Month: November 2009

  • Spooky Foreshadowing

    …or maybe just a simple case of premeditated suicide by cop.

    It’s a two-part story.  The second part occurred in the Wasilla area yesterday, November 14.  A man called 911 and said that Nora Jean York, “out of control,” had been threatening him with a shotgun.  State Troopers responded.

    According to Troopers,

    During the call, dispatchers could hear York talking in the background as she walked in and out of the room.  “(She) threatened several times that, now that he had called the police, she was going to try to get the cops to kill her,”
    …
    When troopers arrived at the cabin… York was already outside with a shotgun in her hands. Troopers could see a semi-automatic handgun in her pocket.

    York refused to put down the guns. Troopers tried three times to zap her with Tasers, but seconds later she pointed the shotgun toward two troopers, Holloway said.

    Troopers fired on her at 2:15 a.m. as she stood on the porch. York was pronounced dead at the scene.

    The other part of the story began for reporter Julia O’Malley about six weeks previously and fifty miles or so away in Anchorage, while running on the Coastal Trail, when she noticed that something new had been added to a trailside cross.

    It sits at the head of a small rock-covered mound on the other side of a chain-link fence near a city sewer building. It carries three names. The first two seem like pets: “Missy, 1977-1992, Gone but not forgotten;” “Missy Too, 1996-2009, a special baby, RIP.”

    The last is different. It says “Nora Jean York, 1951-2009,” written in permanent marker. Underneath that, it says, “ALONE.”

    I visited the cross six weeks ago on a day when thick fog hung over the inlet. I could tell someone had been there recently. A daisy had been placed on the mound.

    Later that day, I searched for an obituary for Nora Jean York but found none. I tried a couple of phone numbers but they didn’t work. I put her name in a public records database. Little came up except a name change record from 1993. That wouldn’t have been a big deal except Nora Jean York used to have a male name, Johnnie Uhl. It appeared she was born a man, but some time in the early ’90s began living as a woman.

    Julia O’Malley investigated further and turned up more info on Johnnie Uhl/Nora York, that goes further toward explaining her fatal Saturday morning confrontation with Alaska State Troopers than does any of the information released by Trooper spokesmen.  It can be found here.