A Michigan man has been jailed on murder charges from Alaska more than 30 years after he allegedly shot a coworker in Fairbanks and put his body in a barrel he dumped on the side of a highway.
Christopher Popps, 54, faces charges of second-degree murder in the death of Patrick Orville Dearth, who was 34 when he went missing in 1993.
Alaska State Troopers announced Popps’ arrest in Michigan in a written statement posted online Friday.
The two men had worked together in Fairbanks, troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel said.
“Based on our investigation, we determined there was an altercation at an auto shop, which led Popps to shoot Dearth,” McDaniel said.
Dearth’s family reported him missing to the Fairbanks Police Department in November of 1993, troopers said. It wasn’t until January of 2025 that an anonymous tipster told troopers, who had taken over the case, that Dearth’s body was in a barrel near Mile 47 of the Steese Highway, north of Fairbanks in the Chatanika area, troopers said.
Popps himself had apparently delivered multiple anonymous tips to different Alaska law enforcement agencies claiming he was responsible for Dearth’s killing, said McDaniel, who added that he did not have additional information to share on why Popps had been giving the tips.
The area was blanketed in snow when the January tip came in, and daylight is scarce at that time of year, so troopers and the Alaska Bureau of Investigation waited until spring of 2025 to search the area, McDaniel said.
“They were able to locate a barrel with human remains in it,” McDaniel said. “Got that down to the state medical examiner's office, who determined that it was a homicide.”
McDaniel said the following investigation, which involved finding and talking to witnesses from more than three decades earlier, took even more time.
Court records show a grand jury indicted Popps on June 25, the same day a warrant was issued for his arrest. Michigan State Police arrested Popps on Thursday in Kalamazoo, where he was jailed pending extradition back to Alaska, troopers said.
As of Friday, Popps did not have an attorney listed in Alaska court records, and there were no future court hearings set in the case.
