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Three Alaska fishers plead guilty after being accused of deliberately scuttling boats

Boats in Sitka's Crescent Harbor are seen on a clear winter day in 2024. (Photo by Meghan Chamberlain/U.S. Forest Service)

Boats in Sitka’s Crescent Harbor are seen on a clear winter day in 2024. (Photo by Meghan Chamberlain/U.S. Forest Service)

Three southeast Alaska commercial fishers accused of deliberately sinking their boats are now pleading guilty.

John Fisher of Sitka, Joseph Poling of Petersburg and Tony Vanveen of Sitka have each signed plea deals, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court in the District of Alaska.

The three were initially charged earlier this year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage. Despite similar details, the cases are not linked.

Fisher, whose plea deal was finalized on Aug. 27, was sentenced to 1 month in prison and one year on supervised release. 

According to court documents, Fisher deliberately scuttled the fishing vessel Igloo near Sitka in March 2025 and admitted doing so to the U.S. Coast Guard.

“The navigable waters of Southeast Alaska are especially precious to the communities who depend on them,” said a sentencing memorandum signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Schmidt. “Illegally scuttling vessels creates risk to the environment and can create a hazard to navigation if done carelessly.”

By phone, Schmidt said it appeared as if Fisher was trying to dispose of his boat but forgot about the boat’s EPIRB — the emergency beacon that automatically deploys and messages the Coast Guard if a boat sinks.

When the Coast Guard contacted Fisher, he admitted sinking the Igloo.

Alaska has a chronic problem with abandoned and derelict vessels; maintaining boats is expensive, and disposing of an unseaworthy boat is also expensive. 

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources has a list of more than 400 abandoned boats on state land and waters.

Poling pleaded guilty on Aug. 7 and is scheduled to have his sentence imposed Oct. 29. The Anchorage U.S. Attorney’s office is recommending a fine of $6,000 and five years of probation for sinking the fishing vessel Leeward in Thomas Bay, northeast of Petersburg.

Tony Vanveen entered his guilty plea on July 27 and is scheduled to have his sentence imposed on Oct. 29 as well. Prosecutors are recommending 30 days in prison and one year of supervised release for sinking the motor vessel O’Kisutch in late September or early October 2025.

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Corie Walsh, Accused of Murdering 2-Year-Old, Was ‘Obsessed’ With Lindsay …

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Corie Walsh allegedly killed her 2-year-old, planned to kill her husband, and attempted to take her own life.

She is said to have already been “obsessed” with the Lindsay Clancy case.

Before and even after the deadlocked jury resulted in a mistrial, the postpartum psychosis tragedy captivated the nation.

Did that same tragedy unfold here? Is Walsh a copycat of some kind? Is something else going on?

Corie Walsh's mugshot.
Corie Walsh is accused of killing her 2-year-old, but her defense attorney says that she was in a psychotic state and unaware of her actions. (Photo Credit: Will County Sheriff’s Office)

What did Corie Walsh’s attorney say in court?

NBC 5 Chicago reported on the bail hearing for 40-year-old Corie Walsh.

She is accused of having murdered her 2-year-old son, Barrett, who died via hanging.

There, prosecutors claimed that she had made statements about “poisoning [her husband] with a drink.”

Walsh also apparently tried to take her own life, as she was found fully clothed in a bloody bathtub with wounds on her wrists and thighs.

Additionally, she was reportedly in such a delusional state that she believed that she had killed all of her children, rather than only the 2-year-old. She reportedly told investigators that her toddler was “the devil.”

It sounds like her behavior worried friends

Defense attorney Robert Kerr informed the court that Walsh is “severely mentally ill” and and should be placed in “immediate” care to prevent her from harming herself further.

Their argument is that she was in psychotic episode when she allegedly hanged her 2-year-old until he died from asphyxia.

Apparently, in the hours before this tragic killing, Walsh was spiraling, sending frantic and “confusing” messages to friends.

The messages seemed “out of character” to them, as at least some of them would presumably testify.

Some of the messages were related to the Lindsay Clancy trial during jury deliberations.

The ‘Lindsay Clancy copycat’ theory is ‘sickening’

“It was manslaughter, please I’m really freaking out,” Corie Walsh allegedly messaged on September 1.

At times, Walsh allegedly seemed to believe that Patrick Clancy, not Lindsay Clancy, had killed the couple’s children.

(This is a debunked conspiracy theory. Lindsay and her attorney do not claim this, and it has been widely debunked.)

Kerr condemned any claims of Walsh being a “Lindsay Clancy copycat” as “sickening.”

He says that she was diagnosed with “grief psychotic disorder” at the hospital, and that her husband has “unwavering” support for her.

What is the truth?

We do not know what Walsh’s true mental state was, and we do not claim to know what really happened. Three main possibilities have been floated on social media.

The first is a genuine psychotic episode. There are several signs, from the alleged murder to the alleged attempt to take her own life.

The second is that Walsh, for whatever reason, consciously and deliberately wished to commit this heinous crime, and fabricated symptoms of psychosis (and perhaps ensured that she would survive the apparent suicide attempt) in order to get away with it. This could mean deliberately copying elements of the Clancy family’s tragedy.

And the third option is that there was some other mental illness at play, one different than a psychotic episode. That one’s pretty broad. We’ve seen people float the idea that someone with rare forms of OCD might feel compelled to enact a murder similar to one described in detail on the news, but that is so rare that it boggles the mind.

(Despite apparently labeling the toddler “the devil” and “the Antichrist,” religious psychosis usually takes a different form than this, but many cases of psychosis may involve religiously inspired delusions.)

All that we truly know is that another family has endured another tragedy. It will be up the experts and the courts to determine, to the best of their ability, who if anyone is at fault.

Corie Walsh, Accused of Murdering 2-Year-Old, Was ‘Obsessed’ With Lindsay … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.

​The Hollywood Gossip

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Entertainment

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