A Car Bomb in Downtown Anchorage

The Pfeil Murders

Neil Mackay was ruthless in his personal and business dealings, and associates learned not to cross him. When a car bomb instantly killed his ex-wife, Muriel Pfeil, the police knew Mackay had planned her murder, but they could not find enough evidence to charge him with the crime.

Neil Mackay grew up in California, and shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the military and became a Marine pilot and flight instructor. According to Marine records, Mackay suffered severe injuries from a plane crash during the war, receiving back, shoulder, and head wounds. Doctors were forced to place a steel plate in his skull to repair it.

Mackay married his high school sweetheart, Barbara, and after the war, he enrolled in law school in California. Once he’d received his law degree, he and Barbara moved to Anchorage, where he took a job as vice president of the First National Bank of Anchorage.

When Mackay attended high school in California, he’d worked as a driver for a mortuary, and from what he saw, he believed he could make a fortune in the mortuary business. After passing the Alaska bar exam, allowing him to practice law in the state, he opened a mortuary on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage and had his law office in the back of the business. Before long and in accordance with his plan, Neil Mackay became a millionaire.

After twenty-five years of marriage, Barbara Mackay filed for divorce from Neil in 1965. Neil opposed the divorce and refused to sign a settlement agreement for three years, until ordered to do so by a judge. Forty-five-year-old Neil Mackay did not remain alone for long. He soon married thirty-three-year-old Muriel Pfeil.

Muriel was the daughter of a wealthy Anchorage couple who had made their fortune in the local real estate market. Muriel owned a successful travel agency in downtown Anchorage. Like Neil, Muriel had a temper, and the two often clashed. To make things worse, Neil suffered seizures and had severe headaches from the injuries he’d sustained in the plane accident in the war. To ease his pain, he took powerful painkillers, and the narcotics fueled his temper.

In 1973, Neil and Muriel had a son named Scotty, but two months after Scotty’s birth, the couple…