Stranger-than-fiction manhunt ends in Skwentna

Around noon on April 30, two Alaska State Troopers advanced on a remote log cabin in Skwentna, Alaska. It was cloudy and only a few degrees above freezing.

Trooper Terrence Shanigan took cover behind a birch tree while his partner, Wildlife Trooper Mark Agnew, covered him from a setback position. Shanigan yelled for the men inside to put down their guns and come outside.

"Fuck you!" came a voice from inside the cabin. The New Jersey accent was unmistakable. "I want a satellite phone and some weed!"

The armed standoff would last an hour. Inside the cabin were a stockpile of stolen guns, a bucket of ammunition, and two young men suspected in a spree of destruction that ended with as many as 25 Matanuska-Susitna Borough cabins burglarized, ransacked and shot full of holes.

The standoff was the climax of a three-week-long adventure that landed two brothers, 21-year-old Benjamin Cross and 23-year-old Jeffrey Indellicati, in the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility facing charges in three states that could net them as much as 40 years behind bars just for their Alaska crimes.

This is the story of two brothers, born of the same mother but adopted by different families. It's the story of a cracked safe robbed of $50,000 in New Jersey, a sex- and drug-fueled tour of Puerto Rico and Texas, and a string of smashed-up cabins in Alaska. It's the story of two brothers from the East Coast living like rap stars on stolen money, and their adventure in the wilds of Alaska.

This is also the story of two Alaska State Troopers who flew, hiked, and canoed through the frozen backcountry to run the brothers down.

It began with a safe

Lisa Dawson had three children. The oldest, Jeffrey, was born in 1986; he was followed soon after by a younger sister, Alexis, and a brother, Benjamin, born in 1988 while the family lived in a homeless shelter in eastern Pennsylvania, across the border from Trenton, N.J.

All three children were adopted by different New Jersey families when they were very young. Jeffrey became Jeff Indellicati, and Benjamin became Ben Cross. The brothers saw each other on Christmas and Easter, playing rough even as small children. Ben laughs when he tells a story about Jeff, then 7, pulling a compound bow and aiming it into his 5-year-old brother's face. Jeff's mom freaked out, and the boys didn't see each other again for a year or two.

In 2008 Ben was 19, living in Florida, and enjoying the girls and the sun. He started breaking into apartments to steal computers and guns, which landed him in jail. When he got out in November 2009, his sister gave him a ride back to New Jersey -- in violation of his parole.

Back home, Ben started working for a company that set up safety nets at construction sites, and he got Jeff a job at the same place. Then, on April 9, 2010, a 5-foot-tall safe went missing, stolen from the brothers' employer. The safe was found busted wide open in a wildlife preserve, emptied of $50,000 in cash and $2.3 million in certificates of deposit. New Jersey detectives think Ben and Jeff were the ones who cracked it.

When the police started calling to talk about the cracked safe, the brothers blew out of town. The stolen cash made travel easy. They landed in Puerto Rico, where they partied hard through cities like San Juan and Mayaguez, blowing thousands of dollars on prostitutes, cocaine, and marijuana.