Lancaster Man Given Death in Triple Slayings

Frank Anderson, the Lancaster man convicted in the brutal slaying of an Arizona family in 1996, showed no emotion Tuesday as he was sentenced to three death sentences for the crime.

Anderson, 50, was also sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy and another 12 1/2 years for armed robbery.

A Mohave County Superior Court jury in January convicted Anderson of armed robbery, conspiracy to commit murder and three counts of first-degree murder in the August 1996 slayings of Robert Delahunt, 15, Leta Kagen, 37, and Roland Wear, 50.

Sentencing proceedings are pending for co-defendants Kimberly Lane, 16, also of Lancaster, and Robert “Bobby” Poyson, 21, a boarder at Kagen’s trailer property where the slayings occurred. Lane and Poyson were convicted of the same charges at separate trials.

Although Anderson expressed remorse at a pre-sentencing hearing last month, his plea for leniency was rejected by Mohave Superior Court Judge James Chavez, who ruled the killings were motivated by monetary gain and were especially cruel and heinous.

“It appears Anderson was the mastermind of the group and Poyson the executioner,” Chavez said.

The judge said the defendants, including Lane, who was 14 at the time, conspired to kill their hosts to steal Wear’s pickup truck to drive to Illinois. In August 1996, Wear and Kagen were found shot in the face in Kagen’s shabby trailer 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.

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It was the first triple slaying in Mohave County in more than three decades.

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

Anderson and Lane left the park together in July 1996 for Chicago, and got as far as Nevada, where they met Poyson, who was staying with Kagen and Wear.

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Times staff writer Claire Vitucci contributed to this report.