Murder trial begins with account of sledge hammer and knife attack

PALMER — Susanna Braden spent the summer of 2010 trying to escape her longtime boyfriend, Andrew Victor Thomas.

She left Fairbanks while he was in jail for assaulting her. She moved to Big Lake, stayed with friends, made plans to start over. But when he got out of jail Thomas followed her. By early August, Braden was dead, stabbed and bludgeoned. No one disputes Thomas is the man who took her life.

Wednesday, attorneys on both sides of Thomas’ murder shared their views of the case with jurors.

“This is a case about power and control,” Assistant District Attorney Trina Sears said. When Thomas could no longer control Braden, “He retaliated by killing her, by smashing her head in with a sledgehammer.”

Thomas’ attorney, Lyle Stohler, told jurors a different story. He said his client never intended murder the day Braden died. He showed up at the cabin where she was staying unarmed. When told to leave he did, though he came back later, again unarmed. The murder weapons were things he grabbed in the heat of the moment.

“I killed her. I didn’t mean to. I caught her in bed with another man,” Stohler said, reading a quote from the statement Thomas made to Alaska State Troopers.

Stohler said that his client was certainly guilty of some things — assault — but murder was a bridge too far. He acted in the heat of passion and was not in his right mind.

For her part, Sears showed the jurors the sledgehammer — a hefty, short-handled model. She also described how one knife Thomas also used in his attack broke and another knife bent as he stabbed Braden repeatedly.

Sears described Thomas as a jealous boyfriend who referred to Braden as his wife, though they were never married. He has two prior convictions for abusing her — the 2010 case and a prior one in 2007. Sears said Thomas hit the Valley and immediately started accusing men of sleeping with Braden.

He tracked her down to a gathering at the house of one of Braden’s friends, Sears said. The friends kicked him out and started looking for a place for Braden to hide. They settled on the Mile 49 cabins after a place in Anchorage fell through.

But Thomas found Braden at the cabins and tried to drag her out. She insisted he come back later, sober, so they could talk reasonably. He came back, but not sober. After an argument he grabbed a knife, then another knife, and finally that sledgehammer.

“Before he left he decided to grab a beer,” Sears told jurors. “He grabbed a beer, a Keystone Ice, had a cigarette with her blood all over him and he went and he calmly said, ‘I’ve killed my wife.’”

Troopers showed up and put him in a patrol car while they worked to secure the scene and figure out where Braden was. Sears said the trooper who arrested him left an audio recorder running in the car when Thomas was left alone.

“He says about Miss Braden, ‘bye bitch,’” Sears said. “That’s what he says about her. And then he says, ‘I’ll go to jail correctly.’ He says, ‘I smashed her.’”

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