Real thieves caught

PALMER — One pair of men has been set free and another arrested for a home invasion on Beaver Avenue last month.

Investigator Rob Lawson said Jeremy Blair, 23, of Wasilla, and Glen Baldwin, 27, of Anchorage, were not the two men he was looking for in the Jan. 5 robbery that left a man with a bloodied nose.

Blair and Baldwin were pulled over 15 minutes after the robbery, leaving the area in a silver four-door sedan like the one victims saw driving away from the apartment complex. Inside their car was the red handle of a hammer, just like the red metal object used on a victim. They also had a pistol and handkerchiefs like the ones the victims said their assailants wore.

“They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time with everything in the car that matched everything that was there,” Lawson said.

As he looked into the case, he said, Blair and Baldwin had alibis that ended up looking more and more plausible. A gas station surveillance tape clinched it — the pump shut off just a minute before they would have been robbing the apartment.

“I pretty much eliminated them as suspects and informed the district attorney of my findings,” Lawson said. “It’s our job to prove them right or wrong and in this case we investigated their alibi and it came true.”

The burglary and robbery charges against the two were dropped. Blair still faces a drug misconduct charge since, Lawson wrote in an affidavit, methamphetamine was found on him when he was arrested.

Now, though, it’s John Martin III, 29, and Murray E. Stewart, 21, who are charged with the robbery. Both are active-duty military at Fort Richardson. When he first started receiving information that it might have been a pair of soldiers, Lawson said he found it hard to believe.

“I never expected people in the military to be doing something like this,” he said.

But, according to an affidavit he filed in the cases, on Feb. 22 a woman came to talk to him at the Palmer Post. She said Martin and Stewart were responsible for the robbery. She said she knew this because it was her money they were trying to collect.

She said she led them to the building, where they first tried breaking into the wrong apartment before trying to kick in the door of their intended target. They bloodied one man’s nose with the red metal object in the process.

Martin and Stewart, Lawson wrote, believed they were to get a cut of the money they received. After the robbery, when the two men came away empty-handed, Martin sent threats to the woman using text messaging. The woman showed the messages in question to troopers.

“You are on my time frame, you know what were capable of,” one read, according to Lawson’s affidavit.

“You have one week,” read another.

Troopers later intercepted communications during which Martin confirmed he was asking the woman to pay him what he would have received for his services and threatened to burn the woman’s father’s house down.

Lawson worked with the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division to arrest Stewart and Martin and search their homes on the base.

On Jan. 29 Stewart was interviewed and, Lawson wrote, denied any knowledge of the robbery.

Martin was a different story. He spoke in detail about the robberies, Lawson wrote. The red object was a jack handle from Stewart’s pickup.

“Martin stated he and Stewart felt [the woman] still owed them some money for their actions,” Lawson wrote.

Martin and Stewart each face one count of robbery, two of burglary, two of extortion and two of assault. Stewart faces an additional assault count.

Their bail was set at $25,000 each and both will need to find third parties to look over them before they can be released. Prison records as of Monday afternoon showed both were still in the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility.

Court records Monday afternoon showed Martin was next due in court today and Stewart was next due in court Feb. 27.