Documents show clearer picture of escaped burglar

SKWENTNA — Fresh details have come to light in the case of an escapee from an Anchorage halfway house accused in a string of burglaries this month as well as a similar set of crimes from 2003.

Brian Church, 52, who walked away from the Glenwood Center in Anchorage, was arrested in a cabin on the Yentna River Feb. 17 when locals reported someone was staying in a cabin near Belchitna Lake. Troopers contacted the owner, who told them no one should be living in the cabin.

Troopers flew out in a helicopter and located Church in the cabin.

“Church stated he probably had a warrant for escape out of Anchorage. Church stated he burglarized six places,” Trooper Tage Toll wrote in an affidavit filed in Church’s criminal case. “The first thing he stated when trooper Toll entered was he was trespassing.”

Cabin owners in the area first started reporting burglaries on Feb. 11 when a woman reported coming home from three weeks out of the area to find strange snow gear in her house.

“Someone also had tried to take their generator, air compressor and a Polaris six-wheeler,” Toll wrote.

Five days later, on the afternoon of Feb. 16, a second cabin owner reported a break-in. The man said his brother found someone inside the cabin. They kicked the man out and gave troopers a good description — mid 50s, light camouflage pants, a backpack, fur hat, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing about 150 pounds. He got in through a window and didn’t take anything.

Later that day, a third call came in, again on the Yentna. A generator had been put outside with an extension cord running in. A basin had been heated up to warm up some water. There were Band-Aid wrappers on the couch. Snowshoes were missing, but some camouflage gear was left behind.

Most of the victims reported the burglar left behind Swisher Sweet cigar butts with plastic mouthpieces. Church didn’t pull punches when talking to troopers.

“Church stated he used a pry bar to enter (the) residence and the bar was still on the porch,” Toll wrote. “Church also stated the snowshoes were stolen along with everything he was wearing, except for a pair of camo pants.”

Toll offered up a total of the damage Church caused.

“In Church’s run up the Yentna River he broke into more than four residences, damaged more than $1,500 worth of property, stole and used more than $500 of food and wood and used tools to break into houses,” Toll wrote.

The facts of the case might have sounded familiar to at least one of Toll’s colleagues, Trooper David Wilson, who in 2003 investigated a case in which multiple homes were burglarized in the Willow and Big Lake areas.

“All of these locations are very remote, not accessible by road and do not have a history of frequent burglary reports,” Wilson wrote at the time. “In several of the burglaries, the suspect, who appeared to have resided in some of the cabins several days at a time, left behind hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes.”

Items stolen in those cases included food, clothing, bedding, books, magazines, a TV, a VCR, a DVD player and DVDs.

And as in the current case, homeowners came back to their cabins to find Church still there. The Red Shirt Lake Homeowners Association raised the alarm after at least six cabins there were hit in 2003. Again Church was caught while living in one of the cabins, in this case one on Cow Lake.

In that case, Church pleaded no contest to burglary and received a two-year sentence.

Escape from a low-security penal institution also isn’t new for Church. In 1997, according to archived court documents, he walked away from the Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm.

Church had been serving time on a felony burglary and theft case and had two years left to serve on an eight-year sentence. Though the escape was noticed in May, charges weren’t filed until late August, meaning he may well have spent the summer of 1997 at-large.

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