ANCHORAGE, Alaska, May 25 (UPI) -- Robert Hale, the sex-offender patriarch of an Alaskan wilderness family who fought national park access rules, has died in prison, corrections officials say.
The 67-year-old Hale, also known as Papa Pilgrim, died Saturday night in an Anchorage correctional facility where he had been sent last fall after being pleading guilty to charges of abusing and sexually assaulting his eldest daughter.
The state Corrections Department said Hale had been in a prison hospice unit and had a chaplain and some family members in attendance when he died.
The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday that Hale had gained notoriety through his family's iconoclastic lifestyle. A 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 Parks Service over his plan to bulldoze a road to land his family owned inside the remote Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.
The Papa Pilgrim saga ended in 2005 when family members told police Hale had routinely beaten and raped his eldest daughter for years.
