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Tag: Spousal Abuse

UPDATED: Black Collar Crime: Kristie Evans Sentenced to Life for Murdering Her Husband David Evans, a Baptist Pastor and Swinger

pastor david evans
David Evans, pastor of Harmony Freewill Baptist Church in Ada, Oklahoma

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2021, I reported that David Evans, pastor of Harmony Freewill Baptist Church in Ada, Oklahoma, was allegedly murdered by his wife, Kristie, and her lover (and threesome partner), Kahlil Square.

The Daily Beast reported:

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation on Friday said Kristie Dawnell Evans, 47, had been arrested and charged with first-degree murder after confessing her role in her husband’s murder. Her lover, Kahlil Deamie Square, 26, was also arrested on Thursday on the same charge.

Authorities say that Kristie Evans asked Square to kill her husband in a sinister plot the two hatched while the pastor was away in Mexico. According to an affidavit, obtained by The Daily Beast, the mother-of-three later told police her husband “was verbally abusive and controlling of her” and “called her names like ‘slut, fat, ugly, and whore.’”

“Kristie gave David’s gun and a box of bullets to Kahlil,” the affidavit says, based on interviews Evans had with investigators. “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 resident.”

In a bizarre twist, the pastor’s wife told investigators that she and Square “had a sexual relationship that also included David at one point as well.”

“Kristie and David first met Kahlil months ago at a Super 8 Motel,” the affidavit states. The trio had sex at the Super 8 Motel on more than one occasion. One time, “Kristie secretly dropped her phone number on the floor for Kahlil. Kristine continued to communicate by phone daily with Kahlil without David’s knowledge,” the affidavit continues.

Evans admitted that Square stayed over for three nights while her husband was in Mexico, too. She told Square that her husband was verbally abusive, that he mistreated her, and that “it would be nice to have more freedom.” “Kahlil simply responded with, ‘damn,’” the affidavit says.

Then, at around 1 a.m. on March 22, Evans called 911 to report that “someone had shot her husband” inside their home in Ada, about an hour outside of Oklahoma City. When officers arrived, David Evans was “lying in bed, bleeding from the nose and mouth” with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Evans was later found guilty of murder. Yesterday, Evans was sentenced to life in prison.

The Oklahoman reported:

A judge Wednesday sentenced admitted murderer Kristie Evans to life in prison for the fatal shooting of her pastor husband after hearing sordid testimony about their secret swinger lifestyle.

The punishment means she will not be eligible for parole until she is in her mid-80s. She is now 49.

She showed no emotion as Pontotoc County District Judge Steven Kessinger announced his decision. The judge called the killing nothing short of cold-blooded and said any remorse was newly found.

She pleaded guilty in April to first-degree murder, admitting she coaxed a lover into fatally shooting her sleeping husband early March 22, 2021, inside their home in Ada. She testified Tuesday she was immediately remorseful.

Her attorney, Joi Miskel, had asked the judge to order her to prison for only four years. The attorney said Kristie Evans had been a victim of domestic abuse throughout the 30-year marriage and a slave to her husband’s sexual wants.

“She is not a danger to society,” Miskel said.

A prosecutor had asked the judge to impose a life term without the possibility of parole. “She had options. She chose the worst one,” Assistant District Attorney Tara Portillo said.

The judge said he considered Kristie Evans’ testimony that her husband had abused her but could not discount that she had orchestrated his murder.

“As you testified,” he said, “actions have consequences.”

Her husband, David Evans, 50, was a beloved Baptist pastor. He had preached about attacks from the devil to the congregation at Harmony Church in Ada just hours before his death. The pastor, also known as Dave Evans, had just returned from a mission trip to Mexico.

He also had led a double life as a swinger, who collected porn and arranged for his wife to meet with men in Oklahoma City, Norman and Moore for threesomes, according to testimony at the two-day sentencing. The prosecutor conceded in closing remarks to the judge that the pastor was a sexual deviant and a “dark, dark individual.”

The judge noted as he imposed the sentence that Kristie Evans planned the crime, provided the murder weapon and ammunition, and allowed access to her home.

Kristie Evans testified she begged her lover, Kahlil Square, to help her get out of the marriage after enduring years of abuse. “I was desperate,” she said. “I wanted to be free from that. I knew of no other way.”

She said she left one of her husband’s guns outside the house and left the back door unlocked. She said she found Square hiding, dressed all in black, after hearing noises inside the house. She said she had to assure Square her husband was sound asleep because he was worried he was making too much noise.

….

She said she heard the shot and saw Square run out the back door. She said she found her husband, bleeding and gurgling from a shot to the forehead.

“I held his hand and told him I was sorry,” she said.

Square, 27, of Moore, also was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting. His next court date is Aug. 25. He also confessed, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing last year. The gun has never been found.

Kristie Evans insisted in her testimony that she still loves her husband, but the judge pointed out she had once described him as an obstacle to be removed.

The judge also said she showed no remorse when she wrote “pornographic” letters in jail to Square and another inmate. The judge said Kristie Evans first wrote Square only 19 days after her arrest to find out if he was OK, still her man and had everything he needed.

The letters were introduced into evidence Tuesday. In one letter to the other inmate, she wrote about her sexual prowess.

“I could wear a man out,” she wrote. “Any man would have done it for me after I got through with him.”

….

The prosecutor told the judge that Kristie Evans had her husband killed for money, a $250,000 life insurance policy. The prosecutor said the pastor and his wife had filed for bankruptcy months before, in October 2020.

The prosecutor also said Kristie Evans had manipulated her lover with sex and statements of love into putting a bullet into her husband’s brain.

“We also know that Kahlil Square wavered and that she talked to him on the phone from church and still persuaded him to carry out the murder,” Portillo said.

Kristie Evans and Square first met at the Super 8 in Moore for a threesome in January 2021, according to her testimony. She slipped him her phone number at a second threesome a week later and they began seeing each other without her husband.

Square visited her at her home over three days in March 2021 while the pastor was on his mission trip. He became a suspect because his car had been spotted at the house.

Kristie Evans claimed she didn’t leave her husband because she feared he would kill her parents, then her and then himself. She said she also needed to keep her job for the insurance to pay for medication for her kidney and thyroid issues.

She had a kidney transplant in 2013. She also has had her thyroid removed.

Her defense attorney, Miskel, said the judge will review his decision in a year and could modify it then.

“Her remorse is real and it was from the very beginning,” she told reporters. “Every time I’ve met with her, there is remorse.

“And you have to understand that she has suffered for years and years this horrific abuse. You don’t just shake that off in a matter of days, months, weeks or even years. And you have to think she still has had no kind of counseling, any kind of therapy, to work through these issues of decades of abuse.”

Asked about the sexually explicit jail letters, the defense attorneys said, “Kristie received positive feedback from her husband when she would perform sexually for him. That’s how she’d been conditioned over 30 years.”

She wrote the jail letters because of that conditioning to get a positive response, the attorney said. “She did cut it off.”

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Black Collar Crime: Wives of Australian Pastors Talk About Their Abusive Husbands

giving spouse abusers a second chance

Late last year, ABC-Australia published a report detailing the stories of pastors’  wives who had been abused by their husbands. Written by Julia Baird and Hayley Gleeson, the report is eye-opening, depressing, necessary, and heartbreaking. The wives of pastors featured in the report often suffered years of abuse; suffering in silence lest they besmirch the church and their husband. And when they sought help from the church, they were often ignored. What follows is an excerpt from the report titled, Raped, Tracked, Humiliated: Clergy Wives Speak Out About Domestic Violence:

It’s not easy divorcing a priest, let alone a violent one.

Jane has taken up smoking since she separated, wears more make-up and listens to music at full volume — all of which would have intensely irritated her ex-husband.

Rebellion has many guises; some self-destructive, others artless and unaffected.

On a cool Spring afternoon in Sydney’s outer suburbs, she stands in her kitchen, turning up the volume to the song, Praying, Kesha’s paean to staring down — and surpassing — abusive men, and says, over and over, as her feet slide in rhythm on the floor, “This is my song! It’s mine. This song is everything.”

You brought the flames and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself
And we both know all the truth I could tell
I’ll just say this: I wish you farewell

Days spent dancing are rare for Jane, though. Some weeks she drops her children to school then crawls back into bed, spent.

She is on the single parent pension and regularly goes days without food. But, just recently, she told 7.30 and ABC News, she has found her voice. And, like other women who have spoken out about abuse in a sudden recent spate of global assault allegations, she is determined.

When she speaks of her faith in God, her face shines. When she speaks of the violence she experienced at the hands of her husband, a senior Anglican priest who worked in a series of parishes across Australia, she trembles.

And when she speaks of the response of the church to her plight, her jaw sets in anger.

Every night of her 20-year marriage, Jane’s husband would wake her up several times for sex. If she objected, he would wait until she fell asleep again.

“He was very sexually abusive from the start,” she said.

“He would watch pornography, drink heavily, and come to bed. I would wake up with him touching me, inside me and I’d say to him, ‘Stop I’m pregnant’ or ‘I’m really tired’ and he would just wait until I fell back to sleep and continue. He knew how much it upset me.

“If I said ‘no’ during sex or ‘no I don’t want to do that’, he would get angry and sulk. And so it was better for me to give in than to have to put up with that.

“Or he would get angry with the kids, so if I gave him sex he wouldn’t get angry. Therefore the kids wouldn’t cop the abuse.

The young mother became sleep deprived and exhausted. Finally, she decided she could not continue to cater to her husband’s needs at the expense of her own health.

“I actually went to him one night and I said ‘I need a break from our sexual relationship … and we need to work on our marriage’. He said: ‘I’m here for you, you have my support’, and then he proceeded to rape me.

“He took what he wanted. And I think he knew in his mind it was one of the last times that he could have me.”

Jane was devastated by the assault. She became deeply depressed, stopped eating and had a breakdown: “I was very unwell for about a year, I really struggled with everything.”

Her husband even confessed his sins to a member of the church hierarchy, who told Jane that, if it was true, she should report him to police. But, Jane says, the clergy member did not offer her any support.

A year later, she left her husband for good.

….

Jane is part of a private online support group of Anglican clergy wives in New South Wales who were abused by their husbands.

They message each other or speak most days, providing a sympathetic ear or suggesting new counsellors when things are desperate.

What stunned them when they first met for dinner were two things. First, how many of them there were, and how common and continuing this problem seemed to be.

Second were the similarities in their experiences: after committing their lives to supporting their husband’s ministry, each had been forced to leave after decades of emotional, financial and sexual abuse which had left them depressed, fearful and, for some, suicidal.

Several had been part of Moore Theological College in Sydney — the training seminary of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney — when their husbands studied to be priests. All had mixed experiences with the church after disclosing their abuse: some clergy had supported them and pleaded their cases, while others ignored them.

All had disappointing or bruising experiences with a senior church leader when they asked for help.

It has been a year since they found each other, a year spent submitting police reports, talking for hours, struggling to pay bills and seeing psychologists. And they now also share a common anger.

They claim to have been silenced, their abuse covered up and their experiences ignored by a hierarchy that, they say, continues to see domestic violence as a peripheral female problem.

Several months ago, an investigation by 7.30 and ABC News revealed women in Christian communities were being told to endure or forgive domestic violence, and stay in abusive relationships, often due to misappropriation of Bible verses on submission.

Since then, hundreds of women — a number of whom were clergy wives from different denominations across Australia — have contacted us to tell their stories.

Many did so out of frustration that some church leaders had responded to reports of domestic violence with denial, demanding urgent response.

In recent weeks, the national and Sydney Anglican churches have formally apologised to survivors of domestic violence in their ranks, and even confessed some clergy were perpetrators.

The problem is this: the Australian church knew this was happening decades ago — that it was not just rogue parishioners who were abusing their spouses, but its leaders, too. And very little has been done to fix it.

….

You can read the entire report here.

Bruce Gerencser