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WILKES-BARRE —Luzerne County prosecutors don’t intend to use Holly Crawford’s 2010 conviction for piercing the tails and necks of kittens and selling the domestic animals as “Gothic kittens” at her upcoming homicide trial.
Assistant district attorneys William Finnegan, Mamie Phillips and Daniel Hollander said they will only seek to use Crawford’s “prior crimes and wrongs” if it helps prove motive to the slayings of Ronald “Barney” Evans, 73, and Evans’ son, Jeffrey, 43, on April 21, 2014.
Crawford and her boyfriend, James Roche, 32, allegedly drove to Evans’ Hunlock Township residence where Crawford lured the elder Evans to the door. Roche then fired multiple rounds from a .22-caliber rifle, according to the criminal complaints.
Jeffrey Evans came out, yelled at Roche and ran back inside the residence while being chased by Roche, the complaints say.
Autopsies showed the elder Evans was shot four times in the chest and torso and Jeffrey Evans was shot five times in the back.
Crawford’s attorneys, Jonathan Blum and Nicole Thompson Lermitte, last month filed a motion seeking to prohibit prosecutors from using Crawford’s prior convictions from the upcoming homicide trial.
The animal cruelty case gained international exposure after the SPCA served a search warrant at Crawford’s residence on Dobson Road in Ross Township, removing kittens that had their ears pierced and tails removed.
Crawford sold the felines online as “Gothic kittens.” A jury convicted her of animal cruelty in 2010. She was sentenced to one year in the county’s Intermediate Punishment Program, according to court records.
Blum and Lermitte are also seeking to have Crawford’s alleged statement to state police thrown out, claiming she was not read her rights.
Prosecutors responded that Crawford’s statements to investigators were based “upon her own free will and choice.”
Their trial is scheduled the week of April 7.