Brittany Shammas
Kristie Dawnelle Evans sobbed through the middle-of-the-night 911 call. She had woken up to a "loud pop," she told the operator, and found her husband gasping beside her, a bullet wound in his head.
"He's laying in a pool of blood," she said in a recording of the March 22 call obtained by News 9. "Oh my god."
Evans stuck to her story after police responded to the single-story Ada, Oklahoma, home and pronounced David Evans dead. Someone had shot her husband, a well-liked pastor at Harmony Free Will Baptist Church, as they slept. She didn't know who.
But days later, as the community reeled from the shock of a church leader murdered in his own home, that account fell apart and stranger one took its place. Investigators say Evans orchestrated her husband's death, asking another man, Kahlil Deamie Square, to kill him. Behind the shooting was an affair between the two, which Evans claimed once included the pastor.
Evans, 47, and Square, 26, were arrested late last week on first-degree murder charges. While confessing to the plot, an arrest affidavit said, she told investigators her husband was controlling and verbally abusive and called her ugly and fat. She told her daughter she had "begged" her lover to kill him.
"Kristie told Kahlil it would be nice to have more freedom," the affidavit said. "Kristie told Kahlil stories about how David mistreated her. Kahlil simply responded, 'Damn.'"
Before the shooting, she had often posted fawning messages about her husband online, News 9 reported. She described him as her best friend in a March 18 Facebook post, writing, "Every day with you is special!"
But behind the scenes, the affidavit said, she was plotting his demise. The pastor was on a mission trip to Mexico at the time of that Facebook post, and, in his absence, Square was staying with his wife.
Evans told investigators she and her husband met Square months earlier and met at a Super 8 Motel multiple times to have sex. During one of those visits, she dropped her phone number on the floor for him. The two began communicating on a daily basis, without her husband's knowledge.
While the pastor was in Mexico, the affidavit said, they came up with a plan to kill him. Evans gave Square her husband's gun and a box of bullets. They decided on a time.
On March 21, hours before the murder, the pastor gave a sermon about the devil. In a video reviewed by the Daily Beast before it was apparently removed, he warned parishioners the "enemy" would try to attack them for sharing their faith.
"Sometimes, I just stop and think. If the devil is not attacking you with everything he's got in trying to destroy and kill you, maybe [it's] because you're not the reason anybody is believing in Jesus," he said. "And as a pastor and just as a Christian, what a waste."
That night, Evans left a back door unlocked at the couple's house, the affidavit said. She waited in their bedroom until she heard noises. Then she found Square crouched in the dining room.
"Kahlil told Kristie he was concerned he was making too much noise," the affidavit said. "Kristie urged him to proceed with the plan."
She went into the living room and turned away while he went into the bedroom. Then she heard the popping noise, and Square ran out of the house.
Evans went to the bedroom, where her husband lay in bed making what she described to investigators as "a gurgling sound." She sat on her side of the bed and dialed 911.
Investigators said she confessed to law enforcement about the alleged murder plot after first confessing to her daughter. She was arrested immediately after coming clean on Thursday; Square was arrested a day later. It was not clear Tuesday whether either had hired an attorney.
In a statement to KFOR, church officials described being shocked and saddened by the turn of events.
"Harmony Free Will Baptist Church has been grieving the death of our Pastor, David Evans, over the last few days," they said. "The circumstances that are now coming to light have taken us by surprise and we are greatly saddened."
They added: "We are aware that even pastors can succumb to human frailty."