A 61-year-old Arizona comedy club owner accused of shooting at his ex-wife outside her Anchorage hair salon and killing her 87-year-old father at a nearby home was found dead March 15 in a wooded area near Eagle River, police said.
The case drew fast attention in Alaska and Arizona because it combined a targeted family attack, a citywide search and the collapse of any criminal prosecution when the suspect died before arrest. Anchorage police identified the dead victim as Romaine Clark and the suspect as Matthew Thomas Becker, who officers said was the focus of a homicide investigation after the violence on March 14. Alaska’s News Source later reported that the Alaska Department of Law confirmed Becker died by suicide before his arrest. Authorities have not said that a broader public threat remained after the first hours of the search, but they did warn several people Becker might have wanted to harm before he was found.
Police have laid out a basic timeline that begins Saturday morning at Becker’s ex-wife’s salon in Anchorage. According to charging documents described by Alaska’s News Source and Arizona’s Family, the woman arrived to open her business and found she could not get inside because the door lock appeared to have been tampered with. She then saw Becker in a nearby vehicle, recognized him and said he got out and began shooting at her as she ran. She was not hit. The woman told officers she did not know Becker was in Alaska and feared for the safety of her father, who lived with her in the Airport Heights neighborhood. Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said investigators believe Becker went directly from the salon encounter to the home on Alder Drive. At about 9:46 a.m., Anchorage police responded to reports of shots fired in the 2800 block of Alder Drive. Officers found Clark dead inside the home. Case said preliminary evidence indicated the suspect went to the rear of the residence and fired through a plate-glass window, striking and killing Clark.
The attack at the house was discovered quickly, but not by a family member. Case told Alaska’s News Source that friends who had planned an outing with Clark went to the residence when he did not come out, then alerted police. He said the time between the ex-wife’s call reporting that Becker had shot at her in the salon parking lot and the discovery of Clark’s body was only about 45 minutes. That narrow window helped investigators connect the two scenes almost immediately. Anchorage police publicly named Clark on March 14 and said next-of-kin procedures had been completed. Becker then became the focus of an urgent manhunt. Police described him as a suspect in the homicide investigation and searched through the day and night before locating his body the next morning. The sequence turned what began as an attempted shooting outside a business into a two-scene homicide case involving family members, multiple neighborhoods and a rapidly moving search.
Authorities have released only limited details about Becker’s movements before the shooting, but public reporting fills in part of the picture. Alaska’s News Source said Becker had been living in Arizona since the divorce, a detail his brother also confirmed to the station. Arizona’s Family identified him as the owner of Chuckleheads, a comedy club in Bisbee, and said he lived in Chandler. Those details explain why the story quickly spread beyond Anchorage. It was not only a local homicide investigation. It was also a case involving a man with business ties in another state who appeared to have traveled across the country before the violence. Still, police have not publicly described when Becker arrived in Alaska, how long he had been in the city, whether he had help planning the trip or how he moved between the salon, the house and the wooded area where his body was found. Those gaps remain part of the case record even though the suspect is dead.
One of the most repeated details in national coverage has been that Becker had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. That information did not come from Anchorage police or court filings. It came from Becker’s brother, who told Alaska’s News Source about the diagnosis, and the same detail was repeated in later pickup coverage. Because of that, it is part of the public story but not part of the formal criminal record released by police. The same distinction applies to motive. Investigators have described what they believe Becker did, but they have not publicly offered a formal motive statement beyond the apparent family targeting reflected in the charging documents and police briefings. Case said officers warned several people Becker might have wanted to harm, but he also said police saw no indication of a wider “hit list” beyond the family. That helped narrow the public understanding of the threat: police treated the case as a targeted attack centered on Becker’s ex-wife and her family rather than a random danger to the larger city.
The search ended the next morning. Anchorage police said Becker was found dead at about 10:24 a.m. March 15 in a wooded area near the Eagle River Campground. Their initial statement said only that the medical examiner would determine the cause of death. Alaska’s News Source later reported that the Alaska Department of Law confirmed Becker died by suicide before officers could arrest him. That development changed the legal path of the case. Before Becker was found, Alaska’s News Source reported that an officer had requested an arrest warrant on charges including first-degree attempted murder and third-degree assault tied to the shooting at the salon. With Becker dead, those charges will not move through the usual court process. Chief Case told the station that the investigation was essentially over, though detectives would continue working to make sure any loose ends were tied up. In practical terms, that means the main remaining work is evidentiary and administrative rather than prosecutorial.
The death of Clark has become the clearest human center of the case. Police identified him as 87 years old, and an employee associated with Chuckleheads later posted a public statement mourning him and condemning Becker’s actions. Arizona’s Family reported that the message described Becker as “a complicated man” but said his final acts had ruined the positive memories people had of him. The post also said it was wrong to make the story about anything other than “the murder of an innocent 87-year-old man.” That reaction showed how quickly the focus shifted away from Becker’s business identity and toward the family loss in Anchorage. In Alaska, the case also struck residents because it unfolded in familiar everyday places: a small business opening for the day, a residential street in Airport Heights and then a wooded area in Eagle River. The ordinary setting made the violence feel abrupt and personal, not distant.
Important questions, however, remain unanswered in the public record. Police have not said how many shots Becker fired at the salon, what weapon was used, whether the gun used there was the same one used at Alder Drive or whether surveillance footage captured his movements between the two scenes. Authorities also have not described how Becker died beyond the report that the Department of Law confirmed it was suicide. There has been no public release of an autopsy finding, no detailed affidavit laying out Becker’s travel to Alaska and no broader explanation of whether any earlier warning signs were known to family members or law enforcement. Those unknowns matter because they shape how fully the public can understand the planning behind the attack. For now, the strongest confirmed record comes from police statements, the basic charging documents summarized by local media and the timeline Chief Case described after Becker’s death.
The case is now in an unusual final stage. Because the suspect died before arrest, there will be no trial to test the allegations in open court, no plea and no sentencing hearing. Instead, the official record will likely rest on the homicide investigation file, the medical examiner’s findings and any final summary police choose to release. That limits how much public detail may ever emerge. A courtroom often becomes the place where surveillance video, travel records, digital evidence and witness testimony are assembled into a single narrative. Here, that process may never happen. What is already clear is narrower but firm: Anchorage police say Becker shot at his ex-wife outside her business, killed Clark at the Alder Drive home and was found dead the next day after a citywide search.
As of March 18, police had publicly identified the victim and suspect, confirmed Becker’s death and said the active search was over. The next milestone is likely to be any final update from investigators or the medical examiner that clarifies Becker’s death and closes out the remaining questions in the case.
Author note: Last updated March 18, 2026.