Kristie Evans
An Oklahoma woman was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole for urging her lover to fatally shoot her husband, according to The Oklahoman.
Defendant Kristie Dawnell Evans, 49, testified at the hearing that the victim — her Baptist pastor husband David Evans, 50 — subjected her to abuse throughout their 30-year marriage. She estimated he forced her to have sex with 50 to 100 other men.
“I was desperate,” she reportedly testified Tuesday. “I wanted to be free from that. I knew of no other way.”
Those claims little moved Pontotoc County District Judge Steve Kessinger, who maintained the March 22, 2021 killing was cold-blooded. Any remorse Kristie felt for the act was new, he said.
That act, according to prosecutors, was to let her her co-defendant lover Kahlil Deamie Square, 27, into her home in the early morning while David was asleep.
“Kristie gave David’s gun and a box of bullets to Kahlil,” the affidavit said. “Kristie and Kahlil agreed upon an approximate time Kahlil would come to the Evans’ residence to kill David. Kristie left the backdoor unlocked so Kahlil could make entry to the residence.”
Defendant Evans pleaded guilty in April to murder in the first degree but did so without a plea agreement. She will be eligible for parole in her eighties. The case against Square is ongoing. He allegedly confessed.
Kahlil Deamie Square, via OSBI
Kristie’s defense lawyer Joi Miskel reportedly requested four years in prison.
“She is not a danger to society,” the attorney said.
Assistant District Attorney Tara Portillo acknowledged that David Evans was a “dark, dark individual” and (in the Oklahoman‘s paraphrasing) a sexual deviant.
Through it all, the couple’s daughter Brittney Long had Kristie’s back. She has told NBC News that David Evans was abusive to her and her siblings. He would slam the children’s heads together, pick them up by the hair, force them to stay up all night cleaning, and then knock over everything while they worked, she said.
“My mom spent three decades of her life caged and controlled,” she told NBC-affiliate KTEN in a new report. “She has told me more than once that she still prefers her life now to the life she had been living since 1991. I believe her.”
After two days in a Pontotoc County Courtroom, Kristie Evans received a life sentence with the possibility of parole for her role in the murder of her husband, David Evans, a man she and family members said abused her for decades. @KTENnews pic.twitter.com/mD4jiJsSyE
— Lexy French (@lexy_french) August 11, 2022
Kristie Evans reportedly testified that she stayed with her husband in part because she was afraid he would kill her, her parents, and himself in a murder-suicide.
Portillo, who sought a sentence of life without parole, maintained at the hearing that Kristie Evans had “options” other than murder.
“She had options,” she said. “She chose the worst one.”
Kristie convinced Square to carry out the shooting anyway after he “wavered,” she said.
Kristie Dawnell Evans.
Special Agent Justin Brown, of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, voiced uncertainty if the sex was coerced, testifying, “I’m not 100 percent sure of that.”
Also at issue were salacious letters Kristie Evans wrote Square and another inmate.
“I could wear a man out,” she reportedly wrote the other inmate. “Any man would have done it for me after I got through with him.”
Kessinger said the “pornographic” missives showed a lack of remorse.
Regarding the letters, Portillo said that Evans “cut it off.” She maintained her client wrote those letters out of years of conditioning from her husband: getting “positive feedback” for performing sexually for him.
“Her remorse is real and it was from the very beginning,” Portillo reportedly told reporters. “Every time I’ve met with her, there is remorse.
[Booking photos via Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, featured image via KFOR screengrab]
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