A Michigan man who sent multiple anonymous confessions to Alaska law enforcement about a 1993 killing got tracked down and hit with murder charges — a resolution that solves a three-decade disappearance but ought to make every American wonder just how "anonymous" those tip lines really are.
Christopher Popps, 54, was arrested near Kalamazoo on July 16 after a Fairbanks grand jury indicted him on two counts of second-degree murder for the shooting death of Patrick Orville Dearth, who vanished in November 1993 at age 34. For over 30 years, Fairbanks police had nothing. Then on Jan. 22, 2025, Alaska State Troopers received an anonymous tip from someone claiming to have committed a murder in the Fairbanks area in 1993.
Here's where it gets interesting for anyone who believes the state should have limits: Popps didn't make just one call. Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told Alaska Public Media that Popps made multiple anonymous tips to different Alaska law enforcement agencies claiming responsibility for Dearth's death. Multiple calls, multiple agencies, and they still traced it back to him. Neither outlet pressed investigators on how they identified an anonymous tipster, and neither the New York Post nor Fox News raised the obvious civil liberties question — if the government can unmask you when you call a tip line, what exactly does "anonymous" mean?
Investigators say Popps and Dearth worked together at an auto shop in Fairbanks, and that an altercation led Popps to shoot Dearth and dump his body in a barrel down a steep embankment near Mile 47 of the Steese Highway. Cold case investigators couldn't search the area immediately due to snow and limited daylight, but when they returned in May 2025, they found the remains. The Alaska State Medical Examiner's Office confirmed the identity and ruled the death a homicide.
A Fairbanks grand jury indicted Popps on June 25, 2026. He sits in a Kalamazoo County jail awaiting extradition to Alaska, with no attorney listed in court records and no hearings scheduled, according to Alaska Public Media.
Nobody is weeping for a confessed killer. But the framing from both outlets — "tipster charged with murder" — papers over something worth watching. Popps wasn't a bystander who saw something and spoke up. He was the perpetrator who cracked under whatever weight he was carrying. The system didn't reward a truth-teller; it caught a killer who handed himself over. The real question is what tools the state used to unmask those calls, and whether those same tools are being turned on Americans who haven't confessed to anything. Neither outlet asked. Somebody should.
