White/Caucasian male Ben Gross, 43, of Wasilla, Alaska, was found dead on June 5, 2016, after Alaska State Troopers responded before dawn to a report of a shooting at a residence near Cloudy Lake. When first responders arrived, the building was on fire; inside, they discovered the bodies of Ben Gross, 43, and Crystal Denardi, 30. Autopsies determined both died from gunshot wounds, and a third person at the scene was injured and survived. The early hours framed a grim picture of violence set against a burning garage on the property that Gross owned, a place that hours earlier had held the small, ordinary quiet of people gathered together.
Investigators came to identify a suspect: John Pearl Smith II, a Palmer man whose pattern of armed home-invasion robberies in the Mat-Su Valley had escalated over the previous year. According to federal charging documents and later trial evidence, Smith forced his way into the detached garage on Gross's property by kicking open the door and immediately firing rounds into the ceiling. When Ben Gross, 43, hurled a beer bottle in defiance, Smith turned his gun on him and fired multiple times, killing him, before turning the violence on the others, then setting fire to the garage to burn the scene. A surviving victim's account became crucial to the investigation, and Smith was arrested later that month as the case widened from a local double homicide into a federal murder and robbery prosecution.
A federal grand jury indicted Smith for the murders of Ben Gross and Crystal Denardi and related robbery and firearms offenses, with prosecutors initially signaling they would seek the death penalty. Years later, after a lengthy case, a jury convicted Smith on federal murder charges tied to the string of armed robberies culminating in the killings at the Wasilla garage. Ultimately, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty pursuit; Smith now faces life in prison for the murders and associated crimes, bringing a measure of legal resolution to the violent night that ended the life of Ben Gross, 43.
