Sep 19, 2015 3 min read

WILKES-BARRE – A woman charged along with her boyfriend in the killings of a father and son in their northeastern Pennsylvania home last year has testified that she had no role in the slayings.

“I didn’t do anything,” Holly Ann Crawford, 40, testified Friday in her Luzerne County trial, during which her attorneys have laid the blame on her co-defendant, 33-year-old James Roche, who faces trial in November.

The two are charged with homicide and conspiracy in the April 2014 deaths of 73-year-old Ronald Evans and 43-year-old Jeffrey Evans in Hunlock Township. Authorities say Roche sought a confrontation after seeing a movie with a character that reminded him of the older victim, with whom Crawford had a relationship.

Crawford said she wasn’t alarmed that Roche was carrying a gun because he carried one everywhere, and although he had repeatedly said he wanted to kill the older man, she never believed he would actually do it.

She acknowledged having said “Yeah, go ahead” when he threatened to kill him again that day, and told him to kill the younger man as well — but said she did so in a sarcastic manner “like, ‘You’re being ridiculous.”‘

When the lead prosecutor reminded Crawford that her own daughters had testified that she described the murders as “like shooting a deer,” she said “I don’t think they are lying.”

Crawford said, however, that a long drinking binge had clouded her memory of the day, and she was “wasted” during questioning in which investigators said she confessed to acting as a decoy to lure the men to their deaths.

“I was drinking the whole time, every day, all day,” Crawford said.

She said she suspected Jeffrey Evans stole her anti-anxiety medicine, and decided to go for a ride with Roche get it back.

Crawford said she suspected the younger man had stolen anti-anxiety medicine and decided to go with Roche to retrieve it. She said she was inside talking to Jeffrey Evans when she saw the older man “crumple” to the ground but didn’t recall hearing gunshots, then saw Roche enter and start to scuffle with Jeffrey Evans. She said she ran to the vehicle, Roche soon returned and they left.

“I didn’t even ask him any questions about what happened,” Crawford said.

Defense attorneys have described Crawford as a battered woman who turned to alcohol and painkillers. She testified Friday that she had been choked unconscious multiple times by Roche and showed jurors scars she said came from him slamming her head into things.

Crawford gained notoriety in 2008 when she pierced kittens’ ears and necks and marketed them as “gothic.” She was convicted of animal cruelty but jurors in the current trial won’t be hearing about the case.