Fiancée: Michael Plummer died protecting family

Editor’s note: This story includes graphic details and language about events that led to the murder of a Valley man March 7.

KNIK — In the future, when 1-year-old Violet Grace Plummer struggles to understand what happened to her father at her grandparents house off Knik-Goose Bay Road March 7, her mother wants her to know one thing: her daddy died defending his family.

Michael Plummer’s family — fiancée Jessica Smith, 27, and her daughters Ivy, 6, and Violet, 1, — were already in bed and he was getting a glass of water and turning off the lights when three men entered the house uninvited.

“Get the F out I don’t know you!”

Jessica heard Plummer repeat those words a second and third time before she got out of bed.

“I thought it was the television,” she said. “But it was my Mike yelling.”

She ran to the top of the stairs where she saw Plummer and three strangers in the entryway. Plummer, 43, was a strong man and in a fight against unarmed men, Jessica said she thinks he would have forced them out the door and lived to tell about it.

But Jessica said as Plummer was pushing Andrew Johnson out the door, Johnson’s son Spencer Johnson, 19, stabbed Plummer in the throat with a knife. The teenager was arrested in Anchorage Friday on charges of first-degree murder.

Plummer stumbled as he tried to walk up the stairs and collapsed on the landing, blood pouring out of his neck. But the intruders didn’t leave, Jessica said. They just stood there.

That’s when she grabbed her dad’s Smith and Wesson handgun from the nightstand and fired.

“It happened so fast,” she said. “I didn’t even know if I got them.”

She’d never fired the weapon before, and in the days since, friends have asked how she managed the big “Dirty Harry” .44-magnum. “I just squeezed really hard and hung on.”

‘I tried to get him to look at me’

Plummer, Smith and their daughters were living with her parents, Steve and Evelyn Smith, until they could build their own house.

When Steve Smith heard the gunshot Wednesday, he flew out of bed, grabbed the gun from his daughter and fired at a gray Dodge Dakota and a small white car fleeing the scene.

Several people at the home, including Evelyn, called 911 at 10:24 p.m., March 7. She also grabbed a towel to use to try to stop the bleeding.

Jessica took the towel and ran to Plummer, but couldn’t stop the bleeding.

“I tried to get him to look at me, but he couldn’t move his eyes,” she said.

Jessica performed CPR and prayed while they waited for Alaska State Troopers and medics to respond to their home off Mile 15, Knik-Goose Bay Road.

“We didn’t call 911 and say someone had died,” Jessica said. “We said ‘he’s badly hurt. Hurry up. Hurry up.’ I was giving him CPR long after I knew he was gone.”

Troopers later found the Dodge Dakota unoccupied with blood on the hood and a flat right front tire near the home.

Later that night, David Carlton dropped Andrew Johnson off at the emergency room at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, according to a sworn complaint filed by Trooper Shannon Fore in the case.

‘They absolutely killed an unarmed man’

Holly Carlton Johnson and Jessica Smith met while they were both incarcerated at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center. Jessica said they’d kicked their addictions and just wanted homes and families.

“Mike and I both have history, but we were clean and sober,” Jessica said. “We’d cut everybody off to help stay straight.”

Though the two weren’t in frequent contact, when Holly called Wednesday to say she was fighting with her husband and asked if they could hang out, Jessica said sure.

It sounded like they had a stable relationship, but he was controlling and Holly was talking about divorce, Jessica said. “It made me think she was scared.”

The two women ran around together for a few hours. Holly and Andrew sent texts back and forth during that time, but there were no angry phone calls, Jessica said. No hint of how the night would end.

After the family watched “Poison Ivy,” Jessica said it was getting late and Holly asked if she could stay over.

Jessica said sure and asked Holly to text Andrew and let him know the plan. “I thought it would be a comfort to him.”

Holly, her brother David Carlton, her husband Andrew Johnson and his son, Spencer, all lived together and three of the four worked for the same Anchorage moving company. Carlton did not work for the moving company.

“I know she didn’t mean for this to happen,” Jessica said. “She’s just devastated. She cried and held Mike and prayed to God with me.”

Jessica said she doesn’t know why the three men entered their home and attacked Plummer. But she told Troopers it seemed significant that both vehicles they were driving that night were backed into the driveway, as if the three men planned to enter, grab Holly and leave quickly.

In the charging documents, one of the three intruders alleges that Plummer also had a gun that night, a .380 revolver.

But the Smith family said Sunday that Plummer didn’t own a gun, and that the only gun involved in the incident was the revolver Jessica pulled from her parents’ nightstand.

“They walked into this home unwelcome and they absolutely killed an unarmed man,” Jessica said.

‘He wanted to be good for his kids’

Plummer and Smith had been together four years, but had known each other for more than a dozen. Plummer had given her an engagement ring and asked her to marry him. They were raising their 1-year-old daughter, Violet, and Jessica’s 6-year-old daughter, Ivy, from a previous relationship.

After last summer’s successful commercial fishing season, they purchased a parcel of land and cleared it themselves. They were preparing for their second commercial fishing season, and Jessica said they were living with her parents until they build their home this summer.

Plummer never knew his own father. He spent years angry about his childhood, Jessica said. But after his mother had a stroke a year ago, he let it go.

“He wanted to be close to his family,” she said. “He wanted to be good for his kids.”

Plummer is the father to sons Michael Jr., Josh and Quinlan, and daughters, McKinley and Violet.

“It’s like a nightmare. They didn’t kill a bad person,” Jessica said. “They killed a person who was defending his home and his family. He was just so interrupted. Our Mike was just coming up to bed.”

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.