Father, ex-husband of Henderson slaying victims mourns son, reflects on relationship

In the wake of a double homicide in Henderson, Andy Scoggins is grieving the loss of his only child and reckoning with a damaged relationship that he had hoped to eventually mend.

The last time he saw his son in-person, his son flipped him off and yelled, “What about child support?”

That was in 2020. Scoggins, who said he’d never been ordered to pay child support, had gone to his son’s public school in Omaha, Nebraska. He was armed with a thick envelope of emails that documented correspondence between Scoggins and his son’s mother.

“I just told him basically, ‘Son, you don’t have to believe me at all, but when you get a chance, look at these. You don’t have to look at them now. And you’ll see a little different picture than the one you’ve been getting,’” Scoggins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview Monday.

Scoggins’ son, Sergei “Evan” Scoggins, 20, and his former wife, Anastasiya Akutsina, 44, were killed in a shooting October 11 at a residence in Henderson, authorities said.

Karl Groschen, 41, who was Evan Scoggins’ stepfather and Akutsina’s husband, faces two open murder charges in connection with their deaths.

“You have to take me”

It was about 6 p.m. when Henderson Police were dispatched to a residence in the 300 block of Black Rock Hills Drive after they got an ominous phone call from a man who said, “You need to come here now; there’s a huge crime scene.”

Arriving officers found Karl Groschen, who held prescription bottles and a drink, according to a police report.

“You have to take me; I thought they were trying to kill me,” police said he told them. Police didn’t discover any evidence that backed up that claim.

Officers found Anastasiya Groschen’s body in the garage behind the driver’s seat of a Toyota Prius. Scoggins’ body was in the laundry room. Both victims had about five gunshot wounds.

A neighbor told police that Karl Groschen pushed his stepson out of the garage around 5:45 p.m. and yelled, “go to your car, get out of here.”

But, she told police, Scoggins ran back inside after what sounded like a gunshot and a person screaming.

Andy Scoggins has said he thinks his son was trying to protect his mother.

The Groschens’ home has been burglarized twice since the shooting, according to a spokesperson for the Henderson Police.

Once a close bond

Evan Scoggins was born in the Outer Banks region of North Carolina just after midnight on April 7, 2004.

Andy Scoggins said his son was a happy child. “He was easy to raise, such a good boy,” Scoggins said.

Evan Scoggins read avidly, won the spelling bee in grades four and five, was interested in politics and wanted to be a filmmaker.

Andy Scoggins said he and Akutsina separated in 2007, but they shared parenting responsibilities. “I was an amazing father,” he said.

Most days, he said, he’d pick his son up at school. He was one of the coaches for his son’s football team, which won a championship when Evan was eight, his father said.

Despite the separation, the family frequently ate dinner together.

In 2014, Akutsina met Groschen on a dating app.

Scoggins learned in 2015 that Akutsina planned to move with her son to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Groschen lived, he said. Evan Scoggins had only five or six weeks left in his fifth grade year, according to his father.

An agreement with Akutsina’s attorney gave her custody of Evan Scoggins but allowed him to have visits, the father said. He and his son stayed in touch by phone and Skype.

Scoggins said that after the Charlotte move, his son told him about kicking open a shoebox and finding a gun that belonged to Groschen. Scoggins said he reported it to child protective services, but nothing came of it.

In November of 2015, he said, he was barred from visiting or calling his son after a judge accused him of coaching his son on what to say. Scoggins said he also refused to pay attorney fees to Akutsina’s lawyer and was jailed for contempt.

Following Charlotte, Scoggins said, his son and the Groschens moved to Missouri, then to Nebraska.

Instagram messages

Scoggins currently lives in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he’s a teacher. He said he pursued a teaching career because he missed his son and wanted to be around children.

He and Evan Scoggins stayed in touch via Instagram messages beginning around 2020, he said. He’d send his son movies, pictures and videos of himself in Ho Chi Minh City.

His son would just reply with a check or a thumbs up reaction. Andy Scoggins said he’d ask his son to come visit, but his son wouldn’t answer.

“I don’t blame my son for not responding in a way that I wanted because I wasn’t in his position,” he said.

The last exchange he had with his son was in July 2023 when the son asked about student loans, Scoggins said.

Last week, Scoggins arrived in Las Vegas after a trip that took about 22 hours. He said he wanted to see his son.

He plans to take his son back to the Outer Banks to be buried.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.