CRIME HUNTER: Death row black widow called 'slut puppy' gets another chance

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It’s a unique defence to wiggle out of a ticket on the night train to Nowheresville.

Killer Brenda Andrew — the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row — wants her murder conviction overturned claiming she was slut shamed at her trial.

Prosecutors even called her a “slut puppy.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favour of the black widow, now 61, agreeing she was sex-shamed at her trial for the 2001 murder of her husband.

“The prosecution invited the jury to convict and condemn Ms. Andrew to death because she was not a ‘stereotypical’ woman − her clothing was not modest enough, her demeanour was not emotional enough, and she was not chaste enough,” her lawyer, Jessica Sutton, said in a statement.

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Brenda Andrew was the very model of Middle American respectability. She was a stay-at-home mom with two young children who taught Sunday school.

Born in 1963, she was a baton majorette in high school and skipped parties because she didn’t drink.

True to form, she married her high school sweetheart, Rob, an advertising executive.

But there were two Brenda Andrews: That doting mom at church bake sales and a sexually insatiable vixen, a secret that caused the couple to separate and leave him dead.

On Nov. 20, 2001, her estranged hubby arrived at their suburban home to pick up the kids. She asked if he could help her fix the furnace and he obliged.

Moments later, she called 911 claiming her husband had been shot to death and she was wounded. Brenda told detectives that two gunmen had set upon the pair.

But in trying to explain the inexplicable, homicide detectives always look first at personal relationships – husband, wife, kids and others.

What cops in Oklahoma City discovered was that Brenda, then 38, had been engaged in a torrid sexual affair with a fellow church member and insurance salesman, James Pavatt. Oddly, Pavatt had recently sold Rob a $1 million life insurance policy.

And Rob was suspicious of his wife and Pavatt. A month before he was slain, the brake line was cut on his car.

As he and Brenda headed for divorce, he told Pavatt to take her off the $1.2 million policy. No can do, Pavatt said, it’s in her name.

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Three months after the murder, the new-some twosome was arrested along with Brenda’s two kids at the Mexican border.

Pavatt was tried first, found guilty and sentenced to death. He remains on death row.

But it was Brenda’s trial that brought the circus to Oklahoma City.

Brenda Andrew’s co-defendant was her lurid lifestyle. The court heard about her promiscuity, the many sexual affairs, the flirtations, the skimpy fashion choices she made, and the prosecutor even held up her thong panties in his closing address.

She liked sex a lot and practiced it anytime, any place, with anyone, and she did it with gleeful abandon. One witness called her a “hoochie.”

But she also told anyone who would listen how much she hated Rob.

“Brenda had extracurricular activities. She liked to cheat on Rob … throughout the marriage Brenda had a boyfriend on the side,” prosecutors said, adding she even made a play for sex with a group of teen boys.

And on her nightstand, she kept a copy of the party girl’s bible: 203 Ways to Drive a Man Wild in Bed by Olivia St. Claire.

In his closing address, dramatically holding up the thong underwear, DA Gayland Gieger told the jury: “This [dangling a pink thong] is what we found in [the suitcase]. It’s been introduced into evidence. The grieving widow packs this [brandishing a red thong] to run off with her boyfriend. The grieving widow packs this [pulling out a black thong] to go sleep in a hotel room with her children and her boyfriend. The grieving widow packs this [pulling out a lacy bra] in her appropriate act of grief.”

Brenda Andrew was convicted of capital murder in 2004 and sentenced to death. Yet, it wasn’t the murder for insurance cash that made it a death penalty case, it was her sex life.

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The Sunday School strumpet may have been a woman of flexible morals, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was a killer. America’s usual law and order Supreme Court agreed that prosecutors unfairly focused on her personal life.

One dissenting judge in a lower court agreed.

Judge Robert E. Bacharach wrote: “The state focused from start to finish on Ms. Andrew’s sex life. This focus portrayed Ms. Andrew as a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel, sparking distrust based on her loose morals. The drumbeat on Ms. Andrew’s sex life continued in closing argument, plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events.”

Now, it’s down to wait and see. The highest court said Andrew’s sexual appetite was irrelevant and an appeal court should take another look at the conduct of the trial.

There was a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Brenda Andrew at her trial. That should have been enough.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun