A 54-year-old Michigan man now faces two counts of second-degree murder after Alaska State Troopers say they traced multiple anonymous confessions back to him, solving a co-worker's disappearance that went unanswered for more than 30 years.

Christopher Popps was arrested near Kalamazoo, Michigan, on July 16 after a Fairbanks grand jury indicted him on two counts of second-degree murder in the 1993 killing of Patrick Orville Dearth, a 34-year-old former co-worker. Michigan State Police made the arrest. Popps remains jailed in Kalamazoo County, awaiting extradition to Alaska, with no attorney listed in court records and no hearings yet scheduled.

The case broke open not through a witness, a DNA match, or a deathbed confession from a third party. It broke open because the man accused of pulling the trigger apparently could not stop calling the police to tell them what he had done.

Anonymous calls that weren't anonymous enough

On January 22, 2025, Alaska State Troopers received an anonymous tip from someone who claimed to have committed a murder in the Fairbanks area in 1993. The Alaska Bureau of Investigation's Cold Case Investigation Unit took over the case. But winter conditions, deep snow and limited daylight, kept investigators from searching the location the caller described.

They returned in May 2025. Down a steep embankment near Mile 47 of the Steese Highway, a remote road outside Fairbanks, investigators found human remains stuffed inside a barrel. The Alaska State Medical Examiner's Office identified the remains as Dearth and ruled his death a homicide.

Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told Fox News Digital that Popps had not limited himself to a single call. He made multiple anonymous tips to different Alaska law enforcement agencies, each time claiming responsibility for Dearth's death. Investigators eventually traced those tips back to Popps himself.

How exactly they identified him has not been disclosed. But the result was decisive: a grand jury indictment on June 25, 2026, and an arrest warrant issued the same day.

An auto shop altercation and a barrel off a remote highway

Dearth was reported missing to the Fairbanks Police Department in November 1993. He was 34. For more than three decades, his disappearance sat unresolved, one more name in a cold case file with no leads and no body.

Troopers now allege that Popps shot Dearth after a confrontation at an auto shop where the two men worked together. McDaniel described the sequence plainly to Alaska Public Media:

"Based on our investigation, we determined there was an altercation at an auto shop, which led Popps to shoot Dearth."

After the shooting, investigators say, Popps placed Dearth's body in a barrel and dumped it off the Steese Highway, a stretch of road that runs northeast from Fairbanks into some of Alaska's most sparsely populated terrain. The barrel sat undiscovered for more than 31 years, hidden down a steep embankment far from regular traffic.

Cold cases that stretch back decades often depend on a single break, a DNA hit from a genealogy database, a witness who finally talks, or physical evidence that surfaces by accident. In a similar case out of Virginia Beach, a Connecticut man was arrested in a 1986 rape and murder after DNA evidence finally linked him to the crime. In Popps's case, the break came from the suspect's own repeated confessions.

Thirty years of silence, then a string of confessions

Investigators have not said why Popps allegedly began confessing more than three decades after the killing. No public statement from Popps has been reported. No plea has been entered. The gap between 1993 and January 2025, more than 31 years, remains unexplained.

That gap raises questions that troopers have so far declined to answer. Did guilt build over time? Did some personal event trigger the calls? Was Popps testing whether anyone would actually find the body? None of those possibilities has been confirmed or denied by investigators.

What is clear is that Popps did not call once and stop. He contacted multiple agencies, repeating the same claim. Each call gave investigators another thread to pull. And eventually, those threads led back to a man living quietly in Michigan, a state more than 3,500 miles from the barrel on the Steese Highway.

The New York Post reported that Popps essentially slipped up by confessing anonymously, only to have investigators identify him as the tipster, a pattern that turned his own words into the prosecution's foundation.

Two counts, no lawyer, and a long extradition ahead

The Fairbanks grand jury returned a two-count indictment for second-degree murder. The specific legal theories behind the two separate counts, both apparently tied to the same victim, have not been publicly detailed. Under Alaska law, second-degree murder covers intentional killings that do not meet the criteria for first-degree murder, which typically requires premeditation or specific aggravating factors.

As of the most recent court records, Popps had no attorney listed in the Alaska case and no future hearings scheduled. He remains in the Kalamazoo County jail while authorities arrange his extradition to Alaska. Fox News Digital reached out to both Alaska State Troopers and Michigan State Police for additional information, though no responses were reported.

Murder cases built on decades-old evidence present unique challenges for prosecutors. Witnesses move, memories fade, and physical evidence degrades. But in this case, prosecutors appear to have something unusual: a suspect who repeatedly told law enforcement what he did, where he did it, and where the body was, and whose account matched the physical evidence investigators found.

Cases where new evidence or a suspect's own conduct finally brings charges years later have become more common as cold case units expand their work. A California pastor recently faced a second murder charge after new evidence emerged in the case of a missing former congregant, and the Gilgo Beach serial killer case resulted in consecutive life sentences after years of dogged investigative work. Each case underscores a simple reality: cold does not mean closed.

Patrick Dearth waited 31 years for someone to find him

Dearth was 34 when he vanished. He had a name, a job, and people who noticed when he stopped showing up, someone filed that missing person report in November 1993. For 31 years, that report sat in the Fairbanks Police Department's files. No arrest. No body. No answers for anyone who knew him.

The barrel on the embankment held those answers the entire time. And the man who allegedly put him there, according to troopers, eventually could not keep the secret to himself.

Popps now faces the system he apparently kept calling. Whether Alaska prosecutors can convert his alleged confessions and the physical evidence into a conviction remains to be seen. But the cold case unit did what cold case units are supposed to do: they followed the lead, found the remains, identified the victim, and brought a charge.

Justice delayed is not always justice denied, but 31 years is a long time for a dead man to wait in a barrel for someone to come looking.