she was also required to move back to Pennsylvania to live with her father, and either attend school or find some form of acceptable employment. Stripping was out, as were stripping derivatives such as being an exotic entertainer or topless go-go dancer.

The magnanimous Judge Moody told her, “Even though this is your first offense, I’m certainly not indicating that if I go along with probation in this case that the next time someone kills someone in this situation — because it’s their first offense — they’re not going to serve time.”

He continued, more so his words would be recorded and shared, “Because I think if we ever set a policy like that — if we give someone a free murder — we’re setting a bad policy from the standpoint that you get a free chance to murder someone and then get probation. This court is not setting any policy, and I want to make it clear now — the fact that if someone comes in under a first offense for shooting someone, whether in the heat of passion or otherwise, he may not expect to get a suspended sentence of probation.”

Again, those are his exact words, given a likewise explicit attempt to seem exceedingly generous. Surely, that’s all it was. The judge and district attorney’s office were your run-of-the-mill Alaska officials, innately understanding and sympathetic to the plight of women in rough, old Alaska. If all went well, Lois would be a free and clear woman at only 28 years old.

Except, it was all a front. The words and kindness, the supposed generosity, they were a weak attempt at a cover-up. The real story was that the troopers had screwed up the case from the very beginning.

In 1966, less than two years earlier, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the need to inform suspects of their constitutional rights before interrogating them. This, of course, changed policing and popular culture forever. Thanks to television shows and movies, you’ve all heard the Miranda warning more times than you could count.

Recall the description of the immediate aftermath from the shooting. A trooper drove up, entered the trailer, and started talking to Lois, who freely admitted to the shooting. This information was the basis of her original first-degree murder charge. However, the officer had not informed the soon-to-be widow of her rights, most importantly here, the right to not instantly admit to a felony.

In addition, the autopsy had been exceedingly sloppy. Rather than the usual hours required for a first-degree murder case, Bill Harris’ autopsy was completed in a mere 10 minutes. The doctor even left bullets in the body. No one in the justice system wanted to see that autopsy presented as evidence in a major trial that further possessed significant public appeal. The Alaska press was going to show up for the trial of a stripper who killed her husband regardless of how the investigation was handled. The details, therefore, would get out, and the embarrassment would be public.

Unsurprisingly, there was some public furor about the sentence. As many saw it, the Lovely Lois had done well in the exchange: a murder for four months at a city jail — not even a prison — and not having to strip at any Anchorage nightclubs. The local papers mocked Judge Moody for his “no free murder” declaration. In the Daily Times, publisher Bob Atwood wrote sarcastically, “Well, thank heaven. We now have it as an official policy of the Superior Court that a person killing another person for the first time cannot automatically expect to receive a suspended sentence.” Given the circumstances, Atwood had wondered what the court’s policy was on letting murderers escape justice. As he concluded, “And now we know.”

In full, she shot her husband, admitted to the same and eventually pleaded guilty. Her only time inside was time served before sentencing. She got away with it. How did the Lovely Lois escape the repercussions of her actions? Everyone around her had to fail at their jobs and then attempt to whitewash their failures with false, self-aggrandizing altruism.

The Harris murder fell within something of a boom in wives killing husbands. In 1959, Regina Bowker killed her husband in their Spenard trailer home, an area that’s now Northwood Park. In 1960, Wilma O’Neal killed her husband, Joe, at their Spenard trailer home. In 1965, Margaret Sims killed her husband, Raymond, at their Spenard trailer home. There are more besides, and yes, there is also something of a theme. A Spenard Divorce was a local idiom for a while because of these murders.

Each of these cases occurred with sympathetic contexts. Each woman said their husbands abused them. One of the men beat their children. Another threatened to commit the wife to an asylum, something possible then. One of them was still married to another woman. They were all trapped in vicious realities. Yet each was sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison. Unlike Cannon, no grand juries declined to indict such a noble local celebrity. Unlike Lois Harris, an entire system of men did not abandon protocol. Instead, these other women paid dearly for their crimes, punishments that yet did not seem like justice.

• • •

Key sources:

“Anchorage Area Woman Charged with Murder.” Anchorage Daily News. February 2, 1968, 2.

“Entertainer Jailed in Husband’s Death.” Anchorage Daily Times. February 2, 1968, 2.

“Harris Funeral Slated Tuesday at Chapel Here.” Anchorage Daily Times. February 5, 1968, 2.

“A Policy on First-Offense Killings.” Anchorage Daily Times. June 27, 1968, 4.

Radloff, Judy. “State Witness Relates Sleziak’s Behavior.” Anchorage Daily News. November 28, 1967, 2.

Webster, Dave. “LSD Less Prevalent Here Than Use of Hard Narcotics.” Anchorage Daily Times. February 15, 1968, 1, 2.

Webster, Dave. “’Lovely Lois’ Will Go East, Out of Jail.” Anchorage Daily Times. June 26, 1968, 3.