Where is Killer and Rapist Kevin Dunlap Today? – The brutal murder of three children and the rape and attempted murder of their mother, Kristy Frensley, shocked the Kentucky city of Livingston in the middle of October 2008. The ex-soldier, Kevin Dunlap, who committed the crime, infuriated the entire state with his methodical viciousness and soulless actions. Even the emergency personnel and law enforcement officials who responded to the scene were deeply affected by the crime’s severity.
The case is detailed in the Investigation Discovery documentary “Evil Lives Here: We Looked Happy,” which also goes into great length to explain the laws of the proceedings and all the related investigational elements. If you want to learn about killer Kevin Dunlap and his crime, keep reading.
Recommended: Where is Kevin Dunlap’s Survivor Kristy Frensley Today?
Kevin Dunlap: Who Is He?
Hopkinsville resident Kevin Wayne Dunlap served in the US Army for more than 13 years (1989-2002). He joined the now-defunct Hopkinsville unit of the Kentucky National Guard after being discharged from the army and served there for two years. He approached Kristy Frensley, a mother of three, on October 15, 2008, as she was working in her yard in the neighbourhood of Roaring Spring in Trigg County, Kentucky.
According to reports, Dunlap was carrying a black revolver and white plastic cable ties while wearing a blue DIRECTV polo shirt and white Reebok athletic sneakers. Kristy claimed that she had only ever seen Dunlap once, when he had asked for directions at her house a week or two before the incident. He even inquired about her house, which was up for sale, while he was setting up the DirecTV satellite television package.
Later, his job records would reveal that he had been a DirecTV installer for Bruister and Associates. After breaking into Kristy’s house, Dunlap allegedly drew a revolver, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, and took her to the bedroom.
Shortly after, Dunlap confined Kayla Williams, 17, Ethan Frensley, 5, and Kortney McBurney-Frensley, 14, to one bedroom while Kristy’s children arrived home from school. Before taking them to another area of the house, he gags them and binds Ethan with pantyhose and the two females with zip ties. Dunlap then started raping Kristy. He then cleaned her, put her in bed, and used a pillow to try to strangle and smother her.
Before stabbing Kristy four times in the neck and attempting to cut her neck, Dunlap allegedly used a butter knife to stab her once in the left ear and twice in the lower back. Dunlap was so vicious that the butter knife’s handle eventually shattered and became stuck in her neck. Dunlap didn’t leave the room until he was duped into believing Kristy was dead and moved to approach the kids. According to medical reports, Ethan, the youngest child, was horrifyingly stabbed nine times. He was stabbed six times in the back, twice in the chest, once in the stomach, and once through the heart.
Four times, once in the right side of the neck, three times in the chest, one piercing the left lung, struck Kortney. Kayla was also stabbed in the neck, and the wound on her throat from ear to ear was so severe that her trachea could be seen. Dunlap used a serrated steak knife, the blade of which fell off and was later discovered during the autopsy in Kayla’s hoodie. Dunlap had lit Kristy’s bedroom floor on fire by pouring flammable liquid on it. Kristy managed to escape by rolling through one of the French windows in the room that opened up to the pool deck while bound, maimed, and on the verge of death.
Dunlap had lit the house on fire before leaving. After noticing the fire, the neighbours called the police and tried to save the victims. Despite being severely burned, Kristy could roll into the pool, where a deputy from the Sheriff’s office would later find her. Only Kristy was eventually discovered alive and was taken directly to the Jennie Stuart Medical Center.
Matt Ledford, a friend of Kayla’s, revealed to the police that he had visited Kristy’s home in the afternoon of that terrible day. He noticed a “champagne-coloured, extended-cab Chevrolet Silverado pickup, model years 2004 to 2006, with a trailer hitch and the initials ‘HEY’ on the licence plate” as he parked his car.
On October 18, 2008, three days after the massacre, Dunlap was taken into custody at his Cox Mill Road home. The investigators obtained a search warrant based on the description after looking through vehicle registration documents that matched Dunlap’s car. Medical examiners saw Kristy, and a vaginal sample revealed DNA evidence that matched Dunlap’s. Authorities searched his residence, discovering Kristy’s DNA on the car’s driver’s seatbelt and Kortney’s DNA on the tennis shoes.
Where is Kevin Dunlap Today?
Kevin was charged with numerous offences by a grand jury in Trigg County, including three counts of tampering with physical evidence, capital kidnapping, and capital murder, as well as one count each of first-degree rape, first-degree burglary, attempted murder, and first-degree arson. The death penalty was what the prosecutors sought. Dunlap amended his appeal to guilty on February 9, 2010, the day before the jury selection process started, despite his attorney’s advice.
The jury at the trial was shown some appalling images of the crime scene, including images of the kids. Before the pictures were shown, Kristy fled the court. Images of Kristy floating in the pool and close-ups of her wounds and bloody gauze were also displayed. According to Dr. Emily Craig’s testimony, she created a route for the kids to help keep the crime scene intact. Ethan, a five-year-old, was heavily engulfed in the rubble.
In fact, he was directly on top of a bed and a ceiling fan. Nearly 10 feet distant from Ethan’s body was Kortney’s. Pictures were displayed to highlight the severity of the attack on the kids. In fact, the power was so great that it totally split one of Ethan’s ribs. In Kayla’s back, the steak knife blade with serrations snapped off.
On March 19, 2010, Dunlap received a death sentence. In addition to earning six death sentences, he also received 55 years in jail for attempted murder, tampering with evidence, and first-degree burglary, along with three life terms for first-degree rape, arson, and kidnapping. Judge C.A. “Woody” Woodall of the Trigg Circuit said to Dunlap, “Your admittance to those offences speaks better than I ever could.” If there is ever a case that “cries out for the death penalty, it is this case,” even the Commonwealth Attorney, G.L. Ovey, defended the sentence to the court.
The father of one of the kid victims, Doug Williams, accurately highlighted the gruesomeness of Dunlap’s acts. He said, “I still find it hard to understand how you can sit immobile, impassive, and devoid of reaction, as the many images and accounts of the aftermath of your crimes were detailed in great detail to this courtroom,” in his written statement to the judge. He was addressing Dunlap. You have made it clear that you have no regret for the crimes you committed against my family and this society.
However, in July 2022, Dunlap’s new legal representative submitted a retrial motion—14 years after his horrifying crime and more than ten years after his sentencing. Currently housed in a cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, 50-year-old Dunlap is on death row.
