Carey: More than a murder victim

MAT-SU — Laura Carey has to pause periodically as she talks about her father. The emotions are still raw and sometimes she breaks into sobs.

“He was a good family man when he died. He believed in God. He knew he was going to heaven, and then to be shot for no reason after he had turned his life around,” she said. “He could have been shot all the times he had been in trouble (for) all the stupid things he had done.”

Robert Carey was shot in the chest late Saturday evening in the yard of his home on Wolf Trail near Mile 115 Parks Highway. His wife, Verna Carey, was wounded in the arm. Alaska State Troopers say they believe the man responsible was Jeremy Christopher Nelson, 37, who lived nearby and who Verna was able to identify as her attacker. AST reports offer little in the way of explanation for the shooting, only saying that just prior to the shots, Robert Carey had asked Nelson to leave his property.

Laura Carey said that her father loved music and played in a band that released two albums in his younger days. He wasn’t around for a lot of her childhood. He was a long-haul trucker then and left his parents to take care of her.

“Even though he wasn’t in my life all the time he always made sure that I knew he loved me,” she said.

Her father was a convicted felon, a status he gained during his period of youthful indiscretion. But that’s not the man he was when he died, his daughter said.

“Probably about 20 years ago I would say is when he really, really started changing his ways and believing in God and giving his life to God,” Carey said.

Her father was living in Montana at the time. She was living in Florida. She attributes that turn-around to her step-mom, Verna. The couple met while Carey was living a life his daughter described to that of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s.

From Montana, the couple moved to Trapper Creek. Carey said that her father always pushed for unity in their blended family and urging his children to move to Alaska.

In 2008, she made that move. She lives in Wasilla now. She said she was happy to see her children develop a relationship with their grandfather.

“They became really close to him since we’ve been up here,” she said.

She took every chance she could to drive to Trapper Creek and visit with him. And when Verna and Robert were in town shopping they’d stop by her place. If she didn’t have a lot of time sometimes she’d meet them at Wal-Mart.

“We’d sit in the shoe department and talk or in the Three Bears parking lot and talk,” she said. “Anytime I was upset I’d call my dad. That’s the first thing that I’d do is I’d call my dad.”

She said her father lived a simple life off the grid. He and his wife tended to their animals and read their Bibles. He had a dog named Clever, which was his best friend and now seems lost without him.

“It’s a pain he can’t express enough, he cries and howls through the night because he, too, was a victim. Clever was there in the cabin with them when this all happened,” Carey wrote in an e-mail.

Not long before the shooting her father had had a stroke, Carey said, but kept it quiet. She said she didn’t know about it until after he’d died.

“He didn’t want to worry anybody,” Carey said.

He also had recently broken his hand. Carey said that one of her parents’ older goats had been picking on a newborn goat and appeared to be about ready to kill it. Her dad jumped in to save the baby and wound up breaking his hand. It was tough living that kind of self-reliant lifestyle and only having one working hand.

“He kept calling his left hand his dumb hand because it wouldn’t cooperate and do what his right hand would do for him,” Carey said.

She said some readers of news stories about her father’s death have said he should have armed himself. But he would have had trouble operating a firearm with just his left hand. And his felon status meant he couldn’t own one anyway.

“He was not able to defend himself and protect his family because he was not able to own a gun,” Carey said.

Carey said she’s collecting information about Nelson and the events leading up to her father’s death. She wants anyone who knows something to get in touch with her at trappercreekmurderinfo@yahoo.com. Anyone who wants to leave messages for the family should head to Facebook, where she’s set up an account under her father’s name.

Her stepsisters have said in previous interviews that to prevent future similar tragedies people should be more willing to report odd behavior on the part of their neighbors.

Carey would agree with that sentiment.

“There are too many people that people are turning their heads to and it’s not going to go away,” she said.

In the wake of his stroke, Carey said, her father had begun talking with his wife about what kind of arrangements they wanted for their burials. Robert’s plot will have room next to it reserved for his wife. Her family is trying to figure out how to teleconference with an old friend of Robert’s from Hyder so the friend can give the eulogy.

The funeral will be at 2 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 5, at Trapper Creek’s Alaskans Forever Cemetery at Mile 115 Parks Highway. There will also be a viewing beforehand in Wasilla at the Alaska Heritage Memorial Chapel. A date has not been set.

And Robert said that he wanted to be laid to rest in a plain pine box. Carey said her fiancé will soon be setting to work on building it.

“I’m not going to put him in a pine crate. We’re going to put a little effort into it,” Carey said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.