Murderer seeks insurance money

Welton hasn't dropped $100,000 claim on son she killed in house fire

July 8, 2005

KATE GOLDEN\Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU -- What happened to the $100,000 life insurance policy a Valley woman took out on her son before she murdered him nearly five years ago?

Right now, the money's in the courts. The mother apparently still claims all or some of it. The claimant: Suzette Welton, now 41. In June 2000, she named herself as the primary beneficiary of $100,000 policies on each of her two sons, Samuel Welton, 14, and Jeremiah Welton, 16. In September that year, she drugged her sons with Sleepinal and set the upstairs of her duplex apartment on fire, trapping them in the rooms in which they slept. Samuel died of carbon-monoxide poisoning. Jeremiah woke up, broke a window, and escaped out the second-floor window.

Eleven days after the fire, Suzette Welton called State Farm Life Insurance Co. to request the benefits for Samuel's death, according to court documents the insurance company filed two years later.

Welton was eventually sentenced to serve 99 years in prison, with the potential for parole after 31 years, for first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder and first-degree arson charges stemming from the Sept. 15, 2000 fire that claimed Samuel's life.

Welton's appeal to the Alaska Court of Appeals was denied. A post-conviction relief request Welton filed earlier this year in Palmer Superior Court has not yet been decided.

Suzette Welton originally listed Michael Minzlaff, her boyfriend, as the secondary beneficiary of the insurance policies she took out on her sons. He was to be an informal trustee for then-16-year-old Jeremiah Welton.

Dennis Welton, Jeremiah's father and Suzette's ex-husband, also claimed an interest in the policy on behalf of Jeremiah, who was a minor.

When Jeremiah became a legal adult, Dennis Welton and Michael Minzlaff withdrew their claims for him.

"(Dennis Welton) disclaimed any ill-gotten gain very early on," said Daniel Aaronson, attorney for Jeremiah Welton, on Thursday.

State Farm Life Insurance sued all the claimants in August 2002. It was ready to pay up, the company said. But not until the court decided who, exactly, was supposed to get the money. It could not "pay any part of the sums due … without danger of being compelled to pay the same part to more than one of the defendants," the company's court filing stated.

State Farm paid $112,519.64 -- the original amount plus interest -- to the courts in October 2003, so it's out of the suit.

Jeremiah Welton is no longer a minor. Aaronson will soon file for summary judgment on his behalf to deny the claim to Suzette Welton.

The lawyer who was working pro bono for Suzette Welton, Diane F. Vallentine, is attempting to quit. A hearing for her withdrawal is scheduled for July 15 in Anchorage Superior Court before Judge Morgan Christen.

Vallentine was out of state and not available for comment.

Aaronson said Vallentine advised her client to drop her claim. He speculated that the attorney withdrew because Welton was not following her advice.

Over the phone from Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility, Suzette Welton on Thursday said she would not answer any questions regarding the case or her relationship with Vallentine. She said she had a new lawyer, but would not release a name. Welton later called the Public Defender Agency and requested that it act as a contact to the media on this case, an investigator with the public defenders office said Thursday. An attorney with that agency did not immediately respond to a message.

Contact Kate Golden at 352-2284.