A man once accused of kidnapping and savage sexual assault of a woman he took to his cabin in Manley Hot Springs in 2015 has been spotted in Fairbanks again.
Daniel Lloyd Selovich, who has legally changed his name to Pirate, had been extradited to Nevada in 2016 after the Alaska case against him was dropped, when the victim died of unrelated causes.
At the time, Nevada authorities had connected Pirate via DNA to a Las Vegas rape some 12 years earlier. Selovich had also been convicted of rape in California in 2004.
Mo Duncan, a woman who lives in the Fairbanks North Star Borough but who has a cabin in Manley, wants both communities — and particularly women or those who care for mentally disabled women — to be aware that Pirate has made his way back to the Interior.
Duncan drove to the McDonald’s restaurant in Fairbanks where Pirate had been spotted, and took photos of him as he sat in the restaurant. She called him out by name and asked him what he was doing back in Alaska. She posted it all on Facebook.
Ms. Duncan said the restaurant manager seemed unconcerned — to the manager, the slim-built, toothless, tattooed man was just another homeless person using the restaurant as a day camp.
He obviously didn’t know the history, Duncan said.
But Duncan is concerned. She says she observed Pirate’s behavior for years because she has a cabin in Manley and has spent a lot of time there, and thinks that a subset of women who have low self esteem are attracted to the toothless man whose face is covered with Maori-style tattoos.
In fact, a woman he allegedly assaulted in Las Vegas was bipolar and disabled from spina bifida, a serious spinal cord condition that can affect the brain and has profound physical problems associated with it.
THE MANLEY INCIDENT
In September of 2015, Pirate allegedly picked up a woman at the Fairbanks Airport after she had flown north to have a type of unwise sexual escapade with him. They had allegedly met in an online sex group. Pirate, 37 at the time, got a charter flight to take them both to his remote cabin near Manley Hot Springs, where he allegedly beat her, duct taped her to him so she could not escape at night or even use a toilet without him, bit her, and used a belt on her. The woman later told investigators he raped her several times a day. She said he tied her to a roof beam and put a noose on her, held a knife to her face and threatened to cut her face off.
Kristi Buchanan, 43, said she was held for five weeks, but finally was able to contact friends through Facebook and asked them to help her. Alaska State Troopers arrived the next day, Nov. 8, 2015, in a helicopter, and Buchanan was taken to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital for treatment.
Troopers found a Gerber knife, several rolls of duct tape, and rope attached to the small, squat cabin’s roof beam.
Pirate was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, and felony and misdemeanor assault, and he was scheduled for trial on Aug. 22, 2016.
But then Buchanan died. Her body was found on July 21, 2016; there was no evidence of foul play. The Fairbanks District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges because they had no victim.
THE LAS VEGAS INCIDENT
Rather than being released from Fairbanks Correctional Center, however, Pirate was extradited to Nevada, where he was wanted for sexual assault, kidnapping, and battery for a case that dated back to 2004, when he allegedly raped and beat the victim with a belt after breaking into her room at the Ambassador East Motel on Fremont Street in Las Vegas.
Authorities had linked his DNA with evidence in the CODIS system, a national “Combined DNA Index System,” that law enforcement uses to solve violent crimes. Because of the nature of his alleged crimes in Alaska, Pirate’s DNA had been entered into CODIS, and Las Vegas police matched it. A warrant was issued.
In July of 2018, he pled guilty to one count of sexually motivated coercion and was sentenced to up to five years for the crime that had been committed in February, 2004. By then, that victim had also died of unrelated causes.
THE CALIFORNIA INCIDENT
In 2010, Pirate was charged with raping a woman under a bridge in Redding, California, on Dec. 16, 2004, according to the Redding Record Searchlight. There was also biting, slapping, and duct tape involved in that rape. At the time, he was going by his former name, Daniel Selovich and he didn’t have face tattoos. He legally changed his name in 2013.
Pirate was sentenced June 2010 to four years in prison after pleading no contest to assault.
[Read: Transient arrested for rape under bridge]
In 2009, he was convicted of assault in Washington state. Other encounters with the law included vandalism, panhandling, and disturbing the peace in Tennessee, Florida, and Nebraska.
According to the the Redding Searchlight, a nationwide DNA index system came back with a match after Selovich was arrested in Florida in 2007, but he was not returned to Shasta County, California.
