Machete attack victim testifies: ‘God didn’t want me to die’

PALMER — Elann “Lenny” Moren wept as she described the way Christopher Erin Rogers Jr. muscled his way into the bathroom with a machete.

Rogers, 29, was convicted Thursday of 12 counts including murder and attempted murder.

Tuesday, Moren testified that on Dec. 2, 2007, he came into the bedroom where she was sleeping with her fiancé — Rogers’ father, Christopher Erin Rogers Sr. — and attacked the couple with a machete as they slept.

As Rogers Sr. struggled to fight off his son, Moren, blood streaming from her head, shut herself in the bathroom and searched for something to defend herself with.

“I should’ve locked the door,” she said through tears. “But I figured Chris could take care of him. And I didn’t want Chris to have to kick the door in to get to me.”

Moren said she heard a thump, which she knew was her fiancé hitting the floor.

That’s when Rogers Jr. turned to her. She braced herself against the door, but Rogers Jr. pushed past her.

“He was trying to cut off either my arm or my head,” Moren said.

“Why was it that you weren’t killed in that bathroom?” prosecutor Roman Kalytiak asked her.

“Because God didn’t want me to die,” Moren replied.

But there were earthly reasons as well. At some point, she said, Moren turned to her assailant and told him, “We’re dead. You’ve killed us. You can go now.”

She said it looked for a moment like she’d gotten through to Rogers Jr., and he started backing away. But then she noticed her fiancé’s dog Bear had her attacker by the leg. After that she was able to get her cell phone from just outside the bathroom. She knew her fiancé was in the kitchen.

“When I went out to get my cell phone I wanted to lay down next to him and die with him,” Moren said.

But she decided to summon help on the slim chance he’d survived, Moren testified. Both of her hands weren’t working, so she locked the door with her teeth. She used the stone on her engagement ring to dial 911.

“I was positive I was going to die,” Moren said. “The main reason I made that call was I wanted someone to know who had done this,” and she didn’t want friends or neighbors to find her and her Rogers Sr.

Also Wednesday, Alaska State Trooper Investigator Curtis Vik read from the transcript of an interview he conducted with Rogers Jr. in Anchorage shortly after his arrest the day after the attack.

“I wish I would have used a gun on Lenny and dad,” Vik said Rogers Jr. told him. “That’s faster. Noisier. But, you know, that’s what pillows are for.”

Vik quoted Rogers Jr. speaking about the pistol he found in his father’s pickup after he took off for Anchorage.

“And then there was the damn gun in the truck,” he says in the transcript. “I felt like a frickin’ idiot. I was like, ‘Damn, that could’ve been a lot easier.’”

Asked if he felt any remorse, Rogers Jr. says in the transcript, “No, I’m not sorry. I wish I would’ve used a different tool. I really do.”

As to a motive for the killing, Vik said Rogers Jr. seemed to be less sure of himself. But, the investigator pointed out the suspect also said numerous times he had no love for his father or Moren.

“I told him several times I thought he was a cold, callous, egotistical, unreliable prick,” the investigator read from the transcript.

And, as for Moren, “I never liked the lady anyway.”

Moren, during her time on the stand, had a much different account of her relationship with Rogers Jr., saying he often gave her hugs and told her he loved her. She said her and his father were planning to have space for the younger Rogers in a home they were set to purchase the day after the attack.

Rogers Jr.’s attorney, John Richard, confronted Vik with pieces of the transcript that seemed to tell a different story of his client’s motives and which, he said, Vik had disregarded.

“He said that the aliens had told him to kill them,” Richard said, looking at the transcript.

Vik pointed out that Rogers Jr. abandoned that story early in the interview.

“For the most part, he made very little mention of aliens other than the first 20 minutes,” Vik said.

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