An Anchorage man had just received a notice of a leasing dispute on Monday when he walked into an office at his apartment complex and fatally shot the manager, according to charging documents.
Jesse Lee Jones, 27, is charged with multiple counts of murder in the death of 34-year-old Josiah Goecker. Police say the shooting happened just before 4 p.m. Monday at the Alpine Apartment Homes in Midtown. Anchorage SWAT officers spent hours searching the complex for Jones, asking residents to stay in their homes, but he wasn’t found until early Thursday in Meadow Lakes, just outside of Wasilla.
A criminal complaint against Jones, filed Tuesday by an Anchorage police officer, says that the shooting was first reported by an employee of Goecker’s at the apartment complex’s leasing office. The apartments are owned by Weidner Apartment Homes, a Washington-based regional property-management firm with residences for rent across the western United States and Canada.
Weidner spokesman Greg Cerbana said Goecker had served as community director of the 387-unit complex in Anchorage for the past six years, managing all aspects of its operations. He said Goecker hadn’t seen any confrontations with renters as serious as Monday’s, although managers often face the major pressures that accompany dealing with renters’ homes.
“It’s part of the job that sometimes you’re delivering messages that people are – it’s tough to take, and it’s tough conversations to have,” he said in an interview Friday.
Cerbana said Goecker had posted a notice Monday on Jones’ apartment door of a leasing dispute, not an eviction as described in police charging documents against Jones.
“He received a notice because he wasn’t on the lease, and we were trying to get him to sign onto the lease,” he said. “And he never did so, and so we gave the apartment a notice of non-renewal.”
Cerbana said the notice was the first communication Weidner had issued Jones about the leasing dispute. He said it was intended to be a “benign” contact.
“It was the least confrontational method that we could have taken to resolve that situation,” he said.
Cerbana declined to speculate on whether Jones had mistaken the leasing notice for an eviction notice.
According to the charging document written by police, Jones entered the leasing office Monday with the notice in hand and confronted Goecker. The employee who reported the shooting was also in the office, and said Jones asked her, “Are you really kicking me and my pregnant girlfriend out onto the streets?’
At that point, the employee said, Jones drew a silver handgun and tried to fire it.
“She said there was a short struggle, over the gun, between Josiah and Jones,” the charges said. “She reported that the gun malfunctioned. The suspect pulled the magazine out of the pistol and fixed the malfunction then shot Josiah five times.”
According to the charges, surveillance video from the office recorded the struggle between the two men, with the shooting not seen on camera. Jones was recorded leaving the office, still holding the gun and the leasing notice.
“(The employee) said when Jones pulled out the gun she thought she was going to die, and she thought he would come into the office and shoot her next,” said the charges.
A statement from Goecker’s family on Thursday described him as a family man who leaves behind his wife Carrie, daughter Olivia and their unborn child Josi Faith. A GoFundMe account set up to support the family had raised more than $85,000 by Friday morning.
“Josiah was a devoted husband, a loving father, a caring son, an incredible brother, and a dear friend to so many,” family members wrote. “He loved Jesus Christ with his whole heart and strength and his final act was modeling the sacrifice of Christ. Arrangements are being made for a service in the coming days.”
Cerbana, who traveled to Anchorage earlier this week to speak with local Weidner employees in the wake of the shooting, said he had met Goecker before his death.
“He really was the best of all of us, and he will be missed as a friend, as a supervisor, as a son, as a husband and a father,” he said.
Jones was in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Complex Friday morning. The charges he faces include first-degree and second-degree murder, plus third-degree assault.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the document posted on Jesse Lee Jones’ door as an eviction notice, based on police charging documents. A Weidner Apartment Homes spokesman says it was not an eviction notice, but notice of a leasing dispute.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
