Kevin Wayne Dunlap — the man responsible for the 2008 Trigg County murders of siblings Kayla Williams, Kortney Frensley, and Ethan Frensley, and the attempted murder of mother Kristy Frensley — died Sunday in Louisville at University of Louisville Hospital, after transport from the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.
Margaret O’Donnell, an attorney for the convicted killer, confirmed to the News Edge he died of natural causes while awaiting execution on death row. He was 51 years old.
A former soldier from Hopkinsville, Dunlap was originally sentenced to six death penalties, three life sentences and 55 years in prison by Judge C.A. “Woody” Woodall III following a 2010 trial in Livingston County Circuit Court. The trial was moved to Smithland due to pretrial publicity.
In the last decade, however, Dunlap and his defense team had been seeking, at the very least, an evidentiary hearing regarding his mental capacities at the time of the murders.
On June 28, 2022, the office of former Attorney General Daniel Cameron issued a 36-page rebuttal of this sought hearing for five reasons — all based on Dunlap’s personal choices at the time. of the murders.
In June of last year, Judge Jamus Redd heard strong arguments from O’Donnell and attorney Dennis J. Burke, noting Dunlap’s faculties were never accounted for during his 2010 trial — which saw Dunlap blurt his guilt, and lead directly into a sentencing phase.
The murder of the three children and the near death of their mother shocked the Roaring Springs community. Dunlap was accused of killing the three children when they came home after school and raping their mother prior to their arrival. He then set fire to the house. Dunlap was arrested in Hopkinsville three days later.
Frensley was able to get out of the house and into the home’s swimming pool after being stabbed. Her story, as has Dunlap’s, has been the subject of several real-life crime television shows.
