Patricide suspect appears in court

By Lisa Majors-Duff

The former Western Carolina University student was extradited to North Carolina in November after spending nearly two years fighting removal from his home state of Wisconsin.

Jurisdiction in the case of North Carolina v. Derek Anderson on the charge of first-degree murder will most likely be contested, said court-appointed attorney Steve Lindsay of Asheville, due to questions surrounding where the defendant's father, Allen Krnak, was killed after disappearing with his wife and son during the 1998 Fourth of July holiday.

Attorneys Lindsay and Jack Stewart are not the first to raise the question of where Krnak's murder took place. Milwaukee County Public Defender Neil McGinn, who represented Anderson during his extradition battle, brought up the same point a year after Anderson's arrest.

"There's no link between Derek Anderson to this area in North Carolina at the time of the family's disappearance," McGinn told a Wilwaukee television station. "And there's no information that Anderson was responsible for any crime."

Anderson, who Milwaukee authorities suspected but never charged in the disappearance of his family, was charged by the Jackson County Sheriff's Office with murder in February 2001, three months after the remains found by hunters were determined to be those of his father. Physicians in the state medical examiner's office said the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, resulting in numerous fractures.

After state medical examiners determined the remains to be those of Allen Krnak, more than 60 law enforcement officers from both Jackson County and Wisconsin's Jefferson County combed the Moses Creek woods in Caney Fork for several weeks searching for evidence of his wife, Donna, and their younger son, Thomas.

While no additional human remains were found, authorities did uncover the remains of the family's cocker spaniel, along with a 14-karat gold wedding band with the initials "DKW & AFK."

Anderson's attorneys said in court Monday the more than 3,000 pages of discovery turned over by the state are being reviewed in preparation for a trial, the date of which remains unknown. Time must also be set aside, Lindsay said, for defense attorneys to travel to Wisconsin to interview witnesses. Additionally, Allen Krnak's remains must be made accessible for examination by experts retained by the defense, he said.

Both the defense and the prosecution agreed to place Anderson's case on the April 14 court calendar, at which time a discovery schedule will be reviewed and any other matters in the case can be heard.

Anderson, who legally changed his made from Andrew Krnak jut days after his family's disappearance, graduated from WCU in 1994 with a degree in psychology. He is believed to be the last person to see his family alive on the day they left their home in Helenville, Wis., to spend the Fourth of July holiday at their cabin about an hour away.

To date, the whereabouts of Anderson's mother and brother have not been determined.

As Anderson continued to fight extradition, local authorities believed the process would be sped up after a Jackson County Grand Jury indicted Anderson on a charge of first-degree murder in February 2001. But Anderson successfully resisted returning to Jackson County for another 21 months.

At the time of Anderson's indictment, Jackson County investigators said they had evidence placing him most recently in Western North Carolina in 1998. Prior to that, he was known to have been in the area in 1996, two years following his graduation from WCU. While in school in Cullowhee, Anderson lived on campus in Reynolds Dorm and off campus in Alpine Apartments.

Back to Archive: 02/20/03.