An Arrest Has Been Made In The 1978 Murder Of Shelley Connolly.

Updated on July 1st, 2014: In December of 2023 Donald McQuade now 67, was of first- and second-degree murder and sentenced to serve 50 years in prison.

Shelley Connolly

She was petite with dark black hair. Shelley was pretty and didn't know it. She was a loud, spunky teenager, born and brought up in Alaska.  She liked to roller skate, have sleepovers and occasionally break the rules to party. She camped and fished with her family and doted on her younger brother. 

Shelley was born in 1961 to Judy Connolly. 

In 1978, Shelly had dropped out of Service High School and was set to begin cosmetology courses. She was engaged, at 16, to a man a few years older in the military.  

In the evening of  January 7th, Shelley set out to an Anchorage bar called Chilkoot Charlie's. She frequented the bar enough to have been giving a nickname "Snow." It was a Friday and a think fog had rooled in. Shelley was wearing a top that her mom thought showed to much and a ski jacket she had received for Christmas. At some point that night, she was seen with several men at the bar.  At least one person reported seeing her at Leroy's a diner on C street.

The following morning, two female hikers, who’d stopped to take pictures of Turnagain Arm, found Shelley's body next too train tracks, along the Seward Highway, 10 miles south of Potter Marsh. Her sleeveless blouse was up around her neck and her jeans were zipped up and closed. An autopsy revealed she had multiple abrasions, lacerations and contusions on her face, neck and abdomen. She also had internal injuries, including a lacerated liver. And there was evidence of rape. The official cause of death was ruled as a combination of internal bleeding and hypothermia.

It was surmised that Shelley has been raped and beaten and was alive when she was thrown out of a vehicle, her hand getting stuck in the door. At first they didn't know they were dragging her, but once they did, they stopped and opened the door and threw her over the side. She rolled down near the train tracks. There was evidence in the snow that suggested that she tried to crawl back up the hill. 

The men Shelley was talking to at the bar were possible suspects. The police were also looking for a man who went by "Pinkie" who may have lived in the Kenai area.

In May of 2018, DNA evidence was submitted from Shelley's crime scene to a public database called GEDmatch. By June, a potential match was found. An investigating genealogist built a family tree from the results. It was all traced back a ancestor born in Ireland in 1858. From there, a complicated genealogical trail led the investigators to a link to Alaska, a woman from King Cove who was the mother of three McQuade brothers who had enough genetic material in common with samples taken from Connolly’s body to be suspects.

The youngest brother was Donald McQuade. He lived in Alaska at the time of Shelley's murder. He had moved from Seattle to Anchorage with his mother in 1971. He was a high school dropout, and worked as a laborer and spent a few short stints in jail for theft, burglary and carrying a concealed firearm. In 1978, he was on probation and living with family friends in Anchorage. Just a few weeks after Shelley’s murder he told a probation officer he wanted to move out of town, to Kenai.

Investigators learned that Donald had moved to Oregon and was living for years with his brother, Richard in Gresham. The Gresham Police Department surveilled the McQuades and picked up discarded DNA samples. 

Investigators got a warrant and asked the Anchorage man that Donald had lived with around the time of the murder to call Donald. Donald said he “made many mistakes when he was drunk,” but didn’t admit to killing Shelley. 

On August 30th at 2:20 p.m, 62-year-old Donald was arrested by Alaskan State Troopers and charged with first- and second-degree murder  He is expected to be extradited and will be arraigned in Anchorage upon his return to Alaska. For now, Donald is in police custody in Oregon.