Crime & Safety
Boat Captain Staged Death To Avoid Prison For Sex Assault: Prosecutors
Prosecutors say Ryan Meganack hid out in a makeshift camp near Port Graham. The U.S. Coast Guard spent more than $300,000 searching for him.
ANCHORAGE, AK — A commercial fisherman and boat captain from Port Graham has been charged with conspiracy and "false distress" after allegedly faking his own death so he wouldn't have to go to prison in a sex assault case.
An indictment released Thursday says Ryan Meganack planted evidence that he had been lost at sea and was actually hiding at a camp in a wooded near the fishing village. The U.S. Coast Guard spent more than $300,000 searching for him, federal prosecutors said.
Port Graham is off the road system near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula about 140 miles southwest of Anchorage. Meganack was a halibut fishermen and the skipper for 14 years of the fishing boat Aires.
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His girlfriend, Ivy Rose Rodriguez, 25, faces the same charges.(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)
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Meganack was scheduled to plead guilty on Dec. 5 to sexual assault charges and faced a prison sentence.
Instead, Meganack and Rodriguez plotted to stage a boating accident, federal prosecutors said.
Meganack built a makeshift camp where he could hide, prosecutors said. Around Nov. 29, he piloted his fishing boat to an island near Port Graham, abandoned a small fishing skiff, returned the larger boat to a lagoon off Port Graham and walked to his campsite.
Within a day, Rodriguez sent Facebook messages to Meganack's family reporting that Meganack had left after midnight in the skiff. She said Meganack had been drinking, that he had more alcohol with him, and that the outboard motor on the skiff "wasn't running right."
Family members called the Coast Guard. Helicopters from Kodiak launched despite falling snow, high wind and low visibility and found the skiff, prosecutors said. The cutter Naushon and an Alaska State Trooper patrol vessel searched by sea. Port Graham residents walked shorelines.
On Dec. 2, acting on a tip, troopers found Meganack at his campsite and arrested him for violating conditions of his release.
He was sentenced in January in the sexual assault case. He remains imprisoned at Goose Creek Correctional Facility in Wasilla. Court documents do not list an attorney in the new case.
By Dan Joling, Associated Press
Image via Shutterstock