This Oklahoma Story Is No Musical
(‘Sunday College Ambush,’ Forensic Recordsdata)
Who can resist a narrative a few Sunday College instructor gone homicidal?
And we’re not speaking about somebody who suffers from psychosis and snaps someday.
Brenda Andrew was a sane, high-functioning mom of two who nonetheless formulated a minimum of two plots to homicide her husband, Rob Andrew.
Attempt, strive once more. The primary was staged in such a method that it might have killed not simply him but in addition any variety of incidental motorists and pedestrians.
Fortuitously, that try on Rob Andrew’s life failed. However her second strive succeeded. She devised each homicide plans with the assistance of boyfriend and fellow Sunday College instructor James Pavatt.
The case is intriguing as a result of it includes two killers who most definitely believed in God.
Even individuals who doubt the existence of a divine entity fear a bit bit that somebody is up there watching after they throw a recyclable container into the common rubbish.
Forging their method. Do avid worshippers like Brenda and James persuade themselves that the meant sufferer is so horrible that God has deputized them to banish him from this earth?
Or perhaps they suppose God is distracted by March Insanity or The Bachelor: After the Last Rose whereas they’re training the sufferer’s signature for the insurance coverage paperwork.
Regardless of the case, right here’s a recap of the episode together with an epilogue and extra intelligence culled from on-line sources:
The beautiful, petite Brenda Evers was born in 1963 and grew up in a conservative household in Enid, Oklahoma, the place she enrolled in baton-twirling class, was identified for being quiet, and “at all times buttoned her garments all the way in which up,” in response to a former classmate interviewed by Ken Raymond for The Oklahoman.
Likable sufferer. It’s not clear what sort of work she did after highschool, however she married earlier than turning 21, to Rob Andrew, a tall younger man who would go on to snag a high-paying job with Jordan Promoting, which counts Oklahoma State College and vitality big OneOK amongst its shoppers.
Rob appeared like a candy man. As one other Oklahoman story by Ken Raymond famous:
Nobody would’ve described Rob Andrew as loopy, though he did do enjoyable issues like bringing slushes to everybody at work as a result of he’d determined July 11 must be 7-Eleven day. Or like naming his daughter Tricity as a result of if she ever ran for public workplace, her slogan could possibly be “Elect Tricity.”
He additionally was a church deacon and did missionary work in South America. On the time of the homicide, the couple had a son, Parker, 7, in addition to Tricity, 11. Rob, 39, remained smitten with Brenda, 38, whilst she grew extra dissatisfied with him.
Maybe she felt resentful about hitching up at such a younger age or about having mother and father who made certain she at all times conformed. Sooner or later after marrying Rob, Brenda started to put on alluring clothes. And he or she launched into a collection of affairs.
She and Rob separated and received again collectively a minimum of as soon as throughout this time.
Rob was an optimist and didn’t imagine in divorce.
Nonetheless, the abuse Brenda dished out will need to have examined his forgiving nature. “Sunday College Ambush,” the Forensic Recordsdata episode concerning the case, performs a rehearsed, insulting message that Brenda left on Rob’s answering machine throughout their troubled relationship. She known as him a “half dad.”
By 2001, Brenda had taken up with Pavatt, who served as a deacon in addition to a Sunday College instructor at the North Pointe Baptist Church. The 2 lovebirds went on a trip to Mexico together with Brenda’s youngsters.
Signal right here. The church gently instructed that the home-wrecking Prudential salesman and the erring spouse step away from their educating posts.
However in some unspecified time in the future at the beginning blew up, Rob had trusted Pavatt sufficient to buy from him an $800,000 life insurance coverage coverage with Brenda named because the beneficiary.
Brenda and Pavatt hoped to gather that payout through a plot so clichéed it belongs in a made-for-TV film. They reduce the brakelines of Rob’s automobile and organized for a faux “your spouse has been in an accident” name summoning him to the hospital instantly.
However Rob realized instantly that somebody had tampered together with his Nissan, and he reported your entire incident to the authorities. Forensic Recordsdata performed the recording of Rob telling police he thought a homicide plot was afoot. It’s not clear whether or not authorities did any form of investigation because of this.
Pilot-light ploy. On her subsequent strive, Brenda lured Rob, from whom she was then separated, into the storage of their Oklahoma Metropolis home when he got here to choose up their youngsters for a go to on November 20, 2001.
She requested him to relight the furnace. When he knelt down to take action, Pavatt sneaked up and shot him within the stomach with a 16-gauge shotgun. In line with Forensic Recordsdata, Rob grabbed a bag of metallic cans from the storage ground to defend himself earlier than Brenda fired a second, deadly bullet.
Then, extra cliché. She had Pavatt shoot her within the proverbial fleshy a part of a limb (an arm on this case) to make it look as if a few robbers had attacked each Andrews.
To make sure nobody noticed him dashing from the crime scene, Pavatt hid out in the home of the Andrews’ neighbors, the Gigstads, for a pair days. They had been out of city and Judy Gigstad had given Brenda their spare key for safekeeping.
Brenda known as 911 and reported that two armed robbers carrying masks shot Rob and her.
The Forensic Recordsdata episode means that Brenda’s voice sounds too calm on the 911 tape to be real. I don’t essentially agree with that, as a result of different episodes have pegged 911 calls as suspicious as a result of the voice is overdramatic.
Fugitives. Regardless, investigators received a powerful trace when Brenda and Pavatt gathered up Tricity and Parker and fled to Mexico proper across the time of Rob’s funeral.
Authorities distributed Needed posters with the couple’s photos, they usually had been caught a number of months later as they tried to cross the border into Texas.
Pavatt’s protection lawyer subsequently identified that investigators had no DNA or fingerprints, solely circumstantial proof.
However there was loads of it. First off, everybody knew concerning the extramarital affair.
Pre-Airbnb. And Gigstad and her husband reported indicators that somebody had been of their home throughout their absence. There was a spent shell casing within the bed room and a broken shoe rack hidden beneath a mattress.
Police theorized that Pavatt had by chance stepped on the shoe rack after which left behind the shell casing when the Gigstads’ son stopped in to gather their mail; Pavatt was able to shoot him if confronted. Fortuitously, the son didn’t see him, and departed unhurt.
There was heaps extra. Brenda’s wound appeared to have come from a gun held simply inches away from her arm, which conflicted with the story she gave police.
A handwriting professional decided that Rob’s signature had been cast on insurance coverage papers that renamed Brenda as beneficiary.
Doctored docs. In later years, Rob had begun signing his identify with an ichthus — the Christian fish image — as a flourish. It was lacking from the papers that Pavatt claimed as real.
(On the legitimate paperwork, Rob had modified the beneficiary designation to Tricity and Parker.)
The 2004 trials every ended with Brenda and Pavatt discovered responsible of first-degree homicide and given a demise sentence. Forensic Recordsdata reveals them shuffling round in chains and orange uniforms.
It was a tragic sight to behold but in addition a bit refreshing to see that higher center class defendants can’t at all times purchase their method out of justice.
Epilogue so far. So, the place are they in the present day?
Brenda hasn’t made a variety of waves contained in the Mabel Bass Correctional Facility in McLoud, Oklahoma. As of this writing, she’s on demise row, with no execution date specified.
Pavatt has created some rumblings from his cell in Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester — the identical jail that spurred headlines by botching the 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett.
Mike Arnett, Pavatt’s legal professional, has campaigned to have the jail’s three-drug execution process declared merciless and strange punishment.
Oklahoma resumed executions in June 2015, when the state put to demise youngster assassin Charles Frederick Warner.
In an odd flip, an accused killer named Zjaiton Tyrone Wooden confessed to the taking pictures of Rob Andrew.
Arnett contends Pavatt didn’t obtain a good trial, partly as a result of jurors didn’t see Wooden’s confession letter.
No appointment. However Wooden’s letter was no bombshell. It contained details about the crime that was already identified to the general public, and it did not impress a choose.
Nonetheless, Pavatt’s sentence was commuted to life.
No such luck for Brenda, however the final time a sexy white girl was dealing with the execution chamber — twenty years in the past — it triggered a nationwide uproar, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, and different public figures arguing towards finishing up Karla Faye Tucker’s demise sentence. After stating that he had thought and prayed about it, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush refused to commute Tucker’s demise sentence, and it was carried out on February 3, 1998.
I had a sense Brenda can be luckier — however didn’t think about simply how a lot. On January 21, 2025, the Supreme Courtroom dominated that Brenda had trigger for difficult her conviction as a result of her sexual historical past had been used to impugn her character. In court docket, the prosecution crew had introduced up different extramarital affairs Brenda had, and one prosecutor even held up a pair of her thong underwear for the jury to see.
Let’s hope the powers that be, divine or secular, settle on essentially the most applicable punishment for the homicide of Rob Andrew, a pleasant man gone too quickly.
That’s all for this submit. Till subsequent week, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Recordsdata episode on YouTube
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