In the middle of October 2008, Kristy Frensley, the mother of three children, was raped and tried to be killed in the city of Livingston, Kentucky.
The crime was so violent that even the first responders and police officers who came to the scene were shaken to their core. The way the crime was done and how emotionless the killer, a former soldier named Kevin Dunlap, looked made the whole state angry.
The show “Evil Lives Here: We Looked Happy” on Investigation Discovery tells about the case and goes into a lot of detail about the investigations and how the case was handled legally. If you’re interested and want to know more about the case and where the attacker is right now, we’ve got you covered. Then, shall we get started?
What is his name?
Kevin Wayne Dunlap of Hopkinsville spent more than 13 years in the US Army (1989-2002). After he got out of the army, he joined the Kentucky National Guard and served for 2 years in the Hopkinsville unit, which no longer exists. On October 15, 2008, he went up to Kristy Frensley, a mother of three, while she was working in her yard in the Trigg County, Kentucky, community of Roaring Spring. Dunlap wore a blue DIRECTV polo T-shirt and white Reebok athlete shoes. He also carried a black handgun and white plastic cable ties, according to reports.
Kristy said that she had seen Dunlap once, when he came to her house to ask for directions about a week or two before the incident. He was setting up the satellite TV service DirecTV and even asked about her house, which was for sale. His work records would later show that he had been a DirecTV installer for Bruister and Associates. After getting into Kristy’s house, Dunlap is said to have pulled out a gun, tied her hands and feet with zip ties, and moved her to the bedroom.
Soon after, when Kristy’s kids, Ethan Frensley, 5, Kortney McBurney-Frensley, 14, and Kayla Williams, 17, got home from school, Dunlap put all three of them in the same bedroom. He then put gags on them and tied Ethan with pantyhose and the two girls with zip ties. He then moved them to another part of the house. Kristy was then raped by Dunlap. After that, he washed her, put her to bed, and used a pillow to try to choke and suffocate her.
Dunlap also stabbed Kristy once in the left ear and twice in the lower back with a butter knife. He then stabbed her four times in the neck and tried to cut her neck. Dunlap was so mean to her that the butter knife handle broke and got stuck in her neck. Dunlap didn’t leave the room and go toward the kids until Kristy fooled him by pretending to be dead. Medical records show that Ethan, the youngest child, was stabbed a horrible nine times. He was stabbed six times in the back, once in the stomach and twice in the chest, with one wound going through his heart.
Kortney was stabbed four times: once in the right side of her neck and three times in her chest, with one wound going through her left lung. Kayla’s neck was also stabbed, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. The cut was so deep that her trachea could be seen. Dunlap used a steak knife with a serrated edge. The blade broke off, and at the autopsy, it was found in Kayla’s sweatshirt. Dunlap had poured something flammable on Kristy’s bedroom floor and set it on fire. Kristy got away even though she was tied down, cut up, and almost dead. She did this by rolling through one of the French windows in the room that led out to the pool deck.
Kristy was badly burned, but she was able to roll into the pool, where a sheriff’s deputy would later find her. Dunlap had started a fire in the house and then left. When the neighbors saw the fire, they called the police and tried to help the people who were trapped. Kristy was the only one left alive in the end, and she was rushed to the Jennie Stuart Medical Center. Matt Ledford, who was friends with Kayla, told the police that he had gone to Kristy’s house in the afternoon of the day in question. While he was parking his car, he saw a “champagne-colored 2004 to 2006 model extended cab Chevrolet Silverado truck with a trailer hitch and the letters “HEY” on the license plate.”
Investigators got a search warrant based on a description of Dunlap’s car that they found in vehicle registration records. Kristy was taken care of by medical examiners, and a vaginal swab found DNA that matched Dunlap’s. The police went to his house and found Kristy’s DNA on his car’s driver’s seatbelt and Kortney’s DNA on his tennis shoes. On October 18, 2008, three days after the massacre, Dunlap was arrested at his home on Cox Mill Road.
Where is Kevin Dunlap at the moment?
Kevin was charged with many crimes by a Trigg County Grand Jury. He was found guilty of one count of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree burglary, one count of attempted murder, one count of first-degree arson, and three counts each of tampering with physical evidence, capital kidnapping, and capital murder. The prosecutors wanted the person to be put to death. On February 9, 2010, one day before picking the jury, Dunlap changed his plea to guilty, even though his lawyer told him not to.
Dunlap was given a death sentence on March 19, 2010. He was given six death sentences and three life sentences for first-degree rape, arson, and kidnapping. He was also given 55 years in prison for attempted murder, tampering with evidence, and first-degree burglary. Trigg Circuit Judge C.A. “Woody” Woodall said to Dunlap, “The fact that you admitted to committing those crimes says more than anything I could say.” Even the Commonwealth Attorney, G.L. Ovey, defended the sentence and told the court, “If there’s ever a case that cries out for the death penalty, it’s this one.”
Doug Williams, the father of one of Dunlap’s child victims, said it best when he said that his son’s crimes were very bad. In a written statement to the court, he said to Dunlap, “I still find it hard to understand how you can sit there motionless, emotionless, and with no reaction while the many photos and stories of the aftermath of your crimes are described in great detail.” It’s clear that you don’t feel bad about what you did to my family and this society.
But in July 2022, 14 years after Dunlap’s terrible crime and more than a decade after he was sentenced, his new lawyer asked for a new trial. Dunlap is on death row and is in a cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. He is 50 years old.