The electronic signal that brought officers to an East Anchorage garage became the starting point of a four-year murder case.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The investigation that ultimately sent Adam Darius Pringle to prison for 55 years began not with a homicide call but with an electronic ankle monitor that appeared not to have moved for two days, drawing Alaska officers to the East Anchorage home where Keenan Wegener’s body was found.
That discovery in March 2022 became the first major step in a case that produced two murder convictions, two lengthy prison sentences and separate jury trials years apart. Wegener, 27, was found inside a plastic tote in a garage on Kalgin Street after officers with the Alaska Pretrial Services Division traced his monitoring device to the property. Pringle, now 44, was sentenced in September 2026 after being convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter. Co-defendant Daniel Alex Rocero had been convicted and sentenced earlier.
The monitor provided investigators with an unusually direct path to the scene. Officers had been checking on Wegener because the device showed no apparent movement for about two days. When they reached the address on March 20, 2022, they activated or pinged the monitor and could hear it from the garage, according to local reporting based on the police affidavit. Inside, they located the tote containing Wegener’s body. What had initially been a compliance or welfare concern immediately became a suspicious-death investigation.
Detectives then worked backward from the garage. The homeowner told police that Wegener had been at the residence two days earlier with Pringle and Rocero. She described hearing loud arguing from a lower level of the house and said she pounded on a wall in an effort to make the men quiet down. Her statement placed all three men together at the home during the period in which authorities later determined Wegener was killed.
According to the homeowner’s account in the probable cause affidavit, Pringle later came upstairs and indicated that Wegener had been knocked unconscious. Knowing that the homeowner was a nurse, he asked her for medical assistance. Rocero also came upstairs and indicated that Wegener was not breathing, she told investigators. The homeowner said she urged that 911 be called but did not go downstairs herself. She later told police she was extremely afraid of the two men and feared the consequences of cooperating.
The account investigators gathered in 2022 was only the beginning of the evidentiary process. By the time Pringle went to trial in 2025, prosecutors presented evidence that he and Rocero had beaten Wegener with an 8-pound metal sledgehammer, placed pressure on his neck and chest and put his body into a large plastic tote. An autopsy determined that Wegener died from a combination of asphyxia and blunt-force trauma, findings that gave prosecutors medical evidence to present alongside the witness accounts and circumstances surrounding the discovery.
Pringle and Rocero were indicted in connection with Wegener’s death later in March 2022, but their cases did not reach trial together. Rocero’s prosecution moved first. An Anchorage jury convicted him in May 2023 of second-degree murder, manslaughter and tampering with evidence. At his sentencing several months later, relatives and friends of Wegener spoke about the effect of the killing and described him as a caring person who helped others.
Superior Court Judge Peter Ramgren sentenced Rocero to 60 years with 10 years suspended on the homicide convictions, resulting in 50 years to serve, and imposed another two years for tampering with evidence. The state said Ramgren viewed Rocero’s conduct as among the most serious cases of second-degree murder and found limited prospects for rehabilitation. Rocero’s combined active prison term is 52 years.
Pringle’s case took substantially longer to reach a verdict. In December 2025, more than three years after Wegener’s death, a separate Anchorage jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter. The Alaska Department of Law said at the time that Pringle faced a possible sentence of as much as 99 years. The state’s conviction announcement credited the Anchorage Police Department’s Homicide Unit with the investigation and noted the role Pretrial Services officers played in finding Wegener.
The eventual sentence was imposed in September 2026. Ramgren ordered Pringle to serve 55 years of active jail time. Unlike Rocero, Pringle was not described in the state’s sentencing announcement as having been convicted of tampering with evidence. His convictions were for second-degree murder and manslaughter, the same two homicide offenses on which Rocero had also been found guilty.
The years separating discovery from final sentencing show how the ankle-monitor check developed into a much larger criminal case. The electronic device first established where Wegener was located. The garage search produced the physical discovery that triggered the homicide investigation. The homeowner’s statements gave detectives a timeline for the confrontation inside the residence. Medical findings established the causes of death, and the two resulting prosecutions required juries to consider the state’s evidence separately against each defendant.
The device itself did not establish who killed Wegener, and authorities did not treat it as a substitute for the homicide investigation that followed. Its importance was more basic: It brought officers to the location where they found him. From that point, police relied on witness interviews, forensic findings and other investigative work to build the cases that prosecutors ultimately took to trial. The Department of Law said Pretrial Services was instrumental in the early investigation, while Anchorage homicide detectives handled the case.
Wegener’s family remained involved as the proceedings continued. During Rocero’s sentencing, relatives and friends addressed the court about the loss and its effects. The nonprofit Victims for Justice also provided support to Wegener’s family, according to the state. The later prosecution of Pringle meant the family’s involvement with the court process continued well beyond the first conviction and sentence in 2023.
Pringle’s September 2026 sentence brought the second prosecution to the same broad endpoint as Rocero’s case: decades of active incarceration for each man. Pringle received 55 years to serve, while Rocero’s combined active sentence is 52 years. More than four years after an ankle monitor led officers to the Kalgin Street garage, the state’s latest case announcements show both convicted defendants serving sentences for Wegener’s killing.
Author note: Last updated November 7, 2026.