Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- Frank Adams knew exactly what he was doing when he beat his girlfriend, Stacey Johnston, to death one summer day in 2007, a Valley jury decided Thursday.

The autopsy report and photos said it all, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Gernat had told them -- the battered head, the swollen face, the broken nose, the broken ribs, the bruised heart, the black eyes, the ear nearly torn off, the bruises from head to toe.

It took jurors about seven hours of deliberation to find Adams guilty of first-degree murder, as well as tampering with evidence, which included burning bloody clothes and whatever he used to clean up the mess in a galvanized garbage can doused with camping fuel.

Adams, who spent much of the trial looking busy, head cocked, scribbling notes, showed little reaction as the jury foreman read the verdict.

In the courtroom to hear the decision, Johnston's family thanked and hugged prosecutors Garnet and Alison Collins, Alaska State Trooper Investigator Leonard Wallner and others immersed in the case.

As Gernat noted, the story might have ended differently if Kelly Evans, an attendant at Glacier View Tesoro, where Adams stopped for gas about 1:40 in the morning on July 27, 2007, after the murder, hadn't noticed him staggering and called 911.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Gernat reminded jurors of Adams' penchant for pummeling women. Not just Johnston, she said, but the ones who lived to tell about it -- an old girlfriend and an ex-wife who fell for his charms then paid in terrible ways. From the witness stand, both told of being dragged from bed by their hair, beaten and terrorized.

Adam's former wife told how he once pinned her down, duct-taped her mouth shut and held a syringe to her neck, how she begged for her life that night, and the next day fled to another state.

These women were the voice of Stacey Johnston, Gernat told the jury.

This testimony about such past acts is usually not allowed at a trial, but it was permitted here to demonstrate a pattern of abuse that only ended the night police pulled a drunk and combative Adams from his car at gunpoint, and found Johnston's body in the back.

MURDEROUS PAST

The jury never was told that in 1978 an Air Force colonel also died at his hands, beaten first with a tire iron, then stabbed before Adams slashed his throat ear to ear. Adams was 16 at the time and spent three years in McLaughlin Youth Center. Laws have since changed. Now 16- and 17-year-olds charged with serious crimes go straight to adult court.

During the three-week trial, the prosecution and defense went back and forth on several issues, including just where Adams was going the night he led police on a high-speed chase down the Glenn Highway.

To the hospital, to get help for Johnston, Sterling said. That's what Adams told a friend. He also told investigators he was bringing her to the police.

Fat chance, according to Gernat. More than once, Adams told investigators he was taking her "home," which Gernat said meant to her parents' house in Eagle River.

"The absolute ultimate insult to injury, leaving her bruised, battered, murdered body on their doorstep," she told the jury.

Back when he was blaming drug dealers for her death, Adams told investigators he'd had trouble getting Johnston's body out of their cabin. So he dragged her by her feet, Gernat said, letting her head go bang, bang, bang down the steps.

That Adams beat Johnston to a pulp was not in dispute. The question for the jury was whether he meant to kill her. If he did, that constituted intent, and that's what it takes for murder in the first degree.

The defense argued that Adams was much too drunk to formulate any such intent. While intoxication isn't a defense to crime under Alaska law, it can be a factor in determining intent. Sterling argued that manslaughter was closer to what happened the day Johnston died. Besides, he said, the state can't have it both ways.

"It can't say he was too drunk to drive ... but then say, but he wasn't drunk enough to negate specific intent."

Johnston "most likely begged for her life," Gernat told jurors. "She most likely tried to run. But in the end the defendant's violent, savage nature took over as he hit her with his hands, with his steel-toed boots, and with (the handle of) a splitting maul. You can tell by the wounds on her back that at some point she was in the fetal position.

"There is only one way a person dies of those injuries and that's when the person who's inflicting these injuries intends to kill them."

When it was all over, the jury agreed.

Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler set sentencing for June 26. The sentence for first-degree murder ranges from 20 to 99 years.

Find Debra McKinney online at adn.com/contact/dmckinney.

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