S1: E30 – End of the Road: The Hunt for Michael Silka

Anybody that has gotten to the point where he can kill all these people, including a small child. There's very little chance he'll give himself up. He's snapped, he's gone beyond, and there's no coming back from where he is now, no coming back.

The hunt for one of Alaska's worst serial killers turned a quiet town into the wild wild West.

In a situation like this, it's clear to us that this is not going to end well. If we see him, and we're not going to walk out and say, hey, how you doing. This is going to be a gunfight today.

We're just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, for the haunting case of End of the Road, the hunt for Michael Silka. I'm slung glass and this is American homicide. Just to note that this episode contained some graphic content. Please take care while listening. On a spring day in nineteen eighty two, Alaska State troopers stopped their patrol car outside a cabin that belonged to Michael Silka.

I don't remember much of Silka's cabin, but it was junkie like most of the other ones over there.

Sergeant Jim McCann was an Alaska State trooper.

Wasn't some cute little log cabin in the woods. It was just a thrown together wood shack with a bunch of garbage laying all around it.

Michael Silka's cabin sat in an area off the beaten path just outside of Fairbanks.

There were these little cabins and people that had come to Alaska and didn't have much money were staying in those cabins.

The troopers were doing a well bean check on Michael Silka. Earlier, they had received a report that he had been shot and killed by his neighbor, Roger Colt.

That trooper went over and knocked on his cabin door. He didn't answer the door.

That's when the troopers walked around Michael Solka's yard. Although it was a warm late April, there was still snow on the ground. Footprints in the snow led the troopers to a three by six foot snow mount.

There were indeed blood spatters on that, but there's a moose hide hanging there, and so I don't know it could be blood from the moose.

One trooper poked at the mound of snow and then grabbed a sample of the blood to send off for testing. Both troopers then walked back to Michael Silka's front door.

They knocked again, and they heard someone moving around a little bit inside the house, and eventually a voice said, who's out there? He said, Alaska State trooper.

It went quiet for a second before the voice from inside the cabin responded.

And he said, how many of you are there?

Both troopers looked at each other, puzzled. One of them yelled back, there's two of us. Can you open the door please. The cabin door slowly opened, and a man with dark hair and a scraggly beard peeked outside.

And strangely enough, it's Michael Silka.

Much to the surprise of the troopers, the man identified himself as twenty five year old Michael Silka, the person they were told had been murdered by a neighbor.

We had no idea who Michael Silka was till all this happened.

So Silka, who the troopers believed was killed by his neighbor, Roger Colpe, was alive and Roger Colpe was missing.

Roger Coulp was a guy that disappeared a lot. He was a heavy drinker, and heavy drinkers around here just kind of wander around and during warm weather they lay down and sleep in the woods. They do all sorts of things.

The belief was Roger Culp would eventually turn up. He always did.

It's not really all that suspicious for a guy like Roger Culp to be gone from his for even a day or two, so there aren't a lot of alarms going on at this point.

Before leaving Michael Soka's cabin, the two troopers had some questions.

They found blood scared around Silka's cabin.

Alaska State Trooper Steve Heckman, and he.

Said, yeah, that's blood on the ground there. I was skinning a moose. I was skinning out a moose height or something in that. The blood was from that.

Michael Soka had butchered a moose and said he washed the hikes for some of his hunter friends. Those hides are used to make jackets, gloves, and even rope.

If you're in the bush, it would be a very common thing.

The two troopers thanked Michael Soka for his time and drove away. Michael Soka waited until they were completely out of sight. Once they were gone, he closed the door. In a cabin a couple doors down, a woman was watching what she witnessed the previous day had left her paralyzed with fear.

There was an exchange between Colp and Silka, and it was just very uncomfortable.

The previous day, that female neighbor of Michael Soka was outside chopping wood and talking with Roger Colp. The two noticed Michael Soka walked past three different times carrying a pile of guns to his car. On his final pass, Silka stopped where his two neighbors were chopping wood, grabbed a long stick, and angrily slammed it against the chopping block. He yelled, this is how you do it, and then walked back to his cabin. It was a strange and scary outburst.

There was something about him that really bothered her.

It also upset Roger Colp, who followed Silka to his cabin. A short time later. The woman chopping wood said she heard gunshots coming from Silka's cabin.

Which is not an unusual thing to hear Banks Alaska. You've been in a suburb, you'll hear that sort of thing from time to time. So she didn't think too much of it, except that Culp. She never saw him again.

When Roger Culp never turned up, that's when she guessed those gunshots coming from Michael Silka's cabin. Was Silka shooting and killing Colp. But she didn't have a phone and couldn't call the police, so she locked her door and claimed to be so scared that she couldn't leave her cabin for days. I can imagine that she felt that she was stuck out in the woods with a psychopath.

She eventually reported what she had seen.

It took her nine days to report what happened, and by the time she did, the troopers realized their first report was incorrect. It wasn't that Culp may have killed Silka, it was that Silka may have killed Colp.

There was a lot of stuff that was going on, but they got all messed up.

By the time the troopers returned to Michael Silka's cabin, he was gone.

They never found Colp. They found blood scared around Silka's cabin that was later identified as being human.

Blood, so that blood Silka said was from a moose was in fact human blood. By that point, troopers believed Michael Silka had murdered Roger Colp and left town.

Something really bad has happened, and he obviously knew we were looking for him because he got out of Dodge.

When Alaska State troopers dug into Michael Silka, theyan covered a ton. Keep in mind it's nineteen eighty four and the world was less connected.

Silka had had a warrant out for his arrest in Illinois, and nobody knew about that. It wasn't in the national computer at that time.

In nineteen eighty three, Michael Silka skipped a court hearing for a weapons violation back in Illinois. That led to a warrant being put out for the twenty five year old drifter.

And there was a caution that he was considered to be dangerous.

So let's talk about Michael Silka. Silka grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, but always dreamed of living outdoors.

He was the sort of guy that didn't hang with others. He didn't do well with other people.

That's Sergeant Jim mccannnon.

Didn't have any close friends that I recall. Everyone thought him a bit odd.

Chicago's Daily Harald newspaper reported that one former high school classmate called Silka a troubled kid who was obsessed with guns. One said he even went to school dressed like a hunter. Another said You could just picture this guy growing up to do something bad.

Michael Silka. He fashioned himself to some sort of mountain man, know, some sort of guy that could go out and live on his own.

After high school, Silka joined the army and was thrilled to be stationed at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

His job was a helicopter mechanic. Some of the other soldiers that worked with him, they described Michael Silka as the guy that would always go off on his own. They wouldn't see him for hours or maybe even days if he could get away with it. He just take a knife and a few things and then go out into the woods and try and survive. And didn't get along very well with his fellow soldiers. They thought him rather strange.

Silka became an expert shooter in the army, but a weapons incident led to his discharge. He then returned to Illinois and quickly got into trouble for carrying a rifle through town.

You know, he's got a criminal record, but they're not really serious crimes, but they generally involved firearms.

By Silka's twenty fifth birthday, he had been picked up up for a series of arrests for burglary, shoplifting, resisting arrest, and unlawful use of a weapon.

Not that he used them against people, but that he always had a firearm of one sword or another in his possession near him.

With court appearances pending at home, Soka left Chicago and drove north into Canada. That's where he was stopped by the police. They found his truck loaded with camping gear and firearms.

They were interested in him enough that they took him to their local headquarters, interviewed him and photographed him, and then let him go. No one ever communicated that to us.

Michael Silka then headed to Fairbanks, where miscommunication allowed him to slip out of the reach of the police, and the consequences would destroy an entire town. The oil boom brought the first wave of people to Fairbanks during the nineteen sixties, but there's also a completely different group of people that are attracted to the area.

This is the end of the road. Basically, it's the farthest north everything.

Sergeant Jim McCann was an Alaska State trooper stationed in Fairbanks.

I've got a lot of experience living here at the end of the road. You know that attracts some of the finest people and unfortunately, some of the worst. It's where some people come to take their last shot at life, or to live their dreams or their fantasies.

Every spring, Locals and Fairbanks spot the newest crop of what they call end of the roads.

There's been a lot of bad people come to the end of the road here and commit their crimes.

One such end of the roat was Michael Silka. After high school, Silka joined the Army. I was stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska, which fit with his personality. Sandwiched in between his army stint, the twenty five year old racked up a handful of arrest in Illinois, mainly misdemeanor charges involving weapons.

I got into a situation where he didn't show up for court there was a warrant issued for him.

Instead, Silka drove up to Fairbanks, where he later was suspected in the disappearance of his neighbor, Roger Cole. To make matters even harder for police, Silka then disappeared and then on May eighteenth, nineteen eighty four, Sergeant mccannn responded to a disturbing.

Call our clerical staff called me and said, Sergeant mccahn, there's something going on in Manly Hot Springs.

Manly Hont Springs is a small mining town some one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Fairbanks.

What they told me it was that everyone that had gone down to the landing in Manly Hot Springs seems to have disappeared.

At the time, only about seventy people lived there, and each spring, locals head to the boat landing on the Tananaw River to watch the ice break up.

People just go down there to look, especially when you're living in a little place like Manly but not much else to look at. It's quite the sight to see, really when the ice goes out. But everybody that went down to look at the river seems to have disappeared.

A woman reported that her husband and his friend went to the boat landing and never returned. A second person reported that a man, his pregnant wife, and their two year old son also went to the landing and didn't return.

There was a whole family, a husband, a wife, and a two year old child.

And then came a report that a third and fourth man were also missing. So for a town of seventy people to have seven people go missing. That's ten percent of the population.

It was bizarre to think that that had happened. I took action at that point.

Sergeant McCann flew out there by helicopter and began searching for clues. At the boat.

Launch, I found one forty four magnum cartridge case, and I saw a number of dark spots on the ground in the dirt that I knew could be blood.

A nearby tree and a boat parked at the launch were both splattered with blood. Along the river bank, troopers noticed drag marks and more blood.

Clearly bodies had been brought up to the edge of the river and pushed off into the river.

A handful of cars were parked at the boat launch, including a beat up Dodge Sedan with an Illinois license plate that belonged to Michael Silka.

And when I saw Michael Silk's license plate there, it was certainly alarming. We did some looking at Silka's car, and we saw a lot of his provisions, some reloading equipment and that sort of thing. It concerned me enough that I thought he's going to come back down that river to get his provisions.

Sergeant McCann and his team spent the night waiting and hoping Michael Silka and the seven missing people would return.

I have no facts at that point to tell me that these people have been murdered, but I've been to these rodeos before. We know what happened. Now it's really confirming that this guy named Michael Silka killed everyone that came down to that landing.

The following more more investigators join the search. Here's Alaska State Trooper Steve Heckman.

It was a horrible situation, and the fact that there were a little kid and a woman involved in it made it even worse. In my mind, you have to say to yourself, who does something like this? You know, there's no motive that would make any sense whatsoever to me, at least personally. I could never find a motive in something like that that I would care to even try to understand.

Trooper Heckman joined a team of divers that comb the dangerous Tananall River.

I knew the current was going to be strong, which it was. I knew the visibility would probably be zero, which it was.

The glacier fed tanan All River was nearly a mile wide and so full of silt that it could easily drag you underwater.

You can be the world's best swimmer, but unless you have a floatation device on or something, you're going to go under, you're going to go under fast.

If these seven people were disposed of in the river, he knew the odds of finding their bodies were slim to none.

We were hopeful, but our expectations weren't great. Even one would have been a victory for us, But there again, we didn't find a thing.

You hope that these people are going to show up someplace else, that they got on a boat and went down river, But I didn't think so.

The following morning, Sergeant Jim McCann received his first lead.

I had received information that Selka had or may have had a silver canoe, a silver grumm and canoe.

Those sleek canoes were popular in the seventies and eighties, and the easiest way for troopers to find that canoe was by air.

I gave instructions to the pilot what we're looking for. That this guy, Michael Selka, may have murdered all these people could be on the river in a silver grumm and canoe. So when I got undo the helicopter, I sat in the back with my sixteen machine gun just in case.

Sergeant McCann and two Special Emergency Reaction Teams took to the sky and a pair of helicopters in search of Silka.

As the leader of the Special Emergency Reaction Team our swap team, I made it very clear to our members that this isn't Vietnam. We're not flying around in helicopters seeing stuff and shooting were law enforcement. We'll only return fire if we were fired upon.

From the sky. The two teams very quickly spotted a campsite.

A couple of our fishing wildlife pilots reported seeing a tent, a man standing outside the tent, and a silver grumm and canoe beached right near the camp.

The helicopter found a place to land, and three troopers made their way through the thick forests to the surrounding campsite. With their guns drawn, they shouted to whoever was inside the tent to show themselves. To their surprise, two men emerged.

There are two bear hunters, and they're not Michael Filke.

Before the troopers and two bear hunters could catch their collective breath, another call.

Came in almost simultaneously. Another trooper spotted a silver grumbing canoe with a single individual going upriver.

With their description from this call, it had to be Silka.

In a situation like this, it's clear to us that this is not going to end well. The chances of apprehending Michael Filke were slim to none. Now, anybody that has come to the end of the road and and then gotten to the point where he can kill all these people, including a small child, there's very little chance he'll give himself up, that he'll allow us to apprehend him to take him into custody. This is going to be a gunfight, and we hope that it only ends poorly for Silka, not for us.

On a spring day in nineteen eighty four, Sergeant Jim mccannn got a call that something was happening in the small town of Manly Hot Springs, Alaska. Seven people had disappeared near a boat landing in town. None of them returned. Part at the boat landing was a car belonging to Michael Silka, who had already been on Sergeant Jim McCann's radar.

So at this point, clearly we can assume that Michael Zilka is it's not just a murderer, but he's a mass murderer.

They also suspected Silka killed his neighbor, Roger Colp, who was last seen going into Silka's cabin three weeks earlier.

We don't know that we'd never found Roger Colpe's body, but it's logical that he would have done that and probably took him right across the road and dumped him in the Tanana River.

With Roger Colp and seven others also presumed to be dead, two helicopters filled with specially trained teams of Alaska State Troopers went to apprehend Michael Silka.

We have a not only a murderer, but somebody who is has made his decisions. He is committed to going out the hard way. He snapped. He's gone beyond and there's no coming back from where he is now, no coming back.

Two sets of helicopters closed in on a person believed to be Michael Silka. He was spotted in an aluminum canoe about twenty five miles away.

I can't imagine he's going to throw his hands up and say I give up.

Silka's boat encountered a down tree across the river that prevented him from passing, so he docked his boat alongside that tree.

We see somebody in a boat who turns out to be Michael Silka.

Lieutenant John Myers was on the helicopter with Sergeant McCann.

We had heard the stories about how good he could shoot, so we know we're probably looking for a well armed, good shooting murderer who had no conscience.

With both helicopters hovering, Michael Silka ducked out of sight between three birch trees.

The pilot just kind of swooped down whether the people in helicopter could get a better look, and then a firefight broke out.

Within seconds, bullets were flying in each direction.

We could see that Michael Silka was shooting. We knew that our people were shooting. In fact, we could see bullets splashing around him.

But there was a problem.

Imagine yourself in any kind of a situation where you have the knowledge, the equipment, the training to do something really important and you can't do it.

That's where I was.

This had to be chaotic and the chances of friendly fire were high.

Now I'm standing there with a fully automatic rifle in my hands, and I mean even if I wanted to and tried, I couldn't do it.

The two were left to helplessly watch what unfolded below them.

Silka was acting furtively, looking up at them and acting very agitated, concerned. He was doing his best to escape.

On the riverbank below, Silka was trying to conceal himself from the trooper's vision.

Then I heard what is perhaps one of the worst things I ever heard. Was our pilot going ten seventy nine ast. That means a dead trooper.

A trooper in the other helicopter was hit by one of Michael Silka's bullets.

My friend Droy Duncan was murdered, his head was gone, and the helicopter itself was blood spattered and bone fragments, and it was a horrible scene. My partner and I were just shocked, I mean totally shocked.

With one trooper dead. That helicopter then left the scene and raced to a local hospital. That left Sergeant McCann and Lieutenant Myers to find Michael Silka.

We couldn't see Silka anymore, so in the meantime, we're circling around it, and now we didn't know if Silka was dead, wounded, or ran, but we knew he was. He probably was hit and then we located him.

He was in the water.

Michael Silka was down in a fierce gunfight that had lasted less than a minute. Trooper shot and killed Michael Silka just seconds after he killed one of their own, Trooper Troy Duncan.

I mean, Troy was a remarkable person. Everybody liked him, everybody trusted him. Everybody was hurt by his death. But the fact is everybody did what they were supposed to do and we lost one and a really good person, good man.

The thirty four year old ex marine had a wife and two children. His remains were flown to Texas, where he was buried next to his mother. Here's Sergeant Jim mccannon again.

I can still see Troy Duncan's face, his smile. Just a big old X marine, you know, and a likable guy, good trooper murdered. People don't understand what law enforcement officers go through, what they carry with them for the rest of their lives.

After a long investigation, troopers concluded what happened at the docks in May of nineteen eighty four, and the details are really unbelievable. Michael Silka shot and killed a first victim at the boat launch. He then threw the victim's body into the river. From there he killed everyone else in sight. His motive baffled Lieutenant Myers.

What makes you decide to kill everybody to see? How do you get that way? I don't have a clue. If really, I don't know. He was committed to dying.

He was committed to killing as many troopers as he could before he went out, and he fired three shots rapidly, you know, one taking Trooper Troy Duncan right in the middle of his face. These things certainly stayed with me.

Troopers believe Michael Silka was able to fire off three shots before he was killed, and.

The other two when I examined the helicopter later, they were right next to the hydraulic lines that kept that helicopter in the air, And some would say that he was trying to take down the helicopter.

The troopers believe Michael Silka snapped. Over the next few weeks, planes flew back and forth over the river in search of the victims.

The Tanana River has a tendency to swallow up bodies. It's a dangerous river. And these people could be any place.

A month later, only four of the seven bodies were recovered, including one body that turned up seventy five miles downstream. None of the other victims' bodies were ever found, including Roger Colp. For those in Manly Hot Springs, it's not.

The peaceful little place that it used to be, you know before this. I mean I could drive into Manly and I just people wave at j It's not the same. These things have a way to resurface in your mind, that memory of these things never dies.

Further investigation led troopers to next Silka to a murder in North Dakota, a pair of killings in Canada, and the murder of two others in Manly Hot Springs. With no known motive, Michael Silka left behind a million unanswered questions with no one to give them answers. The grieving small town took out their frustration on a physical representation of Selka.

The car probably should have been impounded, but in one respect, maybe it was a good thing. We left it there. They beat it with hammers, they set it on fire, and then they drove over it with a bulldozer, and then they pushed it in the river. I mean, I think that was kind of their way to show some finality to the whole thing. That was something that they just felt they needed to do. Gave them some way to show their emotions.

Next time on American Homicide, just days after our college student moves into her new apartment, she disappears. I'm Sloane Glass. We'll be in Angriagje, Alaska for our final two episodes this season of American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of