When the News Was the Editor
By Hank Nuwer
It’s an unwritten law in the newsroom. Journalists cover the news, but never are the news.
But back in 1988, the editorial staff of the Fairbanks News-Miner got a huge shock.
The crime reporters had the thinnest of leads from police. The body of a seasonal Alaska Railroad conductor was discovered in his apartment by the building manager.
His co-workers had become concerned when Marvin Roy Cavadini, a 44-year-old male whose wife lived out-of-state, failed to turn up for his shift.
Detectives asked an apartment manager to unlock the door. They found Cavadini’s body. The killer had stabbed him 37 times.
Editors at the paper handed out story assignments to reporters and photographers to cover the case.
They didn’t have much at first. Cavadini first came to Fairbanks three years previously. Five detectives worked the case.
And then detectives came to the News-Miner with notebooks in hand. The staff was in shock. One of their own clearly was involved in the matter.
Detectives had obtained a search warrant on September 15, 1988 and found the suspect, 23-year-old Phillip Bair of Fairbanks, hiding under a bed in the trailer of News-Miner copy editor Ken Noblit.
Cavadini
Authorities charged Noblit with hindering prosecution in the first-degree..
The News-Miner immediately terminated Noblit’s employment.
The man under the bed was Phillip Baird, 23, and he was charged and held at the Fairbanks Correctional Center in lieu of $500,000 bail.
Police confiscated their furniture, two cars, tools, books and three dogs during the search.
And so now the editor became part of the story.
Details came out during what amounted to a sensational trial. Both Alaska and Colorado media covered it.
Noblit, 46, was a veteran editor who had risen through the ranks at papers in Colorado before his arrival in Alaska. He worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Pueblo Chieftain.
He had been in the news once previously. When he was editor of his college newspaper at Eastern Illinois University, thousands of issues of the paper had been stolen and destroyed by someone unhappy with an article.
Noblit and Baird had been roommates and gay lovers. The defense attorney for both men was unsuccessful in having the information about their sexual relationship suppressed.
“I knew sex would rear its ugly head in the murder case,” acknowledged Noblit’s Defense Attorney Art Robson, but he had hoped it could be kept out of Noblit’s trial.
“Mr. Noblit kept Baird,” said District Attorney Harry Davis in court. “He provided his transportation, a place to stay, his food. He was extremely jealous of him.”
The morning of the murder, Baird wanted to be taken to the home of Cavadini for a tryst.
Noblit testified that he drove his roommate to Cavadini’s apartment. Broken-hearted over the situation Noblit testified that he cried himself to sleep.
The prosecution argued that Baird was in a rage over Noblit’s controlling nature and attacked Cavadini during a drunken sexual encounter.
Baird’s defense attorney Elliott Labovitz contended that Cavadini attacked the intoxicated Baird, and that Baird repeatedly stabbed the victim while trying to protect himself.
In a surprise move, Baird accepted a plea agreement that reduced his first-degree murder charge to second-degree murder, a felony.
“Ken Noblit was the guy (Baird) was striking out at when he stabbed Mr. Cavadini 37 times,” Davis said at trial.
Superior Court Judge Niesje Steinkruger sentenced Baird to 35 years in prison, with five years suspended. She called the murder “heinous.”
Noblit’s case had yet to be heard. Alaska judicial law mandated the release of Noblit after 120 days passed without a trial. “(Noblit) came within a hair of being charged with first-degree murder,” said Robson.
Noblit next was convicted of hindering prosecution, also a felony. In addition to hiding the wanted Baird, the prosecution said Noblit went to Cavadini’s apartment and attempted to clean it. He also washed Baird’s bloodstained clothes.
The court sentenced Noblit to three years in prison
After serving time, Noblit found work in Fairbanks as a head clerk with Safeway, Inc, transferring to Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1995, to be near two sisters.
However, he died just two years later, on December 15, 1997, making the news one last time with his obituary in the Pueblo Chieftain, the paper where he once had worked as an editor.