Deadly Passion

What would you do for love? What if someone stands between you and your heart’s desire, and the person in the middle is your true love’s estranged spouse? What if the woman you love and her spouse try to rekindle the flames of their damaged marriage, and you must think of them together? Would you accept defeat and quietly walk away, or would you take a more proactive approach? Jim Wheeler decided the best path to his true love’s heart was to blow up her husband’s truck with her husband in it.

The town of Wasilla, Alaska, sits 43 miles northeast of Anchorage, hugging the northern point of Cook Inlet and nestled in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in the southcentral part of the state. Today, nearly 11,000 people live in Wasilla, but in 1993, the population was less than 5,000.

On October 18, 1993, a bomb exploded in Robert “Hank” Dawson’s pickup moments after he entered the gates of the Alcantra armory in Wasilla, where he worked. Dawson, a 50-year-old National Guardsman, died instantly from the blast. The Alaska State Troopers, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms quickly began investigating the explosion, and they soon discovered remnants of a bomb and a radio receiver in Dawson’s demolished truck. Authorities knew someone planted a bomb in Hank Dawson’s truck and then detonated it with a remote-controlled device when Dawson drove through the gates of the armory.

Who hated Dawson enough to obliterate him with a bomb? Calls soon flooded trooper headquarters suggesting authorities put James Wheeler at the top of their suspect list.

James Wheeler, 62, moved to Alaska in 1952 while in the Air Force. In 1956, he began serving as a law enforcement officer in the Alaska Territorial Guard. His original role in the Guard was to enforce Fish and Game regulations during the era before Alaska became a state. Wheeler retired from the Guard in 1972, and after working as a security guard for a few years, he became an expediter for the Anchorage street department. Esther, his wife, worked as a secretary at Elmendorf Air Force Base, and the couple lived near Cheney Lake in Anchorage until they retired in 1988. Wheeler’s son, Gary, became an investigator…