Anchorage Daily News

PALMER - At the end of a chase on the Glenn Highway in July of 2007, police found the badly beaten body of a 42-year-old woman in the backseat of a car driven by Frank Adams.Starting Tuesday morning, Adams is scheduled to stand trial in Palmer Superior Court for the first-degree murder of Stacey Johnston. Adams, 46, also is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and tampering with evidence.

On July 28, 2007, Palmer police became suspicious that Adams was intoxicated as he drove a small red hatchback south on the Glenn Highway. They tried to stop him, but he sped up. Anchorage police, alerted from Palmer, put strips of spikes on the roadway near the South Peters Creek exit,

The tires on Adams' car went flat and the car went into a ditch.

When police approached him, according to police reports at the time, Adams tried to grab a tire iron from his car. Eventually they broke out his car windows and pulled him out.

After that, officers found Johnston's beaten body.

Palmer prosecutors said at the time that Johnston died of blunt force trauma to her head and body, resulting in broken ribs and a bruised heart.

Adams and Johnston had apparently been staying in a cabin in Chickaloon and that's where officials believe Johnston was killed.

This isn't Adams' first brush with the law. In 1978, as a 16-year-old, he was involved in a murder-for-hire case in which he admitted killing an Air Force colonel.

Adams did two years in McLaughlin Youth Center for that crime.

Before her death - only a month after meeting Adams - Johnston received a protective order keeping him away from her.

Despite the restraining order, Johnston was with Adams in Fairbanks in June of 2007 and apparently went camping with him, according to a misdemeanor complaint filed against him there.

Assistant district attorney Rachel Gernat is expected to prosecute the state's case against Adams.

He is being represented by Paul Maslakowski of the Office of Public Advocacy.

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