Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

Rewind! May 19, 41st Anniversary, How the Story Unfolded: Six Bodies, Two Helicopters and the Last Call of Trooper Troy Duncan

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Jeff Hall recounts the tragic 1984 shooting at Manly Hot Springs that claimed the life of his partner, Trooper Troy Duncan, during a manhunt for mass murderer Michael Silka. This powerful firsthand account reveals how quickly a routine operation can turn deadly and the lasting impact of losing a fellow officer in the line of duty.

• Former Marine Captain Troy Duncan joined Alaska State Troopers after meeting Jeff Hall at a gun show
• CERT team responded to reports of multiple murders at Manly Hot Springs
• Michael Silka murdered six people before attempting to escape upriver
• Before the mission, Troy made an eerie comment: "Today is my day"
• During the helicopter confrontation, Silka fired a shot that killed Troy Duncan
• Jeff and his team took down Silka with multiple shots
• The emotional aftermath included Jeff threatening a photographer trying to take pictures of Troy's body

Listen to the full story in Episode 32 - "Unleashing the Storm: Alaska State Trooper Jeff Hall's Journey from Jungle Warfare to Manhunts in the Wilderness."


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Speaker 1:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Murders to Music Rewind. I'm going to take you back to episode number 32. That episode is called Unleashing the Storm, alaska State Trooper Jeff Hall's journey from jungle warfare to manhunts in the wilderness the shooting at Manly Hot Springs. If you want to hear that whole episode, go back and listen to it. This guy is an awesome storyteller. He's got an awesome story and you really need to pay attention to how he fell in love with the farmer's daughter. But on today's episode I want to highlight the portion that he spoke about the shooting at Manly Hot Springs. You see, on May 19th 1984, which was just anniversary date yesterday Trooper Troy Duncan lost his life in the line of duty. Jeff Hall was his partner. Jeff Hall was in the helicopter. Jeff Hall was inches from Troy. That bullet that hit Troy could have easily killed Jeff Hall. He's still around. He told us the story and you get to hear the story as it unfolded, how it unfolded, and the dirty truth about the aftermath. Let's pick up in the story. Welcome, mr Jeff Hall.

Speaker 2:

Let's pick up in the story. Welcome, mr Jeff Hall. Okay, manly, hot Springs, troy Duncan was a Marine Corps captain. He was going to get out of the Marine Corps. I met him at a gun show. Oddly enough, I brought in a prisoner from Bethel and put him in the jail and then down by the airport there was a gun show. So I'm walking through there and I'm talking to this guy and he's six foot two, 230 pounds, something like that. And I turned around to leave and he said and he saw the in the vent on the back of my suit coat, he saw the handcuffs. He says excuse me, are you a policeman? I said no, I'm an Alaska state trooper. And he said by golly, that sounds pretty good to me. He said I'm getting out of the Corps. How do I find out about it? And I says well, you just drive down to Tudor Road, that great big building there, walk up the stairs and ask to talk to the recruiting staff. So he did. They hired him. He went to the academy. They hired him, went to the academy.

Speaker 2:

In the meantime I transferred from St Mary's to Fairbanks and I went to Captain Lawrence and said hey, sir, we got a guy down at the academy that we need. His name's Troy Lynn Duncan, former Marine captain, vietnam combat veteran. He'd be a good guy for you to scoop up. And the detachment commanders if they went down there and talked to somebody, or if I said that they would just put it in and say I want this guy and they would send them up to the detachment. And so that's how we, uh, that's how he got started and I was on the cert team and I went to the cert team leader, uh name was Sam Bernard. Um, I said, sam, we got this guy. I know you're supposed to have two years on, but I told him about Troy's background and he said, well, we got a, we got room for that. I'll ask the captain if we can bring him up here. So they brought him up there and they put him on the cert team and the rest was history.

Speaker 2:

And so Manly Hot Springs one night well, it was May, you know, it was still light outside, all the rest of that stuff and my pager went off for a CERT call-out. So I jumped in my patrol car and I drove down to Pager Road and went into the CERT locker and Troy was there and John Myers was there and Troy was there and John Myers was there, dave Hamilton was there. So we're down there loading ammo or loading magazines and stuff, and I was loading tracers into 20 round M16 magazines one ball, one tracer, one ball one tracer. And I had four loaded up that way and I gave two to Troy and two to me. And he stops and he looks at me and says you know, I spent my entire life in contact sports, military Vietnam. He said today is my day. I said okay, let's go. So we went.

Speaker 2:

We had already known about Michael Silka because a trooper, an efficient wildlife trooper, had gone out to. There's a little place out on Chena Pump Road called Hopkinsville. They're just dry cabins, you know, no running water, all that stuff. And this guy, roger Culp, was living in one and Silke was in another one and Silke was stealing firewood from an old lady and Roger Culp went over there and pounded on his door and he said something like say, asshole, you want firewood, go get your own. Silke killed him. We don't know what he shot him with. We think he threw the body over his shoulder, went across the road, dumped him in a hole in the ice on the Chena River and the body was never found, and so we had to locate.

Speaker 2:

And then a fish and wildlife trooper and a blue shirt trooper fish and wildlife troopers and road troopers go to the same academy but instead of going to homicide class they have fish and wildlife, fish and game rules and stuff like that that they have to figure Anyway. So the fish and wildlife trooper said where did you get that moose hide? And he says oh, a friend of mine gave me a quarter of it. And he said so I still got the meat. So anyway, the blue shirt trooper is talking to him and the fish and wildlife trooper went over with a little film canister for those of you guys that have never seen a roll of film that's a little bottle about that big Anyway, and he picked up some snow and he sent it down to the lab and said moose don't have O-positive blood. And so they went back out there and of course Silco was gone.

Speaker 2:

We flew out there and got there at about 3 o'clock in the morning but it was still light enough that you could see pretty well. The guy who owned the roadhouse was a former trooper and he had called on the radio telephone and says we got this strange guy here and we're missing some people. And then the guy up at man Lake called and said hey, we got this weird guy here and he keeps running around. He's got this great big knife and he's been living down at the boat ramp which was an old fish cannery down there right on the it was on the Tanana, not on the Yukon yet, and excuse me and so we just patrolled down. The four of us Dave Hamilton was point, I was slack, the lieutenant was main element and Troy was rear guard. So we went down there and were looking around and you know, I wasn't a homicide detective at that time, but I can recognize drag marks and blood, drag marks and blood.

Speaker 2:

And it turns out that the day before two guys went down and it was, it was everybody's dump. You know, if you had a dishwasher that didn't work anymore, you went down there and put it there and somebody would scavenge parts off it or whatever. So these two guys went down there and one of them the name was Majeska and he had a reputation for being real surly. Anyway, we think that he and Silke got into some sort of a verbal confrontation and so he shot Silke, shot Majeska with a Ruger 44 Magnum and the other guy was running away and he shot and killed him and he dragged their bodies down and threw them in the Tanana. But he was waiting for the ice to go out so that he could get his canoe in there. And for guys that have never heard of this, all the rivers freeze solid and then at some time in the spring the ice breaks up. So anyway, he was waiting for the ice to go out and about that time a guy named Lyman Klein, his wife, two-year-old son, came down on a three-wheeler. Silke shot all three of them, dragged them down and put them in the river. And then there was a sixth guy who came down. Silke killed him, threw him in the river and that night the ice went out. So he had a Grumman square stern canoe with a little outboard on it. So he put it in the water and started taking off up river.

Speaker 2:

So we got out there and we start patrolling down there and we see all of this stuff. And the Lieutenant was a was a avid runner. So he said I'll run back to the, to the roadhouse and get the rest of the team up here and we'll get both helicopters up here. So he did, and so we started flying. After a few minutes we started flying, going all over. We had two or three super cubs up there with fish and wildlife troopers in them and we're circling all of these places. The bad thing was their season had just opened and there were a lot of people out on the water.

Speaker 2:

And it turns out that Silke was heading upriver and he was going to take a right and go up this river called the Zit-Ziana, which naturally they called the Zit River, and there was a guy coming down named Fred Burke and he had a bigger boat and had quite a bit of gas. So Silke killed him, took his boat so he could have the gas and the motor, tied his canoe on behind Burke's boat and started going up the Zit River and we could find a tent. So we're flying around and we find a tent. If there's a place we could land, we'd bring the helicopter down. And Troy and I jumped out one and there's a tent over there and we went up and Roy flopped down behind a log at about, you know, 25 yards from the tent and I said I'll go up and make contact. So I go up and say stay, troopers, can you come out of the tent please? When you come out of the tent, show me both of your hands. So it zips down and the guy comes out with his hands. Okay, trooper, what's up? They said well, we're looking for a guy that we believe just killed six people down at Manly. You're not him, but if you see a guy in a square-in canoe, watch yourself and if he starts coming toward you, just shoot him. Okay, trooper.

Speaker 2:

So we did that and did that, and did that, and then finally, at about 3 in the afternoon, of course, we were all tired by then. So we took a break and went back to the roadhouse and I'm laying in bed and I got my 1911 in my hand and the door flies open. I came up out of it and, pointing my 1911 at the door, and it was a uh explorer girl that was in. They had a a uh explorer program for people that might want to become troopers. Anyway, um, we got up, I got up, we went down, so we put up a quick plan and the other helicopter was there and another CERT trooper, but we didn't. There was, and there was another guy, craig McDonald, that wasn't CERT but he was there and he had a rifle.

Speaker 2:

So those two got in one helicopter and Dave and I got in the other helicopter, or Troy and I and Dave and I got in the other helicopter, or Troy and I Dave was in the other helicopter because our plan was we were going to find this guy and we'd fly past him, put Dave Hamilton on the bank, and then we'd have two helicopters here and a guy with a sniper rifle in front of him. So one of the three of us would shoot him. And of course, a plan is just a list of things that isn't going to happen. Or if you want to hear God laugh, tell him the plan. So anyway, dave's helicopter peeled off and went down and stopped on another tent. So it was Troy and I and we're flying up there and I look down like this oh and, by the way, we're on our way out there and Troy keys a mic on it and says, boy, I'm glad I got my life insurance picked up or paid up. And I've known guys my father knew guys that just had some sort of premonition that they weren't going to make it. Anyway, I don't know if Troy did or not, never had a chance to ask him. So anyway, I look down there there and I can see this boat and it's Burke's boat, but the Grumman canoe is tied behind it, and I saw him look up at us like this, and then he reached down to pick up something.

Speaker 2:

And then we lost him because we went behind some trees and of course our mission was to stop and arrest him. And so we our pilot was a guy named Tom Davis, two tours, uh, flying gunships in Vietnam. So he was a wonderful helicopter pilot. So, uh, tom is coming down like this. Uh, on the Tom is coming down like this, and we're just getting ready to touch down and I said break off, break off, you know, because I've landed in hot LZs before. And that guy there were three trees like this. And that guy we couldn't see him, but we knew that he could dominate. It was the only place within 10 miles that we could have put the helicopter down. It was on a big gravel bed. And so Tom started changing kerosene for horsepower and went like this.

Speaker 2:

And Silke came out with the rifle, came up and shot. I shot three rounds, or I shot a burst, and Troy shot three rounds. He was shooting an AR-15 with a Colt scope on it and he was an expert marksman in the Marine Corps. I was just an army grunt so I just wanted to put a whole bunch of bullets down there and hope the guy walked into it. And I just I saw that I hit low and to the right. And I knew better than that because we used to shoot wolves from a Super Cub.

Speaker 2:

And I found out that you have to. If this is your target and you're moving this way, you have to aim here, not at it, because the rounds will go over here. It's called the Bernoulli effect, anyway. So we start going up and we all shoot Silke. He had a falling block Ruger rifle and he used to carry a cartridge in his mouth and he could shoot it, flip it down, put that in, shoot it, and he could keep a tin can bouncing at 100 yards, according to some people.

Speaker 2:

And before we went out we said, no, is this guy some kind of a tough guy, you know Navy SEAL Green Beret, whatever? No, he's just some fuck from Chicago. That's what the team leader said, anyway. So I adjusted my aim on the second burst, fired dry. I could see the tracers hitting him. I hit him eight times from his shin to his thigh, to his pelvis, and he went over backwards and that was it. And I turned around and looked and I figured all the red stuff on me was Troy, because he had hit Troy right through the neck with a 180-grain 30-06 round. It had gone through his neck and hit the detachment commander, captain Lawrence, in the side of his head. Wow, so anyway, that was it.

Speaker 2:

And then we went back to Manly. There was some big fat photographer starts waddling over there. He's got three cameras and I'm standing outside the plane trying to gather all this. I'm trying to get my mind straight. And this guy raised the camera and I stepped in front of him and I said what are you doing? He says I'm taking a picture. I said you're not taking a picture of my friend. He said well, I'm from the Anchorage Daily News. I can take whatever picture I want. Have you heard of the First Amendment? And I said have you heard of the 1911 and 45 caliber? And I drew it up like this and pointed at his head and I said if you raise that camera I'll fucking kill you, just about that voice. So he squealed like a pig and he turned around and ran away and the other helicopter landed and the team leader got out and said what's up, jeff. I said well, he said he was going to take Troy's picture and I told him I would fucking kill him.

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