It's the middle of January, the darkest, coldest and most depressing time of year in Alaska.

The days are short, maybe five hours at the most, and it's a yearly

cycle that takes from getting used to, even for the most grizzled of Alaskan residents.

In fact, one of the tricks Alaskans used to get through the long winters is to stay busy,

and that's exactly what I'm doing tonight, studying up on the history of Alaskan cold cases.

Although my main interest lies in trying to understand the unsolved disappearance of Aaron Gilbert,

tonight I'm looking into cold cases in Alaska that have been solved. Soldatna, Alaska is a pass-through town on the drive from Anchorage to Homer. Settled after World

War II, Saldatna was selected as the site for where the Stirling Highway Bridge would cross the

Keenai River. After oil was discovered at the nearby Swanson River in 1957, Saldana started to grow,

and in 1960, the settlement was incorporated into a city.

But oil wasn't the only draw to this otherwise small town.

Indeed, the Kenai River, which flows through the middle of Saldatna,

is one of the world's most famous salmon streams,

drawing thousands of local anglers and tourists each summer. In fact, it was on this

river on May 17, 1985, that local car dealership owner, Les Anderson, hooked into a mighty

king salmon that would give him the fight of a lifetime. By the time he landed the fish, he'd set the world record for the largest king salmon ever caught,

97 pounds.

But as the town celebrated this historic feat, residents were also wrestling with a recent crime,

one that was much darker than the murky waters of the Kenai River.

The Kee Nye River. A few months before, on March 20th, to be exact, a 65-year-old woman named Opal Fairchild was found dead in her home.

She'd been shot once in the head, the victim of an apparent robbery gone bad.

Although authorities in 1985 initially found latent fingerprints at the scene of the crime,

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