Robert Allen Hale

Robert Allan Hale (April 7, 1941 – May 24, 2008) — known as Bobby Hale, as well as Papa Pilgrim and Sunstar — was an American criminal who mentally, physically, and sexually abused his wife and 15 children in the Alaskan wilderness, while his 3 other children were said to have gone missing.

Early life Robert Allan Hale was the son of Virginia and I. B. Hale. He had a twin brother, Billy, and younger brother, Tommy. On March 16, 1959, the couple were married in Ardmore prior to moving into an apartment in Tallahassee, Florida. Hale worked for a boat company earning $75 per week.

In 1974, Robert Hale (then going by the name "Sunstar") met 16-year-old Kurina Rose Bresler in the California desert. She would later call herself "Country Rose" and bear Hale 15 children. Hale had gained notoriety through his family's iconoclastic lifestyle. A self-proclaimed devout Christian, Hale moved his family of 17 to Alaska from New Mexico in 1998 and kept them isolated from nearly all outside influences, including churches.

In 2002, Hale launched a legal battle with the National Park Service over his plan to bulldoze a road to his 410-acre ranch ("Hillbilly Heaven") inside the remote Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, near the small town of McCarthy, Alaska. He lost his case at the US Court of Appeals (9th Cir., San Francisco). He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Court refused to hear it.

In 2005, family members told police that Hale had routinely beaten and raped his eldest daughter for years. He was incarcerated in September 2007 and died eight months later on May 26, 2008. He was a diabetic and had been in poor health since at least 2006.

Hale was mentioned in Seymour Hersh's 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot. In 2013 a book was published by Tom Kizzia titled Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier, chronicling Hale's life with a focus on his time in McCarthy. The initial arrival of Hale and the Pilgrim Family in McCarthy was also documented by the humourist and travel-documentarist Pete McCarthy in The Road To McCarthy (2002).