They often imagined themselves as early pioneers scrounging for food and fighting for survival in the woods near their North Carolina home. Leah and Lukah Chang were children who enjoyed the worlds of their minds rather than tag or hide and seek.

“We were in the back yard one day, playing,” Leah recalled, “and I don’t know how it came up, but I remember we made a pact that if either of us were in trouble, if we’re in a fight with somebody, we would always, always stand with each other and fight back-to-back and fight together until we went down.”

They were maybe 8 or 9, she said, and the closest in their relationship.

“That’s the brother I remember, that’s the brother that would stand with me. … That’s the brother that loved me, and the brother that I loved, and if we had to go down, we would go down together,” she said. “And I miss that.”

Leah is 22 now, lives and works in Bakersfield, Calif., and is getting married next week. Lukah at 23 is doing life in Oregon State Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Salem. That brother etched himself into Pendleton history with two ruthless crimes: He murdered Amyjane Brandhagen, 19, the afternoon of Aug. 14, 2012, while she worked as a motel maid across from the Pendleton City Hall and public library; then he waited almost a year before the next attack, Aug. 9, 2013, when he tried to beat 53-year-old Karen Lange to death while she was going for a walk along the Pendleton River Parkway.

Pendleton police Chief Stuart Roberts said he observed a “significant pause” in Pendleton in the wake of Brandhagen’s slaying as the community questioned if such a crime could really happen here. The shock eventually gave way to a sense of paranoia. The attack on Lange brought much of that to a head during a community meeting in which Roberts revealed the connection between the crimes. Residents wanted to know where could they seek safety, if children could walk alone, if another attack was probable. But police had little information.

“I wished I could have done more to provide peace of mind,” he said. “Just based on the crime scenes we have, I knew this guy certainly was capable of significant violence.”

Growing up, Leah Chang said, her brother was reserved, quiet, non-violent. What drove him to kill a woman and try to kill a second, she said, is beyond her.

“My main reason for reaching out was because of the crime he committed and it was done in such a way … it was not ordinary, and for it to be two people … a lot of people think there is something mentally wrong with him, that he’s one of those psychotic killers or something,” Leah said. “My whole point I’m trying to say is, he wasn’t.”

Growing up

Leah and Lukah were born to Ge and Heidi Chang in Hammond, Indiana. Ge is Hmong and from Laos, and when Leah was a toddler the family moved to Morganton, N.C., where Ge was a pastor at a Hmong Baptist church. Leah said her parents were not perfect, but she and her brother had a good childhood. She was adamant they were not victims of abuse.

They lived on a small farm about 30 miles from their church. They raised chickens, ducks, rabbits and occasionally goats. Lukah raised Guinea pigs as pets. The children worked, did chores and played together.

“I remember how competitive we would alway be,” she said, “because we were so close in age, running and climbing trees … we were really very similar.”

They brawled, she said, complete with punches and kicks, but made up by the end of the day. They were so close, she said, some people believed they were twins.

Lukah attended kindergarten through second grade at a Christian school on the same campus as their church, 30 miles from home. Leah followed, but only through first grade. Then their mother taught them at home. The Chang siblings seemed mature for their age, she said, because they spent so much time with their parents. And while Leah said she was outgoing, her brother took longer to get comfortable with other children.

“He’d cut up, he’d goof off, you know, he would do regular, young person, teenager-ish things,” she said.

The siblings sometimes attended a week-long youth camp their church led each summer. At one camp Leah discovered bruises on her brother’s legs and pestered him until he talked.

“He told me that a couple of guys had been snapping him with wet towels the night before,” she said.

She also got him to say who did it. Leah confronted the boys and told them never touch her brother again. Lukah did not take action. She said that was typical of how non-violent and non-confrontational he was as a child.

Growing apart

Lukah was smart, she said, and an avid reader. He loved history in particular. He started staying indoors with his nose in a book. He did the same for hours, years later, when he visited the Pendleton Public Library. He also kept his emotions locked up, his sister said.

“He would often do his best, no matter what the situation, to have an expressionless face. That’s just how he was,” she said. “He didn’t want people to know if he was angry or sad … he didn’t want attention, he didn’t want to be noticed.”

Leah said she was more volatile. “I was the one who had to be kept on a short leash. I was the one with the big mouth. He became more an indoor-reader person, and I was more an outside active person, just a difference of what we were. We didn’t spend time together anymore.”

The family in 2006 left for a year to start a church in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. Leah said she and her brother enjoyed that time. “As young teenagers it was something to experience, we could travel and meet different kinds of people,” she said.

They returned to Morganton, and Lukah went back to the Christian school his senior year, Leah said, but the school expelled him. Their mother issued his diploma. Leah did not say what led to the expulsion.

That might have been the reason, Leah speculated, that her brother joined the Marines in May 2008, right after graduation. Lukah surprised many with the move because it seemed out of step with his personality, she said. He did not talk to her about why he joined, but Leah said her brother would know that having a home school diploma was limiting, so the military may have been a way to gain an area of expertise and have something to stand on when his service concluded.

His smarts also helped him. Lukah was intelligent, she said. She would struggle to earn good grades, but Lukah never even had to take notes. He scored so well on the military entrance exam, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the recruiters said he could have his pick of training and careers.

Roberts noted that same intelligence, and said he thinks Chang felt confident police could not catch him nearly a year after he had killed Brandhagen. But he slipped after assaulting Lange and allowed a video camera to catch his image. Police then released his photo and turned Chang into a wanted man.

Cutting contact

The Marines stationed Chang at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, where he would spend the length of his military career. Leah said he married there, but her parents did not approve. She said that was a family matter and left it at that. Leah said she became friends with her sister-in-law, and they stay in touch, though she wouldn’t share her name. Lukah’s wife did not want to speak to media.

Lukah became fast friends with Casey Lee Byrams, fellow Marine, who roomed with Lukah and his wife. Lukah and Byrams even sported matching “Semper Fi” tattoos on the inside of their left wrists. Yet Leah said her brother grew more closed off.

“In the years he joined the military he became a totally different person,” she said.

Lukah would not reveal innermost thoughts, feelings or personal details of his life, she said. And he started going out, partying. He did not take drugs, she said, but he had a low tolerance for alcohol. Their church took a dim view of his new life.

Thanksgiving 2011 would be special. By then her parents were full-time missionaries in Thailand, and she lived, worked and attended college in Long Beach, Calif., with her brother about 70 miles away in Oceanside, near the base. Lukah, his wife and Byrams picked up Leah and brought her to their place for the holiday. They and other friends celebrated Thanksgiving, complete with turkey and the rest of it.

“We just had a lot of fun,” she recalled.

That was the last time Leah saw her brother in person.

Seven months later Byrams, 24, died. Leah said she only heard rumors about how. Lukah posted this online about his friend: “Thursday, June 07, 2012 At 7:20 this morning, I received the worst news in my life. I was at work when my wife called me with the terrible news. She told me that Casey passed away. This hit me terribly hard. He was like a big brother to me. Looked out for me, kept me out of trouble, and showed me that a person can have fun anywhere at anytime. Even when he was down at his worst he always tried to put a smile on everyone’s face. On my worst day in my worst mood, even when I didn’t want to, he could always make me laugh. It was impossible not to. His view on life was this, ‘If I can make person (even a complete stranger I’ll never see again) smile, laugh, or feel better about themselves it just makes my day.’ He would go out of his absolute way just to make a person feel at ease or make an awkward situation better. I miss him, I really miss him a lot. Because of him I am a Crimson Tide fan (Roll Tide!!). I know that he is up in heaven playing his guitar to Jesus. I love you Byrams, life is a little bit sadder without you man.” ~ Lukah Chang, Oceanside, California

“What my brother wrote,” Leah said, “I could just tell his heart was just aching. It really, really hit him hard.”

He called his family around the Fourth of July, 2012. Leah was with their parents in Thailand.

“I think I tried to talk to him about his friend who had died,” she recalled, “and if anything was going in his life … anything he was planning. ‘No, not really,’ he said.”

Her brother was not the type for small talk. The conversation was short. They have not spoken since.

Lukah deserted July 9. Several days later, a superior officer at Camp Pendleton called the family to tell them. Aside from the death of his close friend, Leah said, the family had no idea what prompted Lukah to leave the Marines and his wife.

“His disappearance was just as much a mystery to us as to anyone else,” she said. “We didn’t understand the reason why he left. We didn’t know what was going on.”

He did not leave so much as a note or a text message.

“He just kind of left,” she said.

His mother filed a missing person’s report with the Oceanside Police Department. The family received no word of Lukah until the morning after his arrest in Pendleton.

“It was like 5 o’clock in the morning, I was just waking up and getting ready to go to work,” Leah Chang said. “It was the worst morning.”

A killer in custody

Chang laughed and sang in the police car on the way from the Pendleton Convention Center where he was captured to the interview room at the station, Roberts said. Detectives were concerned Chang was faking insanity. Once the questions began, though, Chang was all business.

Roberts and Umatilla County District Attorney Dan Primus watched the interrogation unwind via live video. Chang gave his real name, where he was from, the facts about his parents, Roberts said. Chang was direct in his answers to questions from detectives Rick Jackson and Brandon Gomez. If he did not want to answer something, he said so. Chang seemed collected throughout until Jackson asked him about his wife.

“He just absolutely said, ‘We will not talk about that, we will not talk about her,'” Roberts said. “That was the only time, really the only time in the entire interview where he showed what I considered real emotion.”

Chang also refused to discuss why he left Camp Pendleton and Oceanside. Roberts said he almost got the sense Chang longed for deployment as a Marine and grew resentful from spending his whole career at Camp Pendleton. Chang seemed as though he broke away from his life in California and would not go back, Roberts said. But Chang did not say why.

“If he had any desire to go back, there would have been people there to help him, I guarantee it,” Roberts said. “But he didn’t want any of that.”

The detectives finally asked Chang about the crimes.

“For that time forward, it just rolled,” Roberts said. “He was just ready to tell it — what and how and why he did it.”

In Pendleton

Chang arrived in Pendleton around Aug. 7, 2012, and stayed in a few hotels until he ran out of money. One of those was the Travelodge, 411 S.W. Dorion Ave., where Brandhagen was a new employee. Chang noticed her, Roberts said.

The city library, across Dorion from the hotel, became a routine place for Chang, the chief said. And upon leaving there Aug. 14,he saw Brandhagen. He saw she opened rooms she planned to clean and closed doors when she entered. He stalked toward the Pendleton River Walkway, circled behind the hotel, crept to an open room on the second floor and waited for her. Brandhagen’s body was found by the hotel manager at 3:19 p.m.

Chang struck next when he tried to kill Lange. “He characterized his crimes as crime of opportunity,” Roberts said. “Those are his words. I think he was very calculated.”

Chang never lied during the interview, Roberts said, and never showed he was nervous during questioning. Detectives did not need to manipulate Chang so he would talk. Roberts said for those reasons alone the interview was surprising. Chang’s demeanor stayed “pretty mundane” from that point and right through his plea hearing and sentencing.

Roberts said Chang also admitted he thought about killing before he actually did, but he waited until the time was right.

Finding out

Leah got the news from Chang’s wife — Lukah was alive, but under arrest for murder. She gave Leah a number to call a Pendleton police detective. Leah said she felt tossed in a sea of confusion, shock and relief.

“We spent nearly a year not knowing where he was,” Leah said, “and we had spent so much time praying for him, praying for his safety, praying he would come back, that he would be found somewhere, that he would connect us and let us know he was OK. It was just a consolation of knowing he was still alive, although he was charged with crimes, he was alive.”

She called the detective. “He told me my brother was arrested and he told me for what reason,” she said, but did not give much more.

“When I did speak with the detective, it went from confusion to heartbreak,” she said. “That was a rough day. That was a really, really rough day.”

She called her parents with the news.

“It was hard for them … to hear the reason why he was arrested,” she said.

Authorities called to tell Leah about the outcome of his plea deal in January.

“Our family, and other family members have tried to contact him, but it seemed he resented any form of contact,” she said. Their mother sent him letters; they came backed unopened.

“For what reason, we don’t know,” Leah said, “but we kind of have to respect that.”

L. Kent Fisher of Pendleton was Chang’s defense attorney. Chang allowed Fisher to let the family know where he was and what was happening with the case, but that was all.

Fisher said Chang was unlike any defendant he represented, and not only because of the viciousness of his crimes. Most defendants try to grasp at whatever will get them off the hook, set them free. Not Chang, Fisher said.

Fisher recalled the video recording of Chang’s interrogation. There was no doubt Chang was aware of what he had done. Chang said killing filled him with a sense of empowerment and sadness.

“The video was gut-wrenching, just gut-wrenching,” Fisher said.

Leah said accepting what her brother did is hard, and there’s no easy way to deal with having a brother in prison. So much remains a mystery about what happened, she said. Even the alias Danny Wu, which he gave to police during earlier run-ins, did not mean anything to her.

The prodigal son

Leah relies on her soon-to-be-husband, she said, and puts her faith in God to cope with the tragedy her brother wrought.

“God is the only one who really understands why this happened,” she said. “That’s just what keeps me going, even though I don’t understand, I know God does.”

Leah said she understands people want to know why, but she nor the rest of the family can unlock this part of Lukah. “We don’t know,” she said.

Lukah Chang is intriguing, Roberts said, and the question of why he did what he did hangs in the air.

“I don’t think even he can answer that,” Roberts said. “If he could, he would have.”

Prison can change even hard people, Roberts said, and Chang may not have an easy life inside. He’s slight, and his victims were women. He could become a target. Perhaps inside Chang will revert to who he was before becoming a killer, Roberts said, and maybe one day Chang will tell his full story.

Leah has not tried to contact her brother. She considered it, she said, and some family members encouraged her to, but she found that did not align with her faith. The biblical parable of the prodigal son, she explained, held the answer for her.

“My brother is kind of in the same situation as that son who went away and took his inheritance and wandered away from home,” she said.

The father and family in that story kept the son at a distance. Not until he was looking after pigs — an unclean animal in the story’s context — did the son come to he senses, return home and seek forgiveness.

“It may sound cruel, but my brother is in prison, and if he is truly repentant of his crimes and his sin, I will open my arms to him, and I will welcome him back, and I will reinstate him as my brother,” Leah said. “I still love him … but until that time that’s all I can do. I can love him, I can pray for him, you know, just hope for the best.”

The Oregon Department of Corrections denied a request to interview Chang.

Contact Phil Wright at pwright@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0833.

This story originally appeared in East Oregonian.