DNA EVIDENCE: Hair clumps, blood found throughout apartment.
By JAMES HALPIN
jhalpin@adn.com
Published: February 19th, 2010 11:07 PM
Last Modified: February 19th, 2010 11:07 PM
A Bethel man has been charged with murder, accused of beating his girlfriend to death more than three years ago during an alcohol-fueled fight that kept neighbors awake most of the night, according to Alaska State Troopers.
Carl Fox Jr., 51, was arrested Thursday on a warrant charging him with second-degree murder in the death of 40-year-old Agnes Evan, who was found dead of blunt-force trauma in some brush on Dec. 5, 2006.
Evan's slaying was one of two that hit the short-staffed Bethel Police Department in December that year, prompting an outcry for assistance as months passed and the cases remained unsolved. Troopers took over in November 2007, spokeswoman Megan Peters said. The delay in making an arrest was due to a number of factors, including the hand-off by Bethel police and new personnel in other key offices, Peters said.
"There was a lot of turnover at the state medical examiner's office," Peters said.
According to a court affidavit filed by trooper investigator Eric Burroughs, Fox and Evan had been in a relationship for about a year at the time of her death. They lived in an apartment a few hundred yards from where her body was found.
Early the morning of Dec. 3, 2006, several neighbors reported hearing a man and woman yelling and fighting, the sounds of someone being slapped and hit, and that the "female was making strange, growling noises, as though she were in pain," Burroughs wrote. The woman yelled for someone to call police, but when officers arrived no one answered the door.
The next day, a neighbor saw Fox and Evan leave the apartment, according to Burroughs. Evan's body was found the next afternoon. She had multiple blunt-force injuries to the head, body and extremities, and died in part because of a ruptured bowel, troopers said.
Police searching Fox's apartment found clumps of hair along with blood stains on the carpet, wall, couch and mattress. Fox told investigators he and Evan had downed four or five bottles of R&R whiskey and fought about their relationship, but said he didn't remember if things got violent because he blacked out, Burroughs wrote.
In August 2008, the state crime lab reported back that Fox's DNA had been found on Evan's body, Burroughs wrote. Last October, the new state medical examiner determined the fatal injuries were likely inflicted about the time of the fight.
Troopers got an arrest warrant and took Fox into custody on Thursday. Fox, who has a long history of arrests for alcohol, drug and assault offenses, was booked into Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional Center with bail set at $100,000.
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