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UTAH STATE PRISON — Evelyn Christine Johnson was 75 years old when she was sentenced in February to serve up to 15 years in prison for killing her estranged husband.
She will be 81 before she gets her first chance at parole.
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole has scheduled Johnson's initial hearing for May 2017. The date was set based on an administrative review of Johnson's file, "which we do in all death cases," said parole board spokesman Jim Hatch.
On Aug. 24, 2004, Johnson drove to the Uintah County trailer park where her estranged husband was living. She had been served with divorce papers one day earlier.
Alan Lavoy Johnson, 71, invited his wife into his camp trailer and served her coffee, according to Uintah County sheriff's detectives.
But as the couple sat and talked about what would be their second divorce from one another, Evelyn Johnson pulled out a .22-caliber handgun and shot her husband at least five times.
Related:
Judge sentences woman, 75 to prison for husband's death
Evelyn Johnson is either a battered wife who finally had enough and fatally shot the man who she said abused her, or she is a deliberate killer who gunned down her estranged husband after he filed for divorce."He said, 'No! No! Don't do that!'" Uintah County Attorney G. Mark Thomas told a judge during Johnson's sentencing hearing, reading from a statement she made to investigators immediately after the shooting.
"He stood up, and she continued to shoot him," Thomas said.
The prosecutor noted that one of the shots struck Alan Johnson behind one of his ears.
Evelyn Johnson was initially charged with murder, a first-degree felony. After six years of questions about her mental competency — and at least two commitments to the Utah State Hospital — she pleaded guilty in December 2011 to an amended charged of manslaughter, a second-degree felony.
Johnson maintains that her husband had physically abused her and other family members. She had filed for a protective order against him one week before the shooting, and her daughter also claimed that Alan Johnson had abused her mother throughout their 20 years of marriage.
There were no reports of domestic violence to police.
