Valley man guilty of Talkeetna-area murder

By ANDREW WELLNER

Frontiersman.com

PALMER — After a half day of deliberations, a jury found Jeremy Nelson guilty of first-degree murder Thursday in the shooting death of Bob Carey and attempted murder in the wounding of his wife, Verna Carey, in Talkeetna last year.

Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak said the verdict came in at around 1:30 p.m. following a trial that lasted a little more than two weeks.

Prosecutors argued he shut off the Careys’ generator, then shot them when they came outside to see why the generator was off. Nelson’s attorneys argued that Alaska State Troopers didn’t investigated the case well enough to settle on Nelson with the requisite certainty for a conviction.

Kalytiak presented a string of troopers and neighbors at Nelson’s trial.

One neighbor said he saw a man running through the woods on Nelson’s snowshoes, stop at Nelson’s house, then move on to another neighbor’s house where the lights were quickly turned off.

That neighbor, Rudy Gestl, testified that Nelson more-or-less confessed to him that he’d killed Bob Carey and wounded Verna Carey.

But quite possibly the most important testimony came from Verna Carey herself. She said she knew Nelson and watched the brief argument that preceded the shootings.

Nelson’s attorney, Jeff Bradley, pointed out that troopers had trouble locating a relatively large bullet in a wall of the Careys’ cabin and did other shoddy work on scene.

He tried to present testimony from one of Bob Carey’s daughters, who had her own theories about why her father was shot that night, but was stopped by a challenge from Kalytiak.

Bradley said the important part, in his view, was that Carey’s daughter told troopers about her theories, but troopers failed to investigate those leads.

Murder, since it is among the most serious crimes in Alaska law, carries a prison term of up to 99 years. Nelson is scheduled to receive his sentence Aug. 29.

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