Jury finds Kevan guilty

Oct. 13, 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

PALMER - The man who stated at least five times he killed his girlfriend and their 7-week-old son sat quietly as he heard six guilty verdicts read in court Tuesday.

Christopher A. Kevan, 25, was found guilty of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder for each of two deaths.

After hearing testimony that stretched over three weeks, a jury deliberated less than two hours before returning with a verdict: Brandie and Ashton Burns died Oct. 25 when Kevan, lover and father, wrapped his hands around their necks and choked the life out of them.

Tuesday morning, prosecutor Richard Payne held up a poster-sized photo of Brandie Burns smiling radiantly, holding Ashton in her arms. Silence stretched for minutes in the courtroom before the assistant district attorney began his closing arguments.

&#8220This case starts and ends with them,” Payne said. &#8220It's about them and no one else.”

Payne explained Alaska law to jurors, that a charge of first-degree murder means that someone intended to kill. The definitions of first- and second-degree murder were the skeleton of the law, he said, and the testimony the jurors heard in the past weeks were the meat on the skeleton. Intent, he said, is not the same as premeditation - intent may be for only the briefest amount of time.

Strangling is the most personal way you can kill someone, and it takes intent and time, Payne said.

&#8220All you gotta do is let go,” he said.

In a taped interview with Alaska State Trooper investigators Oct. 26, the day bodies were found, Payne said that Kevan would not say how long he sat astride the 120-pound mother with his hands around her throat. Dallas Massie, now retired, asked if it took five minutes, and twice Kevan replied, &#8220It sure took a long time,” Payne said.

&#8220He had time to let go,” he said.

Then Kevan turned to the baby, later telling investigators that at first he was &#8220just trying to quiet it,” before he &#8220determined his own son had to be strangled,” Payne said.

&#8220He tried to quiet the child with the same hands he just murdered the mother with,” Payne told the jury.

Diane Foster, Kevan's public defender, said what happened was a very tragic set of events for two families. As she promised at the start of the trial, Foster didn't point to someone else as the real killer, but argued the jury should look beyond the charges and see the definition of intent as having a conscious objective to kill. No alcohol or drugs impaired Kevan's behavior, she said, but anger had an affect on him.

&#8220If you're in a rage, you might come out of that rage and not know what went on,” Foster said. &#8220We don't know what went on in that house. Brandie and Chris got in a fight and he snapped.”

Foster asked jurors to convict her client of the lesser of the second-degree murder charges, which would mean he intended to cause serious physical injury and knew his conduct was substantially certain to cause death or serious injury.

Kevan said he &#8220felt compelled,” Foster said.

&#8220That's not intent,” she said. &#8220I'm just asking you to look at events as a whole. Just because he knew death could be the result didn't mean he intended it.”

Payne countered that it was true no one but Kevan knew what happened in the Bogard Road apartment that night.

&#8220That's because he killed everybody else,” he said. &#8220Not everybody ‘doesn't feel horrible' about this. Not everybody. There's one person who didn't shed a tear.”

Kevan's sentencing date is set for Dec. 20.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.