Midway through the month of October in 2008, the city of Livingston in Kentucky awoke to the horrific news that their mother, Kristy Frensley, had been raped and attempted to be murdered as well as her three children. The viciousness of the crime was such that it even left the first responders and law enforcement officials who arrived at the site feeling scared to their very core. The whole state was enraged by the methodical viciousness of the act, as well as the dispassionate expressions the culprit, a former soldier named Kevin Dunlap, displayed.
The documentary titled “Evil Lives Here: We Looked Happy” on Investigation Discovery documents the case and provides an in-depth explanation of all of the connected facts of the investigations as well as the legality of the procedures. We have your back if you are curious and want to find out everything there is to know about the case specifics and the present whereabouts of the person who attacked the victim. Then, shall we get started, will we?
Who Is Kevin Dunlap?
Kevin Wayne Dunlap of Hopkinsville served in the US Army for more than 13 years (1989-2002). (1989-2002). Following his discharge from the military, he enlisted in the Kentucky National Guard and served for two years with the Hopkinsville unit, which has since been disbanded. While Kristy Frensley, a mother of three, was working in her yard on October 15, 2008 in the neighbourhood of Roaring Spring located in Trigg County, Kentucky, he went up to her and introduced himself. According to eyewitness accounts, Dunlap sported a blue DIRECTV polo t-shirt, white Reebok sports shoes, and a black revolver in his possession. He also had white plastic cable ties in his possession.
According to Kristy, she had only met Dunlap once, and that was when he had stopped by her house to ask for directions approximately a week or two before the event took place. While he was installing the satellite television package for DirecTV, he even asked her about her house, which was now up for sale. It would eventually be out that he had worked as a DirecTV installer for Bruister and Associates, according to the documents of his employment there. After entering Kristy’s house, Dunlap allegedly took out the revolver, tied Kristy’s hands and ankles with zip ties, and moved her to the bedroom where she was held captive.
Shortly after that, when Kristy’s children — Ethan Frensley, 5, Kortney McBurney-Frensley, 14, and Kayla Williams, 17 — got home from school, Dunlap forced all three children to congregate in one bedroom. Ethan is 5 years old, Kortney is 14, and Kayla is 17 years old. After that, he proceeded to gag them, and then he transferred them to another area of the home while tying Ethan up with pantyhose and tying the two females up with zip ties. After that, Dunlap engaged in sexual activity with Kristy. After that, he cleaned her, put her in bed, and then used a pillow to attempt to suffocate and suffocate her while she was still alive.
Before stabbing Kristy in the neck four times and attempting to cut her neck, Dunlap stabbed her once in the left ear and twice in the lower back with a butter knife. He then stabbed her in the neck four times. Because Dunlap’s treatment of her was so severe, the handle of the butter knife eventually snapped off and became lodged in her neck. Dunlap didn’t leave the room and head for the children until Kristy misled him into thinking she was dead by acting like she had passed away. According to the documentation found in the medical files, Ethan, the youngest of the children, suffered a horrendous nine separate stab wounds. He suffered wounds to his back, stomach, and chest, with one of the chest wounds piercing his heart. He was stabbed a total of six times in the back.
The right side of Kortney’s neck was stabbed once, and she was struck three times in the chest, with one of the wounds piercing her left lung. In total, Kortney had four knife wounds. Kayla suffered a stab wound to the back of her neck in addition to having her throat slashed from ear to ear, with the laceration being so severe that it exposed her trachea. Dunlap used a steak knife with serrations, and a piece of the knife’s blade broke off during the attack. The piece was later discovered in Kayla’s sweater during the autopsy. Kristy’s bedroom floor had been soaked in an ignitable liquid that had been spilled by Dunlap, who then set fire to the floor. Kristy managed to elude her captors despite being bound, mutilated, and on the verge of passing out when she did so by rolling through one of the French windows in the room that led to the pool deck.
Kristy was badly burned as she rolled into the pool, but a deputy from the sheriff’s office was able to extract her from there later. Dunlap had started the fire before fleeing the scene. When the neighbours spotted the fire, they immediately called the authorities and began trying to save the victims. In the end, Kristy was the only person who was found to be alive and she was taken to the Jennie Stuart Medical Center immediately. Matt Ledford, a friend of Kayla’s who stopped by Kristy’s house earlier that fatal day, related his story to the authorities. He said that he went there in the afternoon. He observed a “champagne-colored 2004 to 2006 model extended cab Chevrolet Silverado pickup with a trailer hitch and the initials ‘HEY’ on the licence plate” when he was parking his vehicle.
Following an examination of car registration data that matched the vehicle driven by Dunlap, the investigators applied for a search warrant based on the description provided by the suspect. After Kristy was treated by medical examiners, a vaginal sample was performed, and DNA evidence was discovered that matched Dunlap’s. The authorities conducted a search warrant at his residence, during which they discovered Kristy’s DNA on the driver’s seatbelt of his car and Kortney’s DNA on his tennis shoes. On October 18, 2008, three days after the massacre, while he was at his home on Cox Mill Road, Dunlap was taken into custody.
Where Is Kevin Dunlap Now?
Kevin was indicted on numerous charges by a grand jury in Trigg County, including one count of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree burglary, one count of attempted murder, and one count of first-degree arson, as well as three counts of tampering with physical evidence, one count of capital kidnapping, and one count of capital murder. The prosecution requested that the defendant be sentenced to death. In defiance of the recommendation of his legal representation, Dunlap filed a plea of guilty on February 9, 2010, one day before the process of selecting a jury was to commence.
On March 19, 2010, a death sentence was handed down for Dunlap. In addition to obtaining six death sentences, his sentencing also included three life terms for first-degree rape, arson, and kidnapping, as well as a 55-year prison sentence for attempted murder, evidence tampering, and first-degree burglary. All of these crimes were considered capital offences. In his statement to Dunlap, Trigg Circuit Judge C.A. “Woody” Woodall stated, “Your admittance to those acts speaks better than I ever could.” Even the prosecutor for the state of Virginia, G.L. Ovey, argued in favour of the death penalty, telling the judge that “if there’s ever a case… that calls out for the death penalty, it is this case.”
Doug Williams, the father of one of the minor victims, aptly and succinctly summed up the heinous nature of the acts committed by Dunlap. In the statement that he submitted in writing to the court, he addressed Dunlap by saying, “I still find it hard to understand how you can sit motionless, emotionless, and void of reaction as the many photos and accounts of the aftermath of your crimes were described in great detail to this courtroom.” It is very clear that you do not feel any regret for the wrongs you have committed on both my family and my community.
In spite of this, Dunlap’s new legal counsel submitted a retrial motion in July of 2022, which was more than a decade after his punishment and 14 years after the heinous act he committed. In the moment, Dunlap is being held in a cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. He is currently fifty years old and is on the state’s death row.
