Trial begins for man who threatened troopers

PALMER — A Caswell Lakes man said he was just seeking attention when he threatened to hunt down Alaska State Troopers with a shotgun.

I was, “trying to do something so overwhelmingly shocking that maybe, just maybe, out of sheer coincidence, someone would listen,” Adam Cardwell testified in his trial on numerous assault counts Wednesday.

Cardwell and his wife, Debbie, have maintained for years that after Debbie was arrested for DUI in 2003 troopers raped her.

Troopers say they have investigated and found absolutely no merit to the charges.

Prosecutor Paul Roetman, in his opening statements in the trial, laid out the Cardwells’ allegations as he saw them.

Two years after her DUI case, Roetman said, Debbie Cardwell said one trooper raped her

“The allegations begins with one trooper,” Roetman stressed. “The total is now 12 to 13 people that are included in the rape.”

That number includes, he said, two district attorneys, a handful of jailers, a sitting magistrate and more than a half-dozen troopers.

Roetman said the calls to troopers began in November of 2005 and continued until Adam Cardwell was arrested in April. At some point in February, the Cardwells drove slowly by the home of one of the Talkeetna troopers, made eye contact with the trooper, and drove off.

“He was in fear of what was going to happen to his wife and kids,” Roetman said of the trooper.

Roetman said the Cardwells have insisted repeatedly that they want a copy of a tape they believe was made of Debbie’s DUI processing.

“The only thing that ever existed was an audiotape,” Roetman said, and in the two years between Debbie’s arrest and the surfacing of her allegations it was recorded over. “The defendant actually believes there’s a full-blown pornographic tape involving the rape of his wife.”

Adam Cardwell said he has been up and down the law enforcement ladder seeking someone who would listen. He’s called the troopers. He’s called the District Attorney. He’s called the FBI and even the governor and the president.

“Who do I take it to? I’ve been from local all the way to Washington, D.C., with this information,” Cardwell said.

He seemed happy to be in court, since his grievances, he said, were finally being aired. He went so far as to thank those assembled for his assault trial for giving him the opportunity.

Roetman asked him if he threatened troopers; Cardwell said he did. Roetman went down a list of troopers Cardwell had threatened, asking him one by one if he’d threatened each trooper. Cardwell said he did.

“Yes, I did. And I’m sorry I did that,” Cardwell said.

On a 911 tape from February, Debbie Cardwell tells dispatchers her husband is about to go after the troopers. Adam Cardwell breaks in to briefly give his side.

“I have been in an argument with my wife because she is protecting the Alaska State Troopers for gang rape,” he says. “Please send the cops. I’m going to kill them.”

Debbie Cardwell alternates between telling troopers where she is going to leave a box of evidence for them to find regarding the alleged rape and pleading with dispatchers.

“I beg you, don’t hurt my husband,” Debbie Cardwell says. “Please don’t shoot him.”

“We’re not going to shoot anyone,” the dispatcher replies.

Eventually, in the wee hours of the morning on April 12, Adam Cardwell was arrested. His Attorney, Gregory Parvin, said that when troopers showed up, his client walked to the end of his driveway, unarmed, carrying two things — a headlamp to light his way and a sheaf of papers he believed proved his allegations.

Cardwell said on the stand that in the back of the patrol car he threatened troopers he hadn’t threatened before.

“I hope and pray that someone rapes your wife and kids so you see what I’ve been through,” he recalls telling one of them.

Cardwell’s trial is expected to resume Friday with the jury going into deliberations that day.

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