Additional Murder Charges Filed Against Girl

Prosecutors in Arizona have filed additional murder charges against a 14-year-old Lancaster girl, saying they suspect she was the brains behind a triple murder there last month.

Mohave County Deputy Dist. Atty. Derek Carlisle said Wednesday that the girl, who had earlier been charged with only one of the slayings, now faces three murder charges, the same as two men also implicated in the killings of a family in Golden Valley, Ariz.

The girl also faces one count of conspiracy to commit murder and a new charge of armed robbery. Carlisle said investigators initially believed the girl simply went along with the murders, but now say that it was her idea to kill the family to steal their pickup truck.

Police believe the 14-year-old girl and 48-year-old Frank Winfield Anderson hitchhiked from their trailer park in Lancaster to the dusty desert trailer park in Arizona, where a family gave them shelter.

But days later, the bodies of the family--Leta Kagen, 37, her boyfriend Roland Wear, 50, and her son Robert Delahunt, 15--were discovered by a relative. Delahunt had been stabbed to death and the other two were shot. Carlisle said the two men have identified the girl as the one who first suggested killing the family.

Anderson was arrested driving the stolen truck in Anna, Ill., a few days after the murder. The girl and Robert Poyson--another person who had found shelter with the family--were arrested later at a homeless shelter in Evanston, Ill.

Anderson and Poyson have pleaded not guilty. The girl is being held in a juvenile facility in Arizona.