On July 31, 1949, Laura Showalter was murdered in the territory of Alaska during the course of an attempted rape. Months later, Harvey Carignan, then 22, was arrested after attempting to rape another woman, Christine Norton.
Carignan was convicted of first-degree murder and assault with intent to commit rape for his crimes against the two women and sentenced to death. In 1951, however, Carignan won a new trial when his confession was thrown out because it had been improperly obtained. An officer had told Carignan that he wouldn’t receive the death penalty if he confessed to the crime, which he then did.
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