By Michael Armstrong

Homer Independent Press

Caution: This article contains details about violence against women that may be disturbing to some readers.

The man who killed Duffy Murnane in Homer in 2019 became a leading suspect only after police investigators, acting on a tip, uncovered his background history of violence and rape — a history that had gone undetected in background checks by the local mental health living facility where Kirby Calderwood met Murnane and earned her trust.

Matt Haney, lead investigator in the kidnapping and murder case, spelled out new details of the case — and some of its frustrating stumbles — at a community forum, “Duffy’s Journey to Justice,” organized here on Saturday by Murnane’s family.

The forum included a presentation by Mike Huelsman, Murnane’s uncle, on what the family saw as failures in a criminal justice system that took two and a half years to bring an arrest, and then allowed Calderwood’s prosecution to drag on for nearly four more years. 

Murnane’s step-father, Ed Berg, and Christina Whiting, a Homer writer who helped support the family during the years-long ordeal, provided personal and family background on Duffy’s life — including the story of the “Loved and Lost Bench” built in her memory by the late Homer artist Brad Hughes.

Ingrid Johnson, a University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor of justice, gave a talk Saturday providing context for Murnane’s murder, noting that Alaska is the state with the highest per-capita rate of women murdered by men. 

About 80 people attended Saturday’s forum at the Kachemak Bay Campus, with others watching by zoom.

Calderwood, 36, is to be sentenced July 1 in Homer Superior Court. In February he finally pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder, while the state dropped other charges, including first-degree murder and kidnapping.

As Haney recounted the police investigation Saturday, he said it took 19 months after Murnane’s disappearance before Calderwood’s name even came up.

Anesha “Duffy” Murnane vanished off the streets of Homer on Oct. 17, 2019, while walking to a medical appointment from her residence at Main Tree Assisted Housing on Main Street. 

Haney, a former Homer police officer, was contracted as a special investigator in the case the following March, working with Homer officer Jessica Poling.

Homer police asked South Peninsula Behavioral Health Services for a list of all the men who worked at Main Tree. 

Calderwood was not on the list. Haney said Saturday they were later told that he was left off the list because he only worked part-time.

“There are parts of any case that are frustrating, and that was one of many,” Haney said.

In an email, Jay Bechtol, Chief Executive Officer of South Peninsula Behavioral Health Services, wrote, “SPBHS is grateful to the work that the Homer PD, Matt Haney, and the community did to bring this matter to justice. It has been a horrible experience for our community and even worse for Duffy’s family and those who were close to her. I’m always glad to see community members coordinating events like this to support the family’s and the community’s healing process.”

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INVESTIGATION UNFOLDS

Police became aware of Calderwood and his violent background after an otherwise irrelevant May 2021 Crimestopper tip. Pursuing that tip, Haney said he learned Calderwood had been investigated for sexual assault while serving in the U.S. Army. He said the Army stalled on giving over the report.

“They didn’t provide me the actual hard copy until they said it was gonna take, you know, months, years. And I made one phone call to an FBI agent, and I had it in my hand the next day,” Haney said.

Haney interviewed two ex-wives and other women involved with Calderwood both Outside and in Alaska, “and the picture that was being developed was, he was very violent against women,” Haney said. Some of the women were scared to talk to Haney, afraid Calderwood would find out. Those alleged incidents, including torture and rapes, were never reported, never criminally charged, and never showed up in criminal justice computers used for background checks.



Bechtol said SPBHS does criminal background checks on all employees, contractors, volunteers and interns.

“This includes criminal and civil databases across Alaska and the Country: sex offender data bases, court data bases, juvenile offender data bases and more. If the potential employee has any records in any of those data bases, that individual is not allowed to work for SPBHS,” he wrote. “Further, if at any time during their employment, an employee is arrested for a barrier crime (not convicted, arrested), the state will notify SPBHS and that employee will not be allowed to work for SPBHS.”

Investigators interviewed Calderwood in May 2021, in what Haney called a “soft” interview. Summoned for a second interview, Calderwood told police  they needed to talk to his attorney. Then he left Homer and moved to Ogden, Utah. 

“Now that was more than a clue,” Haney said. “I mean, when you flee the state that you’ve been living in for a number of years, and at the same time, he got married, and he flees the state.”

One year later, in April 2022, a person made a tip to CrimeStoppers and then followed up with Homer police to make sure they got the emailed tip. 

“It gave details that we had never heard of before, facts of the crime, the crime scene and other information, and so with that information, Officer Poling and I then went and found the crime scene,” he said. “It fit exactly the description.”

Haney declined Saturday to name the key tipster, but she was  identified in the February plea agreement as Calderwood’s then wife, Sharon Stewart. 

Haney went to Ogden in early May 2022 and interviewed the tipster, and she provided more information that enabled Haney and Ogden police to file search warrants on Calderwood, his home and his car. They found evidence linking Calderwood to Murnane, including a Timex wristwatch she wore.

Luckily, Haney said, Calderwood was in jail as they served the warrants. Ogden police had earlier pulled him over while he drove in a school zone and saw firearms in his car. In Ogden, it’s illegal to drive with firearms in a school zone. Calderwood was arrested on that charge while Haney prepared a criminal complaint charging him with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. He has been in custody since at Wildwood Pretrial Facility in Kenai.

Haney revealed Saturday that an FBI forensic investigation provided DNA evidence that Calderwood and Murnane were at the crime scene at the same time. Early in his investigation, Haney interviewed Murnane’s family, and they provided investigators items such as hairbrushes that would have her DNA.

“Collecting items for future DNA is hard for the family, because you’re basically saying that … you know, your daughter has not survived,” Haney said.

In response to a question Saturday, Haney said there was no evidence that Calderwood had been involved in any other murders.

“All of us put together a really detailed timeline of where he had been stationed, where he had lived growing up, and we could find no direct evidence of actual homicide,” Haney said. “We did find direct evidence of horrific assaults and those kind of things, but I have no evidence that he had actually murdered anyone else.”

JUSTICE DELAYED

Huelsman, Murnane’s uncle, said the family agreed to the plea of second-degree murder because it avoided a trial and further delays, and it guaranteed an 87-year sentence, with no chance of parole until Calderwood is around 90 years old. In pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Calderwood admitted he caused Murnane’s death but not that he intended to kill her.

In his talk, Huelsman raised what he saw as two failures in the Alaska criminal justice system. 

“They need to do better on catching criminals, and they need to do better on adjudicating them,” he said.

Key to catching criminals is “a strong, robust crime lab,” Huelsman said. “Crime labs take highly skilled people, and they demand high wages. … So we need to have the best possible crime lab in Alaska.”

He expressed frustration at the slow pace of bringing Calderwood to trial. It took almost four years from his arrest before Calderwood pleaded guilty. Huelsman said the family came up with a strategy to put pressure on the judicial system: court watchers, a group of about 20 volunteers who began attending hearings in person.



“You came to show that you cared and you had a kind of a watchful presence,” he said. “… And when we started doing that, the process started moving.” 

Huelsman criticized Rule 45, the state’s speedy trial rule. Under court rules, defendants have the right to be tried within 120 days. However, they can waive Rule 45 and stretch out going to trial for months and sometimes years. He presented a slide showing that of homicide cases, 95% are resolved through plea agreements while 5% go to trial. Some of those 5% believe they’re innocent, he said — but not all.

“Some of these people that do these kinds of terrible crimes are interested in control, shall we say, and they feel out of control because now they’re in jail, and if they can say, well, I want a trial, then they’re they’re back in control, so they’re going to lose, but it’s very expensive,” he said.

Johnson gave an overview of the problem of male violence against women, called gender-based violence in criminology research. The national rate for murders of women by men is 1.34 per 100,000, she said, while in Alaska it’s 3.43 murders per 100,000.

For non-fatal gender-based violence, and based on victim surveys, in her research Johnson said about 25% of rapes are reported to police and 10% result in a conviction. That means of all rapes reported or not, ony 2.5% lead to a conviction.

So how can violence against women be reduced? Johnson asked. Self-protection and bystander intervention help, she said, but what she thought would have the most effect is the certainty of justice. 

“But what we know in the United States is that punishment for gender-based violence is not certain,” she said.

Certainty can mean making it more comfortable for victims to report, giving police more support for things like units that specialize in investigating sexual violence and providing more prosecutors so cases don’t get dropped and go to disposition sooner. Johnson cited an article by Kyle Hopkins for Pro Publica and the Anchorage Daily News on issues with delays in adjudicating cases.

Johnson also suggested another solution: public documentation of perpetrators. That can be things like Alaska Court View, an online resource to look up potential offenders, but also something Johnson called “the whisper network.”

“So women know, they know who’s out there, right? They know their perpetrators are still living in their communities, or they’re living in another community in Alaska, they know who these people are, and they’re sharing that information because the official systems are not sharing that information,” she said.

COMMUNITY RESPONSE

Whiting talked about how the community helped the family from searches in the early days of her disappearance to meal trains for the family to donations for the Loved and Lost Bench. Throughout the past six years, the community let the family know Murnane wasn’t forgotten.

“I think one of the biggest takeaways I had was just how people responded,” she said. “You barely had to ask. And people were, what can I do, what can I do? What can I do?”

Berg said he thought the community support also had another effect: It created an environment to encourage the person who eventually made the key Crimetoppers tip to come forward.

Haney said the person who made the tip said “they were afraid that he (Calderwood) was going to do it again. They knew he needed to be stopped and that they would not be able to stop him. They wanted intervention,” he said.

“In my mind, I like to think that the person who gave the tips had a heart,” Whiting said. “Obviously, that person had a heart.”