Scene ‘was from a horror movie’

PALMER — For Christopher Erin Rogers Jr., the quesiton isns’t whether he’s guilty of killing his father with a machete, but how guilty he is.

Opening statements started Thursday morning on the opening day of Rogers’ trial, in which Rogers, 29, is accused of 12 counts, including murder, for allegedly slaying his father, Christopher Erin Rogers Sr., with a machete and seriously wounding his father’s fiancée, Elann “Lenny” Moren on Dec. 2, 2007.

In a separate trial set for Jan. 20 in Anchorage, Rogers faces 10 more counts, also including murder. According to police, after leaving Palmer, he went to Anchorage and shot three people, killing one — Jason Wenger, 27.

The first day of trial saw a packed courtroom filled with media, family and victims. Moren sat quietly with her son, leaving the courtroom shortly after opening statements.

In his opening, Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak steered clear of lawyerly definitions and legalities, instead giving a narrative account of the killing.

He took the jury back to Dec. 1, 2007, when the weather was cold and there wasn’t much snow. Moren and Rogers Sr. were celebrating the one-year anniversary of their relationship with friends.

“I don’t know if the defendant wanted to be there or not, but he had to be there,” Kalytiak said. Rogers was out on bail for a DUI charge and his father and Moren were appointed to watch over him.

Kalytiak said everything was fine after the guests had left. Moren and Rogers Sr. went to bed. Rogers Jr. went to his small cabin on the property.

But then, he said, at 5:25 a.m. Dec. 2, “Palmer dispatch gets a very disturbing phone call from a female saying, ‘We’ve been macheted. We’re dying here. We’ve been cut up,’”

The caller was Moren. She had managed to lock herself in a bathroom and call for help. Kalytiak said she had been sleeping when Rogers walked in and started hacking at the couple where they lay.

Kalytiak said troopers arrived while Moren was still on the phone.

“What they saw was from a horror movie,” Kalytiak said. “Blood on the floor. Blood on the walls.”

Rogers Sr., he said, had managed, despite suffering fatal wounds, to summon a surge of adrenaline and fight his son into the kitchen. That’s where troopers found him. They heard Moren in the bathroom calling for help, but she was in no position to unlock the door.

“They kick the door open and they find Lenny on the ground, in a bad state,” Kalytiak said.

Kalytiak said he would prove that Rogers had ample time to think about the attacks, that even after he’d started chopping at his father he had time to think and maybe call it off.

“This was a very deliberate, brutal, forceful and repetitive attack,” Kalytiak said.

He said that when all the evidence is in, the jury should convict Rogers of first-degree murder, the most serious type of murder charge.

“I’m not going to prove why the defendant did this,” Kalytiak said. But motive, he said, is not a necessary element of the charge.

After Kalytiak’s 40-minute statement wrapped up, Rogers’ attorney gave his own.

John Richard was up and down in less than 20 minutes. Basically, he said, the murder was a horrible ordeal for all involved.

And, he said, “Mr. Kalytiak is absolutely right about one thing. You’re not going to find out why these things happened.”

But he implored the jury to look at the facts and see which charges they line up with. When they do that, he said, they’ll come up with a second-degree murder charge for the attack on Rogers Sr. and an assault count for the attack on Moren.

As to his client’s guilt on those counts, “there’s not going to be any question about it,” he said, adding that “anything else would be just guessing.”

Also Thursday morning, the jury heard Moren’s conversation with dispatchers shortly after the attack. Dispatchers ask Moren if her fiancé is still alive.

“I don’t know, I can’t get to him, I locked myself in the bathroom,” Moren says.

Toward the end of the 10-minute tape, Moren is heard shouting for help to someone in the home. Troopers get closer to the phone and are heard kicking down the door.

“Stay right there. Just keep breathing, OK? Just keep breathing,” one of them tells her.

Rogers’ trial is expected to last at least a week and possibly continue up to the Christmas holidays. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face up to 99 years in prison for that count alone.

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