By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

LEXINGTON - Adele Craven will take the stand to defend herself against the state's allegations that she presided over her husband's killing, her defense attorney told a Fayette County jury during opening arguments in her murder trial on Monday.

"Adele didn't plan, direct, participate or murder her husband," said her attorney, Deanna Dennison of Covington. "If you were going to kill your husband, you wouldn't kill him in your own house with the family gun."

Ms. Dennison said her client had no knowledge of the plot and that Ms. Craven's former lover acted on his own in hiring a hit man.

But the state has a different view. Using the same evidence that convicted the hired triggerman in the homicide, prosecutor Luke Morgan of Frankfort said Ms. Craven used her knowledge from mortuary training she had received to plan her husband's killing.

Her motive was a half-million dollar life insurance policy held by Stephen Craven, a Delta Air Lines pilot, Mr. Morgan told the mostly female Lexington jury. Ms. Craven knew, he said, that if the killing took place in the morning and the report was not made until much later, it would be more difficult for forensic evidence to be obtained.

Before a jury of 12 women and two men, both sides outlined their versions of the shooting and bludgeoning death of Mr. Craven in the basement of his Edgewood home on July 12, 2000.

The trial was moved from Covington 78 miles south to Lexington because of pretrial publicity.

Ms. Craven faces the death penalty if convicted of murder for her involvement in the alleged plot to kill her husband.

Ronald Scott Pryor, who police say was the hired triggerman in the plot, has already been found guilty. Judge Patricia M. Summe will decide later this year whether to follow the jury's recommendation to send Mr. Pryor to Death Row.

A third person implicated in the plot, Russell "Rusty" McIntire, reached a plea deal where he promised to testify against Ms. Craven in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

The prosecution used a love letter, snapshots and accounts of Ms. Craven and Mr. McIntire having sex in the Craven home, a hotel and the back of a pickup truck parked in the church lot to support its argument that Ms. Craven was an unfaithful wife who was out for her husband's money.

Mr. Craven made $170,000 a year as a pilot for Delta and had built a nest egg that included $78,750 in a credit union savings account and $6,590 in a brokerage account.

The typed love letter, found by detectives rolled up and tied with a ribbon in Mr. McIntire's toolbox, was more than a page long.

The letter, titled "Why I Love You," included such phrases as "you are my soul mate," and "I can not live without you," and "I like the way I feel around you."

Each side used charts to illustrate mobile phone calling patterns of both Mr. McIntire and Ms. Craven.

The prosecution's chart showed that Ms. Craven talked to Mr. McIntire on her mobile phone 284 times, for a total of 21 hours, from June 5 to July 13, the day after the killing. In addition, Ms. Craven used 167 minutes paging Mr. McIntire, according to the defense.

In total, 44 percent of the calls on Ms. Craven's mobile phone were made to or received from Mr. McIntire. There were 22 calls made between the two on the day of the killing.x

"Stephen was bludgeoned to death and shot three times in the head," Mr. Morgan said while showing the jury bloody pictures of the crime scene. "She (Adele Craven) put the plan in action. She orchestrated this man's murder."

Ms. Dennison denied all the allegations made by the prosecution. She admitted her client had an affair with Mr. McIntire, but said that Ms. Craven never wanted her husband killed.

She said Mr. McIntire, who was nearly broke by all accounts, became "obsessed" with Ms. Craven and the "privileged life" she appeared to live. She said Mr. Craven looked down on Mr. McIntire, and considered the baggage handler nothing more than a "ramp rat."

Ms. Dennison said Mr. McIntire, who had been hired to remodel their basement, had stopped taking Paxil, a psychiatric drug used to treat depression and begun drinking alcohol shortly before the killing. She said he had uncontrollable anger, and even once tried to strangle one of his co-workers.

She told the courtroom that she would call one of Mr. McIntire's former cellmates, who will testify that Mr. McIntire said: "Stephen Craven deserved to die. If I had a chance to do it again, I would do a better job at it because ... he deserved to die."

The trial continues today ) with the prosecution expected to call Mr. McIntire.

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com