set the plan in motion. rob walked into the garage expecting to see the children. instead, brenda asked him to fix the furnace while she got them ready. pavatt fired the first shot from behind the van. then handed the rifle to brenda. the blood spatter on brenda s pants proved she was less than two feet away. pavatt used a .22-caliber pistol to shoot brenda s arm, but he fired it from a couple inches away, leaving the burn marks. i ve been shot! my husband s been shot! brenda called police with the fake story of the two masked men. pavatt hid in the empty house next door. the homeowners had given brenda the key for safekeeping. pavatt stayed there for at least a day until police were finished at the scene. he ejected the spent shotgun shell when he heard the homeowner s son walk into the house to pick up his parents
that brenda liked was money. brenda andrew was also convicted of first-degree murder. the forensic evidence was impossible to overcome. we the jury impaneled and sworn in the above entitled cause do apply our oath having hereto found the defendant brenda evers andrew guilty of murder in the first degree fix her punishment at death. she is now the only woman on oklahoma s death row. prosecutors describe it as one of the most cold-blooded murders they ve ever seen. the complexity of the case was a problem. it s a hard case to talk about in a short amount of time. there s so many different pieces of evidence. but in what we believe, any juror wants to hear is what happened at the key moment.
execution-style murder was a shock to the residents of oklahoma city, since crimes like this were extremely uncommon. rob and brenda were a loving couple. they appeared to be. the pictures showed the perfect family, the smiling, happy, loving couple with these two great little kids. the couple were active members of their church. brenda taught sunday school, and rob performed missionary work in south america. early in the investigation police learned there had been a prior attempt on rob s life. just one month earlier, rob called police to report someone had tampered with his car. oklahoma city police department. hi, there. i d like to report a crime. my brake lines have been cut. oh. that sounds like attempted murder, don t you think? a few hours later, rob was getting his brakes fixed when he received a call from the hospital. the caller said his wife, brenda, was critically injured in a car accident and suggested that he come to the hospital right away.
she may have forged rob s signature on the life insurance policy, making her the beneficiary. her first attempt on rob s life involved cutting rob s brake lines. police believe it was james pavatt who called rob with the fake story that brenda was in critical condition at the hospital. when that didn t work, the squa couple devised an elaborate shooting scenario. they planned to kill rob when he came to pick up the children for the holiday weekend. on the night of the murder, pavatt hid behind the van in the garage. when they heard rob s car, they
mr. andrew made the beneficiary, i think, his brother, for the benefit of the children. since the children were minors, he had to have an adult as the actual named beneficiary as the trustee of that money. after rob s death, police were surprised to learn that brenda was again the sole beneficiary. police were immediately suspicious, and they arranged for a handwriting expert, david parrett, to authenticate rob andrew s signature on the insurance policy. a signature is produced with style and speed. it s the thing that you probably write the most in your entire life. in my analysis, i looked at 13 years of rob andrew s handwriting and writing his signatures, 136 signatures. not surprisingly, it was clear that rob andrew s signatures changed over the years. over time, rob andrew s