In the quiet desert community of Golden Valley, Arizona, a grim discovery was made on August 15, 1996, that shattered the local peace. Inside a trailer, law enforcement found the badly decomposed bodies of 50-year-old Roland M. Wear and his companion, 37-year-old Leta B. Kagen. Both had been shot to death. In an adjacent trailer, the horror continued with the discovery of Kagen’s 15-year-old son, Robert Delahunt, who had been stabbed to death.
Authorities estimated the trio had been deceased for at least two days before they were found.
The investigation quickly centered on three individuals who had been living with the victims: 19-year-old Robert Poyson, 48-year-old Frank Anderson, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kimberly Lane. It was a case of misplaced trust, as Kagen had taken in the homeless Poyson in April of that year, and later in August, offered shelter to Anderson and Lane as well. The motive for the brutal slayings was chillingly simple: the trio conspired to kill their benefactors to steal Wear's Nissan pickup truck and drive to Chicago, where Anderson claimed to have connections with organized crime. The victims' truck was missing from the property, prompting a nationwide alert.
The gruesome details of the murders unfolded as the investigation progressed. On the night of August 13, 1996, Lane lured the young Robert Delahunt to a separate travel trailer. There, Anderson attacked him, slitting his throat with a bread knife. When Delahunt's screams were heard, Poyson joined in the savage assault, ultimately killing the teenager with blunt force trauma to the head. Later that night, Poyson turned a rifle on the sleeping couple, shooting Kagen and Wear. Kagen died instantly, but Wear, though wounded, fought for his life. The struggle spilled outside the trailer where Anderson struck him with a cinder block. Poyson then repeatedly dropped the cinder block on Wear's head until he was dead.
The three perpetrators fled in Wear’s truck but were apprehended several days later in Anna, Illinois. Anderson was found behind the wheel during a routine traffic stop, and Poyson and Lane were taken into custody two days later. All three were charged in connection with the triple homicide. Robert Poyson was eventually convicted on three counts of murder, one count of conspiracy, and one count of armed robbery. He was sentenced to death, a sentence that was later overturned by a federal appeals court in 2018 due to the court's failure to give enough weight to his troubled childhood and mental health issues during sentencing.
