Manhunt turns to Arizona flight records

Karen Zekan

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1998 | 11:23 a.m.

Authorities have been tracking planes that took off from the Prescott, Ariz., area three years ago in hopes that one of them may have been piloted by former Alaska state trooper John Addis shortly after the alleged murder of his Las Vegas girlfriend, Joann Albanese.

The prime suspect in the 39-year-old woman's death has managed to elude police despite a nationwide manhunt launched shortly after Albanese disappeared Aug. 19, 1995 -- the day she told her mother she was going to decline Addis' marriage proposal after she got off work from her job at the MGM Grand hotel-casino.

Further challenging detectives working the case is that Addis is not a typical suspect. An ex-police investigator with expertise in crime-scene investigations, Addis is also known to be a skilled marksman and survivalist adept at masquerading under assumed identities and flying planes.

The Addis-Albanese story has run in newspapers across the country and aired on the television programs "A Current Affair," "America's Most Wanted" and Geraldo Rivera's news show, yet none have produced leads that could put police on the alleged killer's trail.

Albanese is believed to have met Addis at a Family Fitness health club five months before she disappeared. A friend of Albanese who reportedly introduced the two remembered him as a good-looking man in great shape who had no family and had never been married.

But in reality, John Addis -- who at the time he met Albanese was working at the gym as a trainer and going by the name John Edwards -- was actually a fugitive out of Alaska with parents, three ex-wives and five kids.

Authorities have yet to determine how Albanese was killed. They believe Addis was with her when she disappeared from her plush home in The Lakes, where her daughters, then 16 and 9, found her purse, wallet, money and identification cards Aug. 20, 1995 -- the day they reported her missing to police.

Her car turned up three days later in a remote stretch of Arizona desert called Little Hell's Canyon. A hunter found her body Friday about a mile from where Yavapai County authorities found her car three years ago. A forensic odontologist confirmed the skeletal remains as those of Albanese.

Investigators suspected foul play after learning of Addis' true identity and of his pattern of meeting women at gyms, moving in with them and then, often abruptly, disappearing with their money.

Albanese, however, is the first woman Addis has been accused of killing.

Jody Stack, one of Addis' ex-wives, was stunned when informed Monday evening that Albanese's body had been found. Reached at her Alaska home, Stack's voice wavered more than once as she struggled to respond.

"We were hoping they'd find her, that both of them would be alive. We figured that she, being a grown woman, would be able to get away," Stack said, explaining that past news accounts of the murder and kidnapping charges against her ex-husband have deeply upset their four children, whom Addis abducted in 1987 during a bitter custody battle.

Stack was in Las Vegas this summer to testify before a grand jury examining the case. She said she's heard nothing from her former husband in years. She said he kept himself in good shape while a trooper, but she never knew him to have worked in a fitness job during the years they were together.

"I feel so terrible for her family. We were hoping for closure one way or another, but not this kind of closure."

Metro Police Detective Larry Hanna, who has worked the case since Albanese disappeared, could not be reached for comment.

Alaska authorities were unable to comment Monday -- all of that state's employees were observing the Alaska Day holiday commemorating the moment in 1867 when the U.S. flag was first raised in Sitka after the northern territory was purchased from Russia for $7.2 million.

Prosecutors scored a unique victory July 31 when they were able to produce enough evidence for the grand jury to indict the fugitive for Albanese's murder, event though the body at that time had not been found.

At the time the couple disappeared, Addis was wanted in Alaska in connection with a 1987 parental-abduction conviction. Authorities said the man fled with four of his children during a bitter custody dispute and moved his children to Montana, supposedly telling them that their mother had died.

He was later arrested and imprisoned in Alaska after his Montana neighbors reported him. Addis would break parole and live in several states before ending up in Las Vegas, authorities said.

A no-bail bench warrant charging Addis with Albanese's kidnapping and murder remains open. Anyone who has seen the man or knows of his whereabouts is asked to call Secret Witness at 385-5555.