Difficult Lives, Tragic Deaths

They were a makeshift family, living in a tired white trailer, surrounded by dead cars, junk and old tires on the outskirts of this remote Arizona desert valley.

The woman, Leta Kagen, 37, her boyfriend, Roland Wear, 50, and her teenage son survived without electricity or running water, and usually without a car, but were known as generous to strangers.

The boy, 15-year-old Robert Delahunt, walked five miles to the main highway to catch the bus to school. Sometimes he’d get lucky and a neighbor would give him a ride. But more often than not, life was a tough hike for Robert, a stocky youth with a shy grin and a homemade haircut.

At school, class bullies singled him out for attention, teasing him about his clothes and his hygiene. Former teacher Mary Stuart recalled how Robert would stay inside during recess--escaping into a world of comic book characters, which he had an exceptional talent for drawing--rather than risk abuse on the playground.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t have wanted to live his life,” said Norma Woods, a counselor at Robert’s school. “Kids at this age can be so cruel and Robert wasn’t the cleanest boy in class because he didn’t have running water at his home.”

The intensely private youth confided to Stuart that he didn’t like the way his mother and her boyfriend always let people stay at their place. He was angry because visitors sometimes stole what little he had.

And last month, authorities say, visitors did far worse.

The bodies of Robert, Kagen and Wear were found at their desert home. Robert was stabbed, the others were shot.

Police have arrested three suspects: a 14-year-old runaway girl from Lancaster, her neighbor, Frank Winfield Anderson, 48, and Robert Poyson, 20, who had rented a room in the Arizona trailer from Kagen.

Police theorize that Anderson--dubbed the “ice cream man” by neighborhood youngsters--and the girl hitchhiked to Arizona together from their Lancaster trailer park.

Anderson’s wife reported him missing Aug. 3, shortly after the girl disappeared. How the pair found Robert, Kagen and Wear is not known. But if they wound up in the area without money or a place to stay, someone probably directed them to Robert’s house. Kagen and Wear had a soft spot when it came to taking in strangers, neighbors said.

Kagen survived on a $200-a-month welfare check, while Wear got by working banquets at a Laughlin, Nev. casino, according to family members and court records. The couple’s habit of taking in strangers was a sore point with friends and family who warned them of the dangers.

“Roland always tried to help people,” recalled his mother, Eileen Wear. “It was a pattern in his life for many years. He would take them in, give them a place to stay and then help them find a job.”

Kagen was the same way, according to her estranged husband, Elliot Kagen. It was how she met Poyson during a gambling trip to Laughlin in February.

Poyson struck up a conversation with the Kagens, and later asked for help renting a room, Elliot Kagen said. “Bobby said he had been living out on the streets and that he wanted to get his life together,” he recalled. “We thought, ‘OK, we’d try to help him.’ We thought we would be open-minded this one last time.”

Poyson moved into the Kagens’ trailer home and worked busing tables at a local diner, Kagen said. Poyson paid $100 a month in rent until he abruptly quit his job earlier this year.

“Bobby kind of had a crazy attitude at times,” Kagen said. “I guess he snapped.”

In mid-August, two strangers arrived at the trailer: an older man and a young girl who said they were father and daughter.

Kagen said he didn’t meet the strangers because he had been staying in Kingman, about 10 miles away. But when Kagen and Wear failed to pick him up one day to show him their newly purchased pickup truck, he had a friend drive him to the trailer home.

“I knew something was wrong as soon as we drove up,” Kagen said. “The house was pitch black and it was only 9 p.m. I knew Leta would have still been up so the oil lamps should have been burning.

“I went inside and that’s when I found my wife.”

Police recovered Wear’s body beneath a stack of wood behind the trailer home. Robert was found stabbed to death in a smaller trailer nearby.

Anderson was arrested three days later in Anna, Ill., driving Wear’s pickup truck. He was charged with three counts of murder. His wife has since left Lancaster for Texas. Interviews with neighbors and employers and court records describe Anderson as a persuasive talker who, until now, had but a minor brush with the law.

In 1992, Anderson answered a classified ad and landed a job as assistant manager at the El Rancho mobile home park in Lancaster. The manager, who was nearing retirement, liked his folksy sense of humor and can-do attitude. Anderson also was physically strong--and good at tackling the many odd jobs at the aging park on the outskirts of downtown.

Anderson moved into one of the 75 trailers with his wife, Mary Dorothy Anderson, an ailing woman who neighbors said looked old enough to be his mother. The couple visited nearby cafes daily, often bringing along the wife’s two grown children or a bevy of friends, most of whom appeared to be homeless.

They quickly became notorious at local cafes where they caroused for hours, buying only coffee, chain smoking and rarely leaving tips. “They were horrible, an absolute nightmare,” said one waitress.

When the park manager retired at the end of 1994, Anderson inherited the job.

“We thought things were going just fine,” said Neal Beaver of Long Beach, co-owner of the park. “Frank was a sharp guy.”

But residents say Anderson took advantage of his position--sometimes selling trailers without paying the owners.

Anderson eventually moved his wife to a rented house in town. Meanwhile, his circle of friends in the encampment grew, including a woman companion who moved in with him at the park office, residents said.

Months after Anderson took over, residents started complaining to park owners. They said he rarely bathed or shaved and never brushed his rotting teeth or combed his hair. He kept a large collection of X-rated videos visible at the trailer park office.

Elray Franklin, a park resident for 19 years, said Anderson “could chat away like nothing was wrong and everything is right. But he had so many games going here, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Women at the trailer park said they felt intimidated by Anderson. “He was very good at winning over people who were down on their luck and then just using them,” said one resident who asked not be identified.

Anderson had been manager about 10 months when park owners decided to audit his books. According to court records and law enforcement officials, Anderson tried to burn the park’s financial records.

He allegedly persuaded one of his tenants, who was in arrears on his rent, to set the park office on fire in October 1995. But the plan failed and arson investigators eventually arrested Anderson and the tenant, Larry Noble Willey.

The two, who had no prior criminal records, were fined $200, sentenced to a year in County Jail and placed on five years’ probation.

Anderson was released four months later. He moved with his wife to a low-rent Lancaster trailer park where he met a new neighbor, the 14-year-old girl. The two disappeared July 30, leaving Anderson’s invalid wife behind.

The girl was arrested Aug. 23 with a different companion, Poyson, in Evanston, Ill.

The couple had arrived there as two young lovers, according to others at the dark church basement that served as Evanston’s homeless shelter. Then one evening, local police hauled the pair away in handcuffs, talking of a triple murder.

Poyson and the girl had registered at the shelter as a married couple on Aug. 19. They seemed to still be on their honeymoon--holding hands, kissing, clutching one another. Poyson used his real name and showed his Arizona identification. The girl called herself “Lea Poyson.” She added four years to her age to meet the shelter’s minimum age requirement. On her intake form, she requested help finding work, as well as medical attention--jotting down in a childish script that she was “Pregnet.”

The shelter doctor gave her vitamins, although he never confirmed her pregnancy. The doctor also bandaged a wound on Poyson’s arm that he said he got in a fight when the couple had been robbed.

The shelter is a makeshift facility squeezed into the basement of the Lake Street Church of Evanston, a huge, gothic-style edifice that is the city’s oldest public building. Overnighters sleep in three unfinished rooms lined with narrow steel-frame bunk beds, men separate from women.

Handwritten signs stuck to the cinder block walls remind guests of the shelter rules: “Treat everyone with respect. No drinking, drugging, smoking, sexual behavior or stealing. No weapons, violence or threats. Stay out of all areas designated for use by members of the opposite sex.”

Poyson and the girl he introduced as his young bride stuck to the rules, although they were warned to lay off the overt affection.

“She was all over him all the time,” said one homeless man who befriended the couple at the shelter.

He said he suggested that the couple consider moving to St. Paul, Minn., because authorities there take good care of the homeless. Poyson liked the idea and he even requested bus tickets to Minnesota from the shelter staff, but they refused.

The couple spent their days walking along Evanston’s shop-lined downtown, hanging out in the park and lounging in the sand on the narrow strip of beach along Evanston’s lakefront, shelter residents said.

A chance meeting had brought them to Evanston, they told police. Hitchhiking from Wisconsin to Illinois, they had encountered a priest at a fast food restaurant in northern Illinois and he had recommended the shelter there.

Poyson and the girl checked in on a Monday night, just after 7 p.m.--when the shelter doors open and the homeless file in from an alley behind the church.

Police tracked down Poyson and the juvenile five nights later, when the girl called a friend in California from a pay phone at the Evanston public library. Police traced the call and contacted authorities in Evanston. The Evanston officers called the city’s lone homeless shelter. Soon afterward, officers arrived. The couple were turned over to the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, which is also holding Anderson.

The three are expected to be reunited at an arraignment this week in Mohave Superior Court in Kingman. Anderson and Poyson each face three murder charges, and the girl faces one count of murder and two charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Times staff writer Martha L. Willman contributed to this story in Los Angeles. Tamaki reported from Arizona and Lacey from Illinois.