(Photo courtesy of Anchorage Daily News)  Christopher Erin Rogers Jr. says he hacked his father to death with a machete in Palmer, stole his dad's truck, fled to Anchorage and continued a 26-hour crime rampage that left two dead and four others injured because he was angry with his family, according to charges filed.

After two killings, he kept hunting because he "just wanted to kill a few more people," he told police.

The rampage came to an abrupt end when Rogers, 28, carjacked an SUV and led police on a high-speed chase across Northern Lights Boulevard that ended with police ramming the SUV - a violent end to the violent binge.

After his arrest, Rogers told police he was angry over his treatment by family members before the Palmer attack, but said the attacks in Anchorage were largely random, according to a police affidavit filed in court.

He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder in the first degree, though more charges, including injuring a police officer, are likely after a grand jury examine the case, Anchorage District Attorney Adrienne Bachman said.

The mayhem began before sunup (12/2/07) Sunday morning, according to court records.

  (Photo courtesy of Anchorage Daily News)   Christopher E. Rogers, 51, and his girlfriend, Elann Moren, 55, spent the day before at home on Gunnysack Road in Palmer. Rogers' son, known as Erin, was with them. She and Rogers Sr. went to bed after dinner, she told police.

When Moren awoke, Erin was standing above her, slashing her with a machete and saying, in effect, "You made me do this," an affidavit filed by Alaska State Troopers in Palmer says. By the time Moren called 911 to report the machete attack, Rogers' father was dead.

Before she left for Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, Moren told troopers that she thought Erin took some or all of unspecified prescription medication she had.

After his capture Rogers Jr. told police he was angry with his father and Moren. Many of his family members thought poorly of him, he said, and treated him badly.

Troopers arriving at the scene Sunday morning couldn't find Rogers Jr. or the weapon that inflicted the injuries. They contacted local police departments and told them to be on the lookout, Trooper Col. Audie Holloway said.

Rogers Jr. was already on his way to Anchorage in his father's black truck. He later told police killing his father with a machete took a lot of energy and that he should have "just shot them" but he couldn't find his father's gun.

He did find the gun, and lots of ammunition, in his father's truck as he drove into town. He ditched the truck and the machete in town near a gas station. He kept the gun and went prowling for new wheels.

10:36 A.M. SUNDAY 12/2/07

Neighbors walking their dog along the 4300 block of Lois Drive found Jason Wenger, a 27-year-old graduate student at the University of Alaska Anchorage, slumped in his idling green Bronco in his driveway near Spenard Builder's Supply.

They first thought he needed medical help, then called police when they saw he wasn't breathing.

Rogers told police he shot Wenger, who was sitting in the driver's seat. He planned to steal the Bronco but the shots were louder than he expected and he worried the neighbors might see him if he took the time to get Wenger's slumped body out of the Bronco and get himself in.

He "did not want to take on the whole neighborhood," he told police, so he ran away.

Neighbors reported hearing shots between 7 and 8 a.m., but they saw the idling car and dismissed them as possible backfire, according to court documents.

Wenger worked for ASSETS Inc., helping people with disabilities, his graduate adviser Jo-Ann Mapson said. A straight-A student, he was at work on his thesis, which he planned to complete in the spring.

A fleeing Rogers made his way through neighborhoods on foot toward downtown Anchorage, he told police. He tired and took a nap in some woods. When he woke up, he bought a pack of smokes and a bottle of beer, then set out to find another victim, he told police.

He wasn't worried about getting caught anymore, he said. He "just wanted to kill a few more people along the way."

7:20 P.M. SUNDAY 12/2/07:

Elizabeth Rumsey, 33, was walking home on a bike path near Westchester Lagoon after volunteering for the Anchorage International Film Festival at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub, said her friend Rachel James, who was talking to Rumsey on her cell phone at the time.

"We were catching up on her weekend," said James, who is Rumsey's backcountry ski partner.

A law clerk for the Alaska Supreme Court, Rumsey had just won the Wilderness Woman Contest in Talkeetna, James said.

Rumsey was only a few blocks from her home when "she crossed paths with a tall, thin man who made her nervous," according to the charging document. Over the phone, James heard Rumsey tell someone the time.

"All of a sudden she screamed several times and the phone went dead," James said. She called a neighbor to go check on her friend, then called Rumsey's cell phone. A woman at the scene picked up and said police and medics were on the way.

Rumsey, shot in the back, was rushed to Alaska Regional Hospital, where she was initially listed in critical condition.

Rumsey's friends are keeping a round-the-clock vigil outside her hospital room and said Monday evening they think she is doing well.

7:05 A.M. MONDAY 12/3/07:

Only a few blocks away from where Rumsey got shot, Tamas Deak, 43, walked out of his home near 16th Avenue and K Street to start his car and let it warm up while he was getting ready for work. Rogers was watching.

Deak is a landscape architect born in Hungary. He's married with two young children, said Michael Prozeralik, president of KPB Architects, where Deak has worked since 2002.

As Deak got out of his car to go back inside, Rogers approached him. He had learned from his earlier mistake, he told police, and this time around, he waited for Deak to get out of the car before he shot him multiple times in the arm and torso.

Rogers sped off as Deak lay on the ground, yelling for his wife.

A bullet "did nick a lung," Prozeralik said, but no major arteries were hit. "The prognosis is pretty positive," he said. Deak "should have a full recovery."

When police received the call about the attack on Deak, every available officer and detective - at least 50 - began the hunt for Rogers, who investigators were beginning to see as a part of the bigger picture, said Anchorage police Lt. Paul Honeman.

7:29 A.M. MONDAY 12/3/07: 

Anchorage police spotted Deak's gray 1990 Jeep Wagoneer at the intersection of DeBarr Road and Bragaw Street and began their pursuit, Honeman said. Rogers refused to pull over, leading them south on Bragaw to Northern Lights, where he ran a red light and turned eastbound.

With a growing string of cruisers in pursuit, it became clear Rogers wasn't planning to stop for police, and the decision was made to stop him with force, Heun said. Two officers rammed their cars into the Wagoneer near Northern Lights and Lily Street, just shy of Boniface Parkway.  One officer injured his knee during the wreck.

Rogers told police he intended to shoot some officers, but his .357 revolver "just clicked" when he pulled the trigger.  Police found five live rounds in the gun, and plenty more in Rogers' jacket.

Rogers, a construction worker who lived in Anchorage, has a lengthy criminal history here and in the Mat-Su area - including charges of assault, harassment, reckless endangerment, driving under the influence, and attempted arson, according to court documents. Though he's been in and out of jail, he's never been in for long, according to the Department of Corrections.

Even before the Palmer attack, troopers had an outstanding warrant for Rogers' arrest. With 2,119 warrants to wrangle, troopers have to choose who to look for. A probation violation warrant is not at the top of their list, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. The original charge in that case was driving under the influence.

A public defender was appointed to represent Rogers, Heun said. He is being held without bail for the Palmer charges, and on $1 million cash-only bail for the crimes he is accused of in Anchorage, Bachman said.

Update 12/4/07:  Christopher Erin Rogers Jr. - Erin to his family - has a lengthy criminal record in Palmer and Anchorage, including attempted arson, driving while intoxicated and domestic violence, according to court documents.

The 28-year-old describes himself as a construction worker. He has listed various addresses over the years, including a trailer home on Wilson Street in Spenard and apartments in Eagle River.

When the rampage began early Sunday, Rogers was out on bail for a felony drunken driving charge. He was supposed to be under the watch of his father and his father's girlfriend, court-approved custodians who lived outside Palmer on Gunnysack Road.

But in a fit of anger Sunday morning, the younger Rogers attacked his father, Christopher Rogers Sr., and girlfriend, Elann Moren, with a machete, according to Alaska State Troopers. Before the 26 hours of violence ended in Anchorage around 7:30 a.m. Monday, the elder Rogers and an Anchorage graduate student were dead and four more were injured, including a police officer.

As a young teenager, Rogers twice was in trouble for theft, with cases handled through the juvenile system. He graduated from the Alaska National Guard Youth Corps Challenge Program, which is supposed to help problem kids turn their lives around.

In April 1999, when he was almost 20, he set two fires on the same day in Eagle River, according to a charging document that accused him of arson. He and a friend were walking around bored, he told police.

In asking for leniency before a judge, Rogers' grandfather, Daniel Landers, said that Rogers had returned to school at Chugiak High after previously showing no interest in his education. He had brought his grades up to A's and B's.

"He has done a lot to turn his life in another direction," Landers, who since has died, wrote to the judge. But he added: "I do feel that his attitude does need improvement and I do feel that this is due to growing up in a broken family."

That May, Rogers pleaded no contest to attempted arson and the judge sentenced him to two years' probation. Years later, his conviction was set aside.

But he didn't stay out of the trouble. He was convicted of domestic violence assault in 2000 and got five years probation.

The next year, he accused his mother of threatening him and his girlfriend, and sought a restraining order.

He wrote in his petition that his mother subjected him to "emotional and psychological abuse, playing mind games." He said his mother stopped by the KFC in Eagle River where he worked to start arguments about his girlfriend. She called both of them foul names, he claimed. The young couple had a son, and he didn't want his mother to see the boy, his petition said. She needed a "mental health exam," he wrote.

The magistrate didn't give him a protective order.

Then, in 2004, Rogers was convicted of drunken driving and resisting arrest after a wreck. His blood-alcohol content was .175, double the legal limit for driving, according to court records. He got a few days in jail and three years of probation.

Last year, in Palmer, he was convicted of harassment after a woman accused him of beating her in front of her three children. The woman suffered a sprained arm, as well as extensive bruises, according to a trooper's affidavit. He got two years' probation.

In July, a trooper investigator discovered Rogers Jr. 200 yards down a trail off Sullivan Road in the Butte, passed out behind the wheel of a 1982 Chevrolet pickup, keys in the ignition, an open vodka bottle nearby and numerous full Jack Daniels shot bottles in the car. He was arrested for felony drunken driving.

The next month, a Palmer magistrate approved Rogers Sr. and Moren as court-approved custodians for him, according to court documents.

In October, an Anchorage judge issued a warrant for his arrest. City prosecutors wanted him jailed for failing to show up for alcohol abuse treatment in the 2004 drunken driving case.

Update 12/6/07:  Elann Moren probably owes her life to Bear.

On Wednesday, Moren's son, James Moren, shared his mother's story of the attack that launched a violent 26-hour rampage stretching from Palmer to Anchorage, ending with Erin Rogers' arrest for murder.

According to her son, Moren awoke suddenly early Sunday in her apartment south of Palmer to find her fiance, Christopher Rogers, fighting off his machete-wielding son.

James Moren said when Chris Erin Rogers Jr. finished with his dad, he turned the machete toward Moren, who had tried to help Rogers Sr. fight him off.

That's where Bear, a 6-year-old, 150-pound wolf-mastiff cross, came in.

"The dog attacked Erin, so my mother was able to get in the bathroom and lock it and call 911," Moren said.

His mother, 55, was seriously injured and remains hospitalized, Moren said, praising her courage during the fight for survival against an armed killer.

Bear, as "big as a human," either drove Erin Rogers off or scared him into running, James Moren said.  The dog suffered a 6-inch gash that left his lip hanging loose, requiring stitches, Moren said.

Bear has been Rogers Sr.'s pet since he was a puppy. He also lost a tooth in the bloody encounter, Moren said. He was taken briefly to the pound but was quickly bailed out by family.

Rogers is being held on $1 million bail for the Anchorage attacks and another $1 million bail for the Palmer attacks.

The night before the Gunnysack Road assaults, the elder Rogers and Moren celebrated their first anniversary together, James Moren said.

"Family and friends had just left. They had been celebrating with non-alcoholic beverages and were looking forward to a healthy life together. They were planning a wedding to take place this summer," he said, his voice trailing off.  "I'm just thankful my mother is alive."  Just barely alive, the way he described it.

"The doctor took 10 minutes to explain all her injuries," he said. "It's pretty ugly."  He said his mother is out of the intensive care unit at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. "She's going to require more surgery," he said. "I don't know what the long-term outlook is. She's going to require a lot of rehabilitation."

Moren, 32, of Anchorage said his mother asked for her glasses Tuesday, so he retrieved them from the apartment where the fatal assault took place.  "It looked just like everything you would see in a horror movie."

Of Erin Rogers, Moren said, "He's ... crazy. I don't have any room in my heart for him." Moren said he'd met Erin Rogers only a few times, mainly since August when his mother and Christopher Rogers volunteered to be Erin's third-party custodians so he could bail out of jail on a July drunken driving arrest.

"His father felt responsible toward him," Moren said.  James Moren said he last saw Erin Rogers on Thanksgiving.

"It was one of four dinners I had that day, so I wasn't there long, but I didn't see any arguments, no hostile feelings," Moren said.

That's the assessment of others at the dinner too.  "We had a wonderful Thanksgiving," said Kris Marshal, who lives next door to Rogers Sr. "All three of them were here. Erin brought a beautiful crab hors d'oeuvre."  Marshal said she noticed no strained relations among the family members at the meal.

By most accounts, their neighbors on Outer Springer Loop and Gunnysack Road knew little of either Rogers or his son.

Marshal said she heard nothing the morning of the attack despite living only a few yards away. The first she knew anything had happened was when sirens blared into the darkness.

Other neighbors also learned of the event when troopers came knocking in their search for the younger Rogers.

Rogers and Moren's landlord, Carmen Keirn, who hosted the Thanksgiving dinner, said the family had lived in the apartment for about two years. She said she knew Erin Rogers had a criminal record, but not one as extensive as what she read about in the newspaper Monday morning.

She said she had no fear of him. "I paid him $10 an hour to work in the yard."  She said the father and son seemed fine together as they worked on the roof of the apartment.  "I never noticed anything, no animosity between them. Not at all."

Update 12/13/07:  An Anchorage grand jury indicted Rogers Jr. on 10 charges including murder, adding to murder and attempted murder charges he already faces in Palmer.

In Anchorage, Rogers, 28, was charged with:

• First degree murder and robbery in the Dec. 2 shooting death of graduate student Jason Wenger. Police say he was trying to steal Wenger's Bronco but got skittish after shooting him and left.

• Attempted murder and assault in the shooting that evening of Elizabeth Rumsey, 33, who survived. Rumsey, an Alaska Supreme Court law clerk, was walking home from the Bear Tooth Theatre and was shot in the back, police say.

• Attempted murder, robbery and vehicle theft in the shooting and carjacking on Dec. 3 of Tamas Deak, 43. Rogers targeted Deak, a landscape architect, as he warmed up his Jeep before work, police say.

• Attempted murder against an Anchorage police officer, failure to stop for a police officer, and weapons misconduct. According to Anchorage police, Rogers failed to pull over after he fled early on the morning of Dec. 3 in Deak's Jeep, forcing police to ram the vehicle. Police say he told them he intended to shoot officers, but his gun just "clicked."

Among the witnesses who testified before the Anchorage grand jury: a firearms expert from the state crime lab, three police detectives, and an executive with Brown Jug. Rogers told police he bought some smokes and a bottle of beer after taking a nap in the woods midway through the 26 hours of violence.

Update 12/14/07:  Bear the dog was asleep on a couch, no longer suffering much from his encounter with a machete-wielding attacker that left his master dead and his master's fiancee seriously injured.

"He has a cut lip. It was pretty badly cut. Looked like a real blow to the mouth," said "Doc" Derry, who is caring for Bear until he can find a permanent home. "And he had a shattered tooth."

Bear is credited with saving Elann Moren's life Dec. 2. That doesn't surprise Derry, who's known Bear since the half-wolf, half-mastiff was a puppy.

"He's a great dog. He doesn't like strangers," Derry said. "And he doesn't like to see people hit each other. So it's my educated guess that he went ballistic when he saw what was going on. He's a big, big dog."

Derry believes Bear and the killer had a disagreement over who should remain in the house and the killer lost: "Bear doesn't have a thumb to turn the doorknob," he noted.

Derry said he had known the elder Rogers since the 1980s. Rogers lived with Derry on and off for a few years, "trying to get back on his feet."  "He helped me build this house about 10 years ago," Derry said of his place on Wasilla-Fishhook Road. "Chris brought this puppy home that he got from a friend. This is his home. My bitch took him in as her own. This is where he grew up."

So for now, Bear is in a familiar place. As of Tuesday, Derry didn't know where Bear would end up permanently.

Lennie, as friends call Elann Moren, underwent yet another surgery Tuesday, this time on an elbow shattered in the Dec. 2 assault.

"I don't think Lennie can handle him," when she leaves the hospital, Derry said.  He'll probably go to a family member, he said.

In the meantime, the bill from the veterinarian who stitched up Bear came to about $700. Then there's the food bill for a 150-pound animal.

"When Chris (Sr.) brought him home, he was just this little puppy," Derry said. "Little did we know ..."

Update 12/11/08:  Now a year later - Both the prosecution and the defense warned potential jurors during the screening process that this was a bloody, intense case. They didn't exaggerate.

The jury of three women, nine men and three alternates listened intently and grim-faced as the state laid out its case against the younger Rogers, 29, in Superior Court Judge Vanessa White's Palmer courtroom. Their attention intensified when they heard the sounds and saw the images they were warned about.

On Dec. 2, 2007 at 5:20 in the morning, police dispatcher Jennifer Hull got a disturbing call, Kalytiak told them.

A woman, moaning and struggling to keep conscious, had locked herself in her bathroom and was calling on her cell phone.

The prosecutor said she said things like, " 'We're dying over here. He just came in and started chopping us up. I can't walk. My arm is barely on my body.  " 'Please hurry. " 'God have mercy ...'

"And you can imagine," the prosecutor went on, "she didn't say this in the tone I'm using now."

While he was addressing the jury, the courtroom door opened and Moren slipped in, dressed in a full-length black-and-white cape and a black fur-trimmed hat. Just before the prosecution played her 911 call for the jury, she got up and slipped out as quietly as she'd slipped in.

Neither the lawyers nor the judge said anything about it.

As Kalytiak tells it, on that cold winter morning, as Matanuska winds howled, the defendant came into his father's bedroom and started hacking the couple to pieces with a machete, striking again and again and again.

His father did his best to fight him off and to protect his fiancee, Kalytiak said. He shoved him out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where he collapsed and died naked on his back on the linoleum floor.

"This is how it happened," he told the jury. "You're going to hear much more, you're going to see much worse.  "I should also tell you what I'm not going to prove -- why he did this."

Once Kalytiak was finished, it was Rogers' public defender's turn to address the jury.  "Mr. Kalytiak is absolutely right about one thing," John Richard said in his brief opening. "We're not going to figure out why."

It was clear this wasn't going to be a whodunit case. Richard's opening statements went more along the lines of, what was Rogers thinking? What was his intent? Perhaps this was second-degree murder rather than murder in the first degree.

Among witnesses called to testify was Curtis Vik, investigator with the Alaska State Troopers, who led the jury into the crime scene through a series of photos projected on a courtroom screen.

The photo tour started out in the driveway, then moved in closer, to the front of the house, to the arctic entryway, to the kitchen door, through that door and into that gory kitchen. And then into the bathroom where Moren nearly bled to death while on the phone with the dispatcher. And finally into the bedroom where the attack began as the couple slept.

Blood was everywhere, in splatters, in drips, in pools. On the floor, on the kitchen cabinets, on the sink, on the refrigerator, on the seat of a chair. Imprinted on sheetrock where the victims slammed against the walls.

Throughout the proceedings, Rogers, in a light blue dress shirt, khaki pants, pink socks and slip-on shoes, rocked quietly back and forth in his chair. During some of the more graphic testimony, he grew flushed, wrinkled his forehead and tucked his chin close to his chest.

He was staying on the property at the time of the rampage because his father was acting as his third-party custodian following a drunken driving charge. The tiny outbuilding where he was sleeping was where the photo tour came to a close.

It was there investigators found a black machete sheath leaning against the wall, next to Rogers' bedside table, just below a set of white lace curtains.   The prosecution passed it, sealed in plastic, around for the jurors to see, along with other evidence from the scene.  The machete will make its appearance later.

Update 12/15/08:  Bear, a 150-pound mastiff mix, with legs as thick as baseball bats and a head the size of a holiday turkey, strode into the courtroom on a leash in the murder trial of Christopher Erin Rogers Jr.

His appearance came at a time members of the jury could have used an upbeat story about a dog, since they'd just seen photos of his dead master all hacked up by a machete and had listened to the medical examiner use the word "chop" over and over again.

On the other end of Bear's leash was Ernestine Arron Harmon, fiancee of the defendant's brother. The dog, whose fate was somewhat uncertain after the murder, lives with them now. Harmon came to Superior Court Judge Vanessa White's courtroom to help tell Bear's piece of the story and to act as his character witness.

  (Photo courtesy of Anchorage Daily News)   Great dog, she said under oath from the witness stand. Couch potato. Loves people.  As she testified, Bear stood beside her and looked around. He stared at the defendant for a few moments, then looked away and parked it on the floor.

Among the dozen charges Erin Rogers faces is cruelty to animals for allegedly taking a whack at Bear as the dog tried to stop the mayhem early on the morning of Dec. 2, 2007. He got a nasty slice across his lip and a shattered tooth for his efforts.

Friends and family of the surviving victim, Elann "Lennie" Moren, credit Bear for sidetracking the attack and buying her enough time to lock herself in the bathroom and dial 911.

The jury also heard from Cynthia Collins, the veterinarian who sewed Bear back together and extracted the lower incisor that got shattered.

The Humane Society of the United States named Bear as Most Courageous Dog in Alaska. But Bear got edged out as Valor Dog of the Year by Buffy, a German shepherd in California that chased a gunman away from her owner despite being shot.

Bear is the second dog to make a dramatic courtroom entrance in this trial.

The first was Lucky, an oldish white poodle that wears outfits, that temporarily interrupted court proceedings the day jury selection got under way. The defendant's distraught mother, Sherry Kelly, produced a letter from her doctor that has allowed her to bring the dog to court during the trial that would decide her son's fate.

Kelly and Lucky have made the drive from Anchorage every day since the beginning. Monday was the first the two were missing.

The day's testimony began on a much grimmer note. All day, the alleged murder weapon, a machete sealed in plastic and secured to the bottom of a gun box, sat front and center on a table in the courtroom.

Dr. Christopher Young, deputy medical examiner for the state of Oregon, was filling in for Dr. Franc Fallico at the time of the murder. The autopsy he performed on the defendant's father showed 25 injuries, although some overlapped and intercepted. He itemized 13 in the head and neck region alone, the majority on the back, top and side of the head. These he went over wound by wound for the jury.

There wasn't enough blood left to do a standard toxicology test, he said. The backup plan uses samples from urine and vitreous fluid inside the eyeball.

During opening statements, Prosecutor Roman Kalytiak had said that the night before the attack, during a pizza party celebrating the first-year anniversary of the victims falling in love, marijuana had gone around the room. The toxicology test confirmed that. And those who were there testified later the defendant joined in too.

Kalytiak then passed photos of Christopher Rogers Sr.'s body, converted to black-and-white and bound in a three-ring folder, to the jury. The first to flip open the cover, a blond woman with fashionable glasses, glanced at the first photo, slammed the folder shut and passed it on.

The man next to her, in a plaid shirt and black suspenders, didn't even look.   They'll be able to examine these photos more closely later, they'd been told.

Update 12/19/08:  Rogers Jr., was convicted of hacking his father to death and nearly doing the same to the elder Rogers' fiancee in December 2007.

"I've been in Palmer for 10 years prosecuting and I can say that this is the worst murder I've seen," said Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak.

  (Photo courtesy of Anchorage Daily News)   Rogers had little reaction to hearing the verdict.  He sat stoically in a blue button-down shirt and slacks, at times whispering to his attorney, Craig Condie, who later declined comment.

The trial before Superior Court Judge Vanessa White lasted one week. The jury of eight men and four women convicted Rogers of first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, vehicle theft and animal cruelty .

Rogers will be sentenced March 24.

In a trial set for Jan. 20 in Anchorage, Rogers faces 10 more charges, including murder.

Prosecutors contend he left his father's home, drove to Anchorage and shot three people, including, Jason Wenger, 27, who died.

Kalytiak said that the Palmer case was difficult because of the grisly subject matter.  "If there's an act that deserves the label of murder in the first degree and attempted murder in the first degree, this is it," he said.

Rogers' other attorney, John Richard, said in court Thursday that the jury could not know what was in his client's mind and therefore could not conclude he had formed the intent to kill Moren and his father. Richard argued for a second-degree murder conviction for the killing of Rogers Sr. and an assault conviction for the attack on Moren.

Reference:

Juneau Empire

Anchorage Daily News