Teen Says Idea to Kill Family Was Made in Jest

Kimberly Lane, the Lancaster teenager on trial for the August 1996 slayings of three members of an Arizona family, told a jury on Thursday that she was the victim of a troubled childhood and an abusive father, and that her suggestion to two friends that they kill the family was made in jest after a night of drinking.

Dressed in a white skirt and flower-print blouse, Lane, 16, appeared steady and confident, clasping her hands as she answered questions from defense counsel Eric Engan.

On a tape made 10 days after the slayings and played Thursday, Lane tells the detective she thought they were all kidding when she suggested they kill the family and steal their pickup truck.

“I was pretty messed up,” the teenager testified after the tape was played. “I had had a couple beers.”

Lane is being tried as an adult but cannot be sentenced to death because she was only 14 at the time of the killings. Two men convicted earlier in the case are awaiting the judge’s decision whether to sentence them to death or life imprisonment.

The prosecution has painted Lane as the instigator of the slayings.

After Lane ran away from home in July 1996 with Frank Anderson, the 48-year-old manager of the mobile home park where she lived in Lancaster, the two, along with a drifter named Robert Poyson, were taken in by the family in Kingman.

In his opening statement earlier this week, Deputy Mohave County Atty. Derek Carlisle told the jury that Lane didn’t like the shabby trailer belonging to Leta Kagen, 37, her boyfriend Roland Wear, 50, and her 15-year-old son, Robert Delahunt.

Det. Eric Cooper told the nine-woman, five-man jury on Thursday that Lane admitted she first suggested killing the desert family when she, Anderson and Poyson decided they’d had enough of their spartan accommodations and wanted to steal Wear’s truck and leave for Chicago, where Anderson boasted of an organized-crime affiliation.

Lane is expected to return to the stand today.