Overview
- The state high court, which ruled Wednesday, rejected Adam Fravel’s bid for a new trial and said the record showed premeditation, intent, and extreme indifference to human life.
- Justices concluded the trial judge properly allowed testimony on common patterns in abusive relationships and the medical examiner’s finding of homicidal violence, and they found no cumulative error.
- Fravel’s appeal argued the evidence was insufficient for three of the four murder counts and challenged hearsay references to the Gabby Petito case, the domestic-violence expert’s reliability, the autopsy work, and prosecutors’ closing remarks.
- A jury in December 2024 found Fravel guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree domestic-abuse murder, second-degree intentional murder, and second-degree felony murder, and the life-without-parole sentence stands.
- Kingsbury disappeared in March 2023, and investigators found her body in June in a culvert near Fravel’s parents’ property, wrapped in a bedsheet with a towel knotted around her head, details prosecutors said supported their suffocation theory.