His Cam Girl Wife was Found Dead Just Outside of Their Family Home

The murder of OnlyFans content creator, Kathleen “Kat” Dawn.

[2018 | Calera, United States]

On January 13, 2018, a young 19-year-old was on her normal routine, heading into work at a fast-food restaurant around 5 AM, when she found her neighbor lying lifelessly in her sports bra.

That neighbor was 42-year-old Kathleen Dawn, and her husband, Jeff West, was just a few steps away from her body, supposedly asleep in their house.

Jeff West and Kathleen Dawn

Jeff West was a campus security officer and U.S Army veteran. When he met Kathleen “Kat” Dawn, they ended up in a whirlwind romance. In just four months, the couple tied the knot in Las Vegas and started their family by giving birth to baby Logan West. For a decade, the couple raised their daughter that they fondly nicknamed “Lola,” with their two family dogs in Georgia before moving to Calera in 2015.

42-year-old Kathleen was a housewife, proudly claiming herself as a “Full Time Wife & Mommy” on her Facebook. But she was also an explicit content creator on OnlyFans known as “Kitty Kat West.” For $15.99 per month, fans of hers can subscribe to her for more photos of Kathleen posing suggestively in lingerie. Both her Instagram and Twitter accounts were also openly used to promote her OnlyFans subscription. Jeff knew of his wife’s side activity and was supportive of her.

What Happened that Night?

According to Jeff, the couple had been drinking the night before, but Jeff fell asleep first around 10:30 PM as he had work the next morning while Kathleen continued drinking. He remained asleep until awoken by the ruckus when Kathleen was discovered.

In the beginning, it was theorized as a drunken accident that she must have accidentally tripped, fell and hit her head. However, some witnesses claimed that the scene looked staged with Kathleen’s cracked phone discovered nearby with a green Lucid Absinthe bottle on top of it.

When the police informed Jeff about his wife’s death, he showed little expression. As if he had known it all along. To which, his defense would later claim that he was a military man, trained to remain calm in all situations and different people had a different coping mechanism.

The prosecutors did not believe that it was all an accident. In trial, they portrayed Jeff as a calculative man and charged him for murder. The prosecution was able to piece together a timeline based on CCTV footage and digital evidence.

After the couple had their restaurant date, they dropped by a liquor store to get a bottle of Lucid Absinthe and Jameson whiskey. Back at home, they continued drinking. The phone’s gallery revealed that Jeff took photos of Kathleen dressed in just bra and underwear with stiletto heels, presumably for her OnlyFans account.

Sometime throughout the night, Jeff snapped with Kathleen. The prosecution deduced that it could be Kathleen’s drinking habits or her openly using her Instagram and Twitter to promote her adult content subscription. Out of anger, Jeff threw her phone out of the house. Kathleen, dressed just in her bra, stepped out to retrieve it when Jeff grabbed the bottle of Lucid Absinthe and delivered a fatal blow to her head. He then staged the bottle on the cracked phone and left their front door open.

The Evidence

The Cause of Death

Although autopsy revealed Kathleen was very drunk as she was three times over the legal alcohol limit, the impact on her head was far too much to be just a simple fall. Jeff’s defense attorney said that Kathleen had a drunken habit of performing cheerleading jumps off utility boxes after a couple of drinks.

A medical examiner testified that a fall was unlikely to cause such an enormous force for Kathleen’s petite size. He found old bruises on Kathleen’s leg and fresh injuries to her toe. He concluded the cause of death was a blunt force trauma to her head.

Investigators did confirm Jeff’s inverted fingerprints on the neck of the bottle of Lucid Absinthe, supporting the possibility of Jeff holding the bottle upside down as a weapon. However, they did not find any presence of blood on Jeff nor any of Kathleen’s hair, scalp, or brain tissue except for her blood on the bottle. There were no indications back in the house that there was a physical struggle.

The Motive

The prosecutor painted the couple’s relationship as being rocky and troubled based on their text exchanges such as “throwing away 14 years of marriage,” and “I’m never doing this holiday again with you.” However, the defense claimed that like any average couple, they had arguments from time to time, but on that night, the couple was doing well, as evident as their usage of terms of endearments in their text exchanges.

When police questioned Jeff’s stand about his wife being an online adult model, he said,

“There’s nothing to be jealous about. Me and her (were) in a good spot. It’s just pictures. She got money for it.”

The only hitch in the relationship was Kathleen being more sexual than him, wanting more sexual intercourse in a week than him. However, he expressed that he was content with himself, but she wasn’t that happy about it.

The Couple’s Movement

The damming evidence was Kathleen’s phone health app recorded Kathleen taking a total of 87 steps before stopping at 10:54 PM. The ADT alarm system revealed that the front door opened at 10:53 PM and closed 10 seconds later. Jeff’s health app revealed that he was not asleep as he had told the police, as his health app recorded him taking 18 steps from 11:03 PM to 11:10 PM. The front door remained closed until 1:56 AM, where someone left it open till 5:12 AM.

The neighbor who discovered Kathleen also claimed that she saw movements in the house, but Jeff’s attorney defended that Jeff just woke up to the dogs barking outside.

The Verdict

To the very end, Jeff West chose not to stand trial and pleaded innocent. Even Kathleen’s mother, Nancy Martin, stood by Jeff, believing that her son-in-law could not have harmed her daughter. She described her daughter as an alcoholic and she was under medication for her bipolar disorder. Nancy even asked the judge to grant Jeff leniency,

“We’ve lost a daughter, Logan West lost her mother and she does not need to lose her father. We are hoping for leniency in the sentencing. ”

In the trial break, Logan was able to hug her father for the first time in 4 years. The 14-year-old too defended her father, saying,

“He has always been my shield against the world. Please give me my father back as soon as possible.”

After hours of deliberation between intentional murder, reckless manslaughter, and not guilty, the jurors came to a unanimous decision that Jeff West was guilty of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison after considering Jeff’s past military background, clean from criminal record, and Kathleen’s mother supporting him. He would only serve a total of 16 years in prison, crediting the four years he served in trial and will be released early in the 2030s.

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