A woman in Oklahoma has been sentenced to life in prison after she was found guilty of urging her lover to kill her husband.
According to The Oklahoman, Kristie Dawnell Evans was convicted of murder this week in Pontotoc County.
In court proceedings, Evans testified that her Baptist pastor husband, David Evans, had long abused her during their 30-year marriage. She claimed her husband forced her to have sex with 50 to 100 other men. Evans previously pled guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree earlier this year.
“I was desperate,” she reportedly testified Tuesday. “I wanted to be free from that. I knew of no other way.”
Prosecutors say the 49-year-old Evans let her lover Kahlil Deamie Square, 27, into her home early in the morning on March 22, 2021. David Evans was still 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.”
Square is also on trial for murder. Officials say he confessed to the crime.
Assistant District Attorney Tara Portillo said she agreed that David Evans was a “dark, dark individual” and the couple’s daughter, Brittney Long, also said her father was abusive.
She said he would hit her and her siblings, pick them up by their hair, force them to clean all night and then “knock over everything.”
“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.”
Evans testified that she stayed in the marriage because she worried that David would kill her, her parents and himself.
But Portillo said Evans “had options” and she “chose the worst one.”
Photo credit: Unsplash/Injury Law Firm
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
