Family’s Tough Road Ends in Tragedy

GOLDEN VALLEY, ARIZ. —  They were a makeshift family, living in a tired white trailer, surrounded by dead cars, junk and old tires on the outskirts of this remote Arizona desert valley. They survived without electricity or running water, but were known as generous to strangers.

The boy, 15-year-old Robert Delahunt, walked five miles to the main highway to catch the bus to school. Sometimes he’d get lucky and a neighbor would give him a ride. But more often than not, life was a tough hike for Robert, a stocky boy with a shy grin and a homemade haircut.

At school, class bullies singled him out for attention, teasing his clothes and his hygiene. Former teacher Mary Stuart recalled how Robert would stay inside during recess--escaping into a world of comic book characters, which he had an exceptional talent for drawing--rather than risk abuse on the playground.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t have wanted to live his life,” said Norma Woods, a counselor at Robert’s school. “Kids at this age can be so cruel and Robert wasn’t the cleanest boy in class because he didn’t have running water at his home.”

The intensely private boy confided to Stuart that he didn’t like the way his mother and her boyfriend always let people stay at their place: He was angry because visitors sometimes stole what little he had.

Authorities say the last visitors did far worse.

The bodies of Robert, his mother and his mother’s boyfriend were found Aug. 15 at their desert home. Robert was stabbed, the others were shot. Police in Illinois later arrested a 14-year-old Lancaster runaway, her 48-year-old neighbor and Robert Poyson, a 20-year-old who had rented a room from Robert’s mother at the trailer home.

Police speculate the girl and Frank Anderson hitchhiked together from their Lancaster trailer park. Anderson’s wife reported him missing on Aug. 3, shortly after the girl disappeared. How they found Robert and his family is not known.

But if they wound up in the area without money or a place to stay, someone probably directed them to Robert’s house. His mother, Leta Kagen, and her boyfriend, Roland Wear, had a soft spot when it came to taking in strangers, neighbors said.

Kagen survived on a $200-a-month welfare check, while Wear got by working banquets at a Laughlin, Nev., casino, according to family members and court records. The couple’s habit of taking in strangers was a sore point with friends and family, who warned them of the dangers.

“Roland always tried to help people,” recalled Wear’s mother, Eileen Wear. “It was a pattern in his life for many years. He would take them in, give them a place to stay and then help them find a job.”

Kagen was the same way, according to her estranged husband, Elliot Kagen. It was how she met Robert Poyson during a gambling trip to Laughlin in February.

Poyson struck up a conversation with the Kagens, and later asked for help renting a room. Elliot Kagen said his wife felt sorry for Poyson and offered to take him in.

“Bobby said he had been living out on the streets and that he wanted to get his life together,” Elliot Kagen recalled. “We thought, ‘OK, we’d try to help him.’ We thought we would be open-minded this one last time.”

Poyson moved into the Kagens’ trailer home and worked busing tables at a local diner, Elliot Kagen said. Poyson paid $100 a month in rent until he abruptly quit his job earlier this year.

“Bobby kind of had a crazy attitude at times,” Elliot Kagen said. “I guess he snapped.”

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Then, in mid-August, two strangers arrived at the trailer: an older man and a young girl who said they were father and daughter.

Elliot Kagen said he didn’t meet the strangers because he had been staying in Kingman, Ariz., about 10 miles away. When Leta Kagen and Wear failed to pick up Elliot Kagen one day to show him their newly purchased pickup truck, Elliot Kagen had a friend drive him to the trailer home.

“I knew something was wrong as soon as we drove up,” Kagen said. “The house was pitch black and it was only 9 p.m. I knew Leta would have still been up so the oil lamps should have been burning.”

“I went inside and that’s when I found my wife,” Kagen said. “I felt her and she was stiff as a board.”

Police later discovered Wear’s body beneath a stack of wood behind the trailer home. Robert Delahunt was found stabbed to death in a smaller trailer nearby.

Police arrested Frank Anderson three days later in Anna, Ill., driving Wear’s pickup truck. Anderson, who was nicknamed “the ice cream man” by neighborhood youngsters in Lancaster, was later charged with three counts of murder. His wife has since moved to Texas. Interviews with neighbors, employers and court records describe a persuasive talker who had no serious trouble with the law.

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Frank Winfield Anderson answered a classified ad in 1992 and landed a job as assistant manager at the El Rancho mobile home park in Lancaster. The veteran manager, who was nearing retirement, liked Anderson’s folksy sense of humor and can-do attitude. The man was physically strong--and good at tackling the many odd jobs at the aging park on the outskirts of downtown.

Anderson moved into one of the 75 trailers with his wife, Mary Dorothy Anderson, an ailing woman who neighbors said looked old enough to be his mother. The couple visited nearby cafes daily, often bringing along the wife’s two grown children or a bevy of friends, most of whom appeared to be homeless.

They quickly became notorious at local cafes, where they caroused for hours, buying only coffee, chain-smoking and rarely leaving tips.

“They were horrible, an absolute nightmare,” said one waitress who described the couple and their friends as slovenly.

When the park manager retired at the end of 1994, Anderson inherited the job.

“We thought things were going just fine,” said Neal Beaver of Long Beach, co-owner of the park. “Frank was a sharp guy.”

But residents say Anderson took advantage of his position. They claim that Anderson, for instance, sold trailers but never paid the owners.

Anderson eventually moved his wife to a rented house in town. Meanwhile, his circle of friends in the encampment grew, including a woman companion who moved in with him at the park office, residents said.

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Months after Anderson took over, residents started complaining to park owners. They said Anderson rarely bathed or shaved and never brushed his rotting teeth or combed his hair. He kept a large collection of X-rated videos visible at the trailer park office.

Elray Franklin, a park resident for 19 years, said Anderson “could chat away like nothing was wrong and everything is right. But he had so many games going here, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Women at the trailer park said they felt intimidated by Anderson. “He was very good at winning over people who were down on their luck and then just using them,” said one resident who asked that she not be identified.

Anderson had been manager about 10 months when park owners decided to audit his books. According to court records and law enforcement officials, Anderson tried to burn the park’s financial records.

He persuaded one of the tenants who was in arrears on his rent to set the park office on fire in October. But the plan failed and arson investigators eventually arrested Anderson and the tenant, Larry Noble Willey.

The two, who had no prior criminal records, were fined $200, sentenced to a year in County Jail and placed on five years’ probation.

Anderson was released four months later. He moved with his wife to a low-rent Lancaster trailer park, where he met a new neighbor, a 14-year-old girl. The two disappeared on July 30, leaving Anderson’s invalid wife behind.

The girl was arrested on Aug. 23 with a different companion, Robert Poyson, in Evanston, Ill.

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The couple had arrived there as two young lovers, according to others who crowded into the dark church basement that served as Evanston’s homeless shelter. One evening, well after lights-out, local police hauled the pair away in handcuffs, talking of a triple slaying.

Poyson and the girl had registered at the shelter as a married couple on Aug. 19. They seemed to still be on their honeymoon--holding hands, kissing, clutching one another. Poyson used his real name and showed his Arizona identification. The girl called herself “Lea Poyson.” She added four years to her age to meet the shelter’s minimum age requirement of 18. On her intake form, she requested help finding work, as well as medical attention--jotting down in a childish script that she was “Pregnet.”

The shelter doctor gave her vitamins, though he never confirmed that she was expecting a child. The doctor also bandaged a wound on Poyson’s arm that he said he received in a fight during a robbery of the couple.

The shelter is a makeshift facility squeezed into the basement of the Lake Street Church of Evanston, a huge, gothic-style edifice that is the city’s oldest public building. Overnighters sleep in three unfinished rooms lined with narrow, steel-frame bunk beds, men separate from women.

Handwritten signs stuck to the cinder-block walls remind guests of the shelter rules: “Treat everyone with respect. No drinking, drugging, smoking, sexual behavior or stealing. No weapons, violence or threats. Stay out of all areas designated for use by members of the opposite sex.”

Poyson and the girl he introduced as his young bride stuck to the rules, though they were warned to lay off the overt affection.

“She was all over him all the time,” said one homeless man who befriended the couple at the shelter.

He had suggested that they consider moving to St. Paul, Minn., where he said the authorities take good care of the homeless. Poyson had liked the idea and he even requested bus tickets to Minnesota from shelter staff members but they refused. The couple spent their days walking along Evanston’s shop-lined downtown, hanging out in the park and lounging in the sand on the narrow strip of beach along Evanston’s lakefront, shelter residents said.

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It was a chance meeting that brought them to Evanston. Hitchhiking from Wisconsin to Illinois, the couple told police they had encountered a priest at a fast-food restaurant in northern Illinois and he had recommended the shelter in Evanston.

Poyson and the girl checked in on a Monday night, just after 7--when the shelter doors open and the homeless file in from an alley behind the church.

Police tracked down Poyson and the teenager five nights later, when the girl called a friend in California from a pay phone at the Evanston public library. Police traced the call and contacted authorities in Evanston. The Evanston officers called the city’s lone homeless shelter, and gave the night supervisor a description of the pair. The supervisor recognized the description, and soon afterward officers arrived. The couple were turned over to the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, which is also holding Anderson.

The three are expected to be reunited at an arraignment this weekin Mohave Superior Court in Kingman, Ariz. Anderson and Boyson each face three murder charges, and the girl faces one count of murder and two charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Times staff writer Martha L. Willman contributed to this story in Los Angeles. Tamaki reported from Arizona and Lacey from Illinois.