Armed robbery targeted cash

PALMER — Two Anchorage men jailed for a home-invasion-style robbery were allegedly targeting their victim’s tax return and Alaska Native corporation dividend checks.

According to court documents that Alaska State Trooper Pierre Burkett filed in the case against Jason Warth, 32, and Heath Olin, 38, the call about the home invasion reached troopers just before 7 a.m., Tuesday.

On scene of the robbery at a home near Mile 51, Parks Highway, a woman told troopers she’d been home with her husband earlier that day. Her husband had just cashed his two checks and she had about $700 of the money in her purse.

Warth, formerly the woman’s fiancé, had showed up to help her husband run some errands. Warth showed up with his current girlfriend and another man. But Warth and other man — who troopers believe was Olin — were acting strangely. The woman decided not to go and got her husband to agree to stay.

“A few minutes later, Warth and the other male broke the front door into their residence. Warth jumped on (her husband) and started beating him,” Burkett writes.

He was hitting the woman’s husband with a pistol. Warth then turned to the woman and started hitting her with the gun, too.

The husband wound up in the hospital where he had to get “several stitches,” Burkett writes. One of the doctors at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center removed a piece of plastic from the man’s wound. The plastic appeared to have come off of the pistol used to strike him.

The couple gave troopers a description of the vehicle and told them which direction it was headed. Troopers stopped it headed toward Anchorage, three miles beyond the Glenn/Parks interchange.

Warth’s girlfriend was driving. Olin was in the backseat, and Warth was in the passenger seat. At first he allegedly tried to pass off a fake ID that declared him to be Kenneth A. Massengill, but troopers quickly saw through it.

Both Warth and Olin were charged with robbery and assault and jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. As of Thursday afternoon both were still in custody.