“All of the facts are not known and may never be, but enough became public to make the Alaska murder case a grim thriller that outdid anything invented by mystery writers like James Cain, Rex Stout, or Mickey Spillane” – Ebony magazine, October 1954

Nicknamed “the most beautiful woman in Alaska,” 31-year-old Diane Wells was bruised and bloodied when she screamed for help in the early hours of October 17, 1953. Her husband Cecil, a wealthy Fairbanks businessman, had been shot dead, and she claimed they were the victims of a brutal home invasion.

Blonde, glamorous and 20 years younger than Cecil, police were immediately suspicious of Diane’s account, and an anonymous tip-off led the investigation towards her alleged lover, Black musician Johnny Warren, who had left town the night of the murder.

The scandal hit Newsweek, Life, Ebony, Jet, and the pulp detective magazines, and decades later I uncover new evidence including an unpublished memoir and unseen photographs, and re-examine the FBI files. I also track down and interviews the people close to Cecil, Diane, Johnny, and the mysterious “Third Suspect”, Guatemalan dance instructor William Colombany, to reveal what“It remains to this day the most notorious and baffling case in the history of Fairbanks” – Terrence Cole, Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star the story of “the most notorious and baffling murder in the history of Fairbanks.”