Lancaster Man ‘Shot No One’

The attorney defending a Lancaster man on trial for allegedly killing three members of a desert family to steal a truck indicated in opening arguments Wednesday that he intends to place the blame on a co-defendant, a 21-year-old drifter he described as a “heinous, violent madman.”

Mohave County Public Defender Ken Everett, who previously would not reveal his defense strategy, in court described Frank Winfield Anderson, 49, as a “self-confessed coward” who is incapable of killing another human.

“Frank Anderson shot no one,” Everett said. “He hit no one to cause the death of no one . . . conspired with no one, planned with no one and caused no deaths.”

Anderson went on trial this week on three counts of first-degree murder plus theft and conspiracy charges in the August 1996 slayings of Roland Wear, 50, Wear’s girlfriend, Leta Kagen, 37, and Kagen’s 15-year-old son, Robert Delahunt. It was the first triple homicide in Mohave County since 1962.

Anderson could be sentenced to death if convicted.

Prosecutors have painted Anderson as a murderer who, after abandoning his invalid wife, ran away with 14-year-old Kimberly Lane of Lancaster, hooked up with drifter Robert Poyson and killed three people who were kind enough to take them in. Poyson and Lane are awaiting trial on the same charges, with Lane being tried as an adult.

“This is a horrible, horrible triple murder,” Deputy Mohave County Atty. Jace Zack told the nine-man, five-woman jury in his opening statement.

“They were very poor people who lived in a junkyard.”

On Wednesday, the small courtroom was packed with courthouse employees and reporters. Anderson, who in pretrial hearings appeared in court wearing a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, wore a black-and-white tweed sport coat for the start of the trial.

He displayed little emotion during the proceedings, but paid close attention to testimony given by three Mohave County sheriff’s deputies and Dr. Donald Nelson, chief county medical examiner.

In August 1996, Wear and Kagen were found shot in the face in Kagen’s shabby trailer anchored on the outskirts of a remote desert community known as Golden Valley. Delahunt was found badly beaten with his throat cut and a knife protruding from his skull.

Anderson and Lane met when they both lived at the Lancaster mobile home park he managed. According to prosecution testimony at pretrial hearings, they began a romantic relationship and Anderson convinced her he had Mafia ties in Illinois, where she could become a “Mafia goddaughter.”

They left the park together in July 1996, bound for Chicago, and got as far as Nevada, where they met Poyson, who was staying with the Kagens.

Noting that the Kagen trailer property was filthy and lacked electricity, gas and running water, Zack alleged that the trio conspired to kill the victims to steal Wear’s late-model truck.

The prosecutor told the jury Wednesday that Delahunt was the first to die and that Anderson was the first to inflict injury.

“The defendant used his then-14-year-old girlfriend as bait to lure Robert Delahunt into a travel trailer,” Zack said. While Lane distracted Delahunt by kissing him, “the defendant burst in on them, grabbed the knife and slashed Robert Delahunt’s throat,” Zack said.

Defender Everett conceded that Anderson did cut Delahunt’s throat but argued that he did so to protect Lane after he heard his girlfriend scream.

Anderson acted as he did because Lane had an emotional hold on him, Everett told the jury. “She’s an adult in kid’s clothing. As young as she might be, she’s whip smart, streetwise, a manipulator.”

Everett told the jury that Poyson polished off Delahunt by beating him with rocks and pounding a knife into his skull.

Two hours later, Anderson and Poyson entered Kagen’s mobile home about 150 feet from the travel trailer where her son had been murdered. Anderson held a lantern as he and Poyson confronted Kagen and Wear in their bedroom, authorities said.

Kagen allegedly died instantly when Poyson fired one round from a .22 rifle into her head. Wear was shot in the face but died after he was struck in the face with the rifle, the lantern and a cinderblock.

Authorities said Anderson, Poyson and Lane then loaded tools and a stereo into Wear’s truck and drove off in the wee hours of Aug. 14.

Kagen’s estranged husband discovered the decomposing bodies at least two days later.

Anderson was arrested in southern Illinois when a state trooper checked the license plate number of Wear’s truck and determined it was stolen. Poyson and Lane were arrested at a homeless shelter in Evanston, where they registered as a married couple.

After her arrest, Lane, now 15, gave birth to a child she said she thinks was fathered by Anderson. The baby was given to her mother and stepfather, who live in Chino Valley, Ariz.

Trial dates have yet to be set for Poyson and Lane. Though Anderson and Poyson could face the death penalty if convicted, Lane cannot be executed because of her age.