Search & Rescue

The family of a Juneau man who has been missing for more than two weeks is offering a $5,000 reward for information about where to find him. 

Family, friends and law enforcement have been looking for Doug Farnsworth since he went missing on Sept. 29.  His older sister, Kiersten Farnsworth said she and other family members believe he is dead. 

“We want his body and we’ll give whoever helps us find it $5,000,” she said. “We’ve had hearsay that he’s passed and that his body was moved.”  

The truck Doug Farnsworth was believed to be driving was found by the Perseverance Trailhead about a week ago. When that happened, Alaska State Troopers, Coast Guard and a local canine search group combed the area for him but didn’t find any trace so they called off the active search. 

Kiersten Farnsworth flew up from Arizona earlier this month to find her brother. She said she’s had a ton of community support. A lot of family and friends have gone out looking for him. There’s a Facebook group where people post about places they’ve searched. Some family friends took their boat and drove it up and down the coastline looking for him. 

“Doug was pretty well known, so it’s definitely — it’s amazing to see so much community support,” she said. 

She says there is footage of the truck driving up Basin Road around 4:31 a.m. on Sept. 29, but it’s too dark to see who is in the truck. She asks that anyone who may have video footage from Basin Road or Gold Creek from a few hours before or after that time reach out to her or Juneau Police. 

Juneau police have a detective assigned to the case. Lt. Krag Campbell wrote in an email that they’re following what leads they have and don’t have any update on the investigation at this point. 

Anyone who knows anything about where he might be can make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line online or at 907-523-7700.

This story has been updated to reflect that Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell responded to a phone call seeking more information about the investigation in Doug Farnsworth’s disappearance. 

Juneau police confirmed Tuesday that a body found last week was Joseph Clayton, who had been missing since late August.

Clayton went missing on Aug. 20 after going on a hike and never returning. Four days later, some of his belongings were found at an abandoned campsite near the University of Alaska Southeast.

The Juneau Police Department on Oct. 6 released information that a man was found dead in the woods across from the Auke Bay Ferry Terminal. Police said there was an old campsite nearby — a different campsite than the one found near UAS — and it looked like the man’s body had been there for some time.

At the time, the police said detectives collected clothing and items found at the campsite. Police said they could not identify the man’s body because of how long he had been outside.

Police gave Clayton’s family a call to let them know that a body had been found. After receiving that call, a family member posted on Facebook that Clayton had been found.

At the time of the post, the body had not been identified yet. Police got the call from the medical examiner’s office Tuesday morning that the body was Joseph Clayton and notified his family.

This story has been updated with more information from Juneau police.

There are two recent missing persons cases in Juneau. Officially, neither person has been found yet. 

One of them is Joseph Clayton. He has been missing since he went on a hike on Aug. 20. Four days later, some of his belongings were found at an abandoned campsite near the University of Alaska Southeast. 

Volunteers searched for him for days and Alaska State Troopers used dogs to search the area, but they were not able to find Clayton. 

There has been no update from the Juneau Police Department on that case since. The silver alert activated for Clayton was canceled on Sept. 22.

Another person was reported missing more recently — Douglas Farnsworth. His family reported him missing on Sept. 29. 

 

His sister Kiersten Farnsworth thinks he might be dead. She flew up from Arizona to try and find her brother’s body. 

Farnsworth’s family told Juneau police that he was driving someone else’s truck. That truck was later found by Perseverance Trail. A Coast Guard helicopter searched that area last weekend during a break in the weather, but they did not find anything.

Canine search teams were not able to pick up Farnsworth’s scent in the area. His sister does not think he is in that area either. 

On Wednesday, a body was found near the Auke Bay Ferry Terminal. The Alaska Medical Examiner’s Office has not identified the body yet. JPD is not able to comment on whether the body is related to either of the missing persons cases until they get word from the medical examiner. 

Farnsworth’s family does not think the body found is his. They are still asking people in Juneau to look out for him. 

Anyone who knows something about a missing persons case can contact 907-586-0600 or make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line.

It has been more than a week since anyone heard from Juneau resident Doug Farnsworth. A lot of people have been out looking for him, including the Alaska State Troopers, the Coast Guard and a local canine search group.

Juneau police say they have a detective assigned to the case. Farnsworth’s older sister, Kiersten, is in Juneau searching for him now. She believes he’s dead and is asking for anyone in the community who may know something about his disappearance to call.

Kiersten Farnsworth flew up from Arizona to find him. She said she knew something was wrong when his social media went dark — she reported it on Sept. 27. 

“My brother is a very, very huge media person. He makes a ton of TikToks. He’s always on Facebook,” she said. “He called my mom and he said he was going to come home, and he didn’t.”

She’s been able to find some details about where he was on the last night anyone heard from him. 

“He called one friend around one in the morning, and they didn’t answer. He called another girl at 3:15 a.m. and tried to flirt with her, and that’s pretty much their whole conversation,” Kiersten Farnsworth said, laughing. “Then after that, it just goes silent.”

Farnsworth said state troopers have been helping with the search. Juneau police said earlier this week that they assigned a detective to the case, but Farnsworth said they haven’t been very helpful. 

“JPD actually told me, they don’t look for people that don’t want to be found,” she said. “So I wasn’t too impressed with JPD.”

The truck that Doug Farnsworth was driving was found up near the Perseverance Trail, and Kiersten Farnsworth said a lot of people have been up there looking. 

“But at this point, we don’t think that’s the area where he’s going to be located,” she said.

Farnsworth said she’s found no evidence that her brother is in that area of town. She didn’t want to get too deeply into the reasons why, but she said her family believes that he is dead. 

She said she’s driven up and down the highway out to Auke Bay looking for a place where he could be. She wants the community to know that anyone who knows something about the case should call. She says the family needs closure. 

“He could be wherever — I have no problem driving to wherever. Yesterday, I climbed down the bank of Thane and moved a tarp,” she said.  “My body hurts really bad.”

Doug Farnsworth was living with and taking care of his mother. Now that he’s gone, it’s hard for her to leave without knowing where he is. 

“I live in Arizona, and my mom lives with my brother. She really, really relied on my brother, and now she wants to come back with me. But we’re stuck at that point where she doesn’t want to feel like she’s abandoning him. Because it’s not abandonment. It’s us knowing he’s gone,” Kiersten Farnsworth said.

Kiersten and Doug grew up in Juneau, in Lemon Creek. They’re Lingít. She laughs when she talks about how many cousins they have in town. 

She said a lot of people in town know him because he was an active part of the community. 

“He brings people out of their shells. He worked at Gastineau for a long time with troubled kids, and they all loved him. He’d flip attitude straight around. He went by Dougie Fresh. He made hilarious Halloween costumes, just really animated people — people just really liked him,” she said.

She said she’s happy to see so many people come together and help look for him. 

Anyone who knows anything about where he might be can make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line online or at 907-523-7700. 

A Juneau man has been missing for more than a week. Family and friends have been posting on social media and searching for Douglas Farnsworth for several days. 

Farnsworth’s sister, who goes by Kiki Dawn, describes him as a non-stop poster on social media. “He would never stop or just vanish like this,” she wrote in a message. 

On TikTok, where he has nearly 11,000 followers, he last posted in late August.  

Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell said the department assigned a detective to Farnsworth’s case on Oct. 1. That detective talked to family and found out that Farnsworth was driving someone else’s truck. That truck was found near the Perseverance Trailhead area by the Flume Trail. 

“That in itself was just unusual because the keys were left in it, there were some personal items belonging to Mr. Farnsworth in it,” Campbell said.  

After the truck was found, Juneau police contacted the Alaska State Troopers to launch a search. 

“They didn’t think he was out like, hiking or anything,” Campbell said. “There [were] reasons to believe that he wasn’t doing that but maybe he had gone into the woods and may need some assistance in getting back.” 

Troopers and SEADOGS were searching near downtown on Friday and into Saturday. The Coast Guard was doing flyovers of downtown looking for Farnsworth. 

But Campbell says they didn’t find any trace of him. Campbell said SEADOGS didn’t pick up a scent.  

“Then you’re just kind of blindly searching in the woods, and it’s just such a huge area to cover. That’s not something they’re typically doing,” he said. 

So for now, Campbell said Troopers have called off their active search, though he said they can start it up again if they get new information. 

Campbell said JPD still has a detective investigating the case.  

One of the last times Farnsworth was seen, he was contacted by Juneau Police on Sept. 27 about a misdemeanor Driving Under the Influence charge. But Campbell said he doesn’t think that’s the last time anyone saw Farnsworth — he said they got a report that someone saw him driving in town on the 28th. 

Farnsworth’s sister, Kiki Dawn, has been trying to organize search efforts via social media.

Now, she said she is traveling to Juneau. She says he wasn’t an avid camper or hiker. 

“We need to find my brother,” she said. 

Campbell says anyone who knows something about Farnsworth’s disappearance can contact 586-0600 or make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line. 

Search and rescue authorities in Yakutat say unusually high flows on the Situk River claimed the lives of two visiting fishermen when their boat flooded and capsized on Sept. 24.

A third man on the boat was safely rescued.

Authorities have identified the two deceased men as Michael Hunt, Sr. of Milford, Pennsylvania, and Richard Kowal, Sr. of Port Jarvis, New York. A third passenger on the boat, Douglas Koehn, survived the incident.

All three men were frequent visitors to Yakutat, and both Hunt and Kowal were well known in the community.

The Yakutat Police Department received word at around 9:45 a.m. on Sept. 24 that a boat had capsized on the Situk River about nine miles outside of the city.

Yakutat Police Chief Jim Capra says the men were traveling upriver in a 15-foot jet boat when it became pinned while attempting to avoid logs in the river.

“The water had risen to, not flood stage, but a very high stage overnight,” Capra said. “They probably had experience at that river level, but the flows are probably twice as fast — and the river’s normally not very fast — but it is always full of log jams and log piles. It looks like they misjudged the speed of the current.”

Capra said the boat took on water and capsized after crashing into a pile of logs. Both Koehn and Hunt became pinned in the water, but only Koehn was able to free himself.

“Michael was pinned just downstream on that same log, the same log the boat was on and, and didn’t make it,” Capra said.

A pair of sport fishermen passing by spotted both the boat and Hunt but were unable to retrieve him due to the strong current.

“It was just too dangerous with the current. So they went downstream looking for anybody else or any debris and they found Doug, got Doug to the landing and raced into town,” Capra said.

Koehn was taken to the Yakutat Community Health Clinic to be evaluated and was later released.

The fishermen called first responders, who organized a search. According to Capra, a group of volunteer firefighters, searchers and medics retrieved Hunt’s body around two hours after the accident and continued the search for Kowal.

It took four more days to find him.

“Other than a couple of small items, no sign of Richard, so we concentrated on the high probability search areas with probes, poles and an underwater camera on a probe looking under and through the log jams,” Capra said.

One of the search teams found Kowal’s body on Sept. 27, near the accident site.

Capra says over 50 volunteers and first responders aided in the search and rescue efforts.