Attorney: Rogers will plead insanity

PALMER - The attorney for a Palmer man accused of using a machete to kill his father and a gun to shoot another man will raise an insanity defense.

Public defender Matt Phillips appeared in court Friday on behalf of Christopher Erin Rogers Jr. in a pair of misdemeanor cases.

Phillips told Palmer District Court Judge John Wolfe that Rogers intended to plead insanity in the murder cases.

He requested to delay the misdemeanor cases - a petition to revoke his probation on a 2006 harassment case and a 2007 drunken driving case - until after the murder cases were resolved.

Rogers is accused of murdering Christopher Erin Rogers Sr. on Dec. 2 and seriously wounding his father's fiancé, Elann Moren, at their home south of Palmer.

Prosecutors said Rogers then traveled to Anchorage, where he shot and killed Jason Wenger, 27, and wounded two others.

Cases against him have been opened in Anchorage, where he faces 10 felony counts, including murder, and Palmer, where he faces eight counts, also including murder.