KILLER ROBERT KOWALSKI FINGERED IN '96 MURDER

A CONVICTED killer now faces charges in a 1996 Alaska cold case. Alaska State Police say a grand jury has indicted 50 year-old Robert D. Kowalski, 50,  on Friday, charging him with first and second-degree murder. In the July 1996 murder that happened at Glacier Bear Lodge in Yakutat, Sandra Perry, 39, was shot in the head. The pair were living common-law in Washington state and were in Alaska on vacation, cops say. Kowalski, then 34, claimed the couple heard a bear outside and when he got a shotgun, he tripped onto the bed and fell onto Perry. He told authorities that as he was getting up, the gun accidentally went off, shooting Perry in the head. But a man in the next room heard the poaiur arguing viciously before the gun went off. The cold case unit re-examined the case after Kowalski was convicted in 2008 of killing his girlfriend in Montana with a single shot to the head. MORE IN THE ALASKA DAILY NEWS