'Serial killer in the making' sent to prison for viciously attacking 2 women in Bountiful

Editor's note: The following story depicts graphic acts by a man a prosecutor called "the scariest defendant I have ever encountered." Discretion is advised.

FARMINGTON — Over 30 spectators filled the gallery of a Farmington courtroom Friday, softly whispering in anticipation of the sentencing of Kane Thomas Fairbank, who pleaded guilty in January to the attempted murder of two women in Bountiful's Mueller Park.

"I've been doing this for over 20 years," said deputy Davis County attorney Richard Larsen later in the hearing. "This is, without question, the scariest defendant I have ever encountered, based on his willingness and desire to kill."

"This is a serial killer who fortunately got caught before he got good at killing," Larsen said.

Fairbank entered unceremoniously, never looking at the pews lined with the families and friends of the victims.

Fairbank, of Highland, is a tall, lanky young man, just under 21 years old. He shuffled into the courtroom from a side door, flanked by law enforcement, shackled at the feet and hands. His hair was in a messy bun, and as he sat before the bench in his Davis County Jail clothes of white and grey stripes, labeled "XL," hung like a pillowcase on his thin frame.

There was no jury trial. The sentencing was "a foregone conclusion" in the words of the prosecution, because a recommendation had been worked out by teams of lawyers as part of a plea agreement.

Fairbank pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted aggravated murder and a reduced count of attempted murder, first-degree felonies. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony, and obstructing justice, a second-degree felony.

But this hearing was the last chance victims would have to make statements to the judge and the man before he was sent away for a long time — 15 years to life for the first charge and three years to life for the second, with the sentences ordered to run consecutively.

The two stabbing victims spoke of the impact Fairbank had, changing the course of their lives on May 12, 2022.

On the first day they met, the woman who was stabbed first said, she had spent nine hours with Fairbank after meeting him on Tinder. She said she met his parents and niece and chatted with him online for over 24 hours in total. "I liked him; I wanted to get to know him," she said, growing emotional. "I trusted him; I had no reason not to."

She had no way of knowing that Fairbank spent months luring her in for the express purpose of killing her.

On their second date, the two went to Mueller Park. They were in the back of his vehicle when he started stabbing her, slicing at her face and neck.

"I grabbed the blade of the knife with my left hand to keep it from killing me," she said, and remembered Fairbank saying, "Your blood is making this knife really slippery."

But she fought back, she said, which deflated the man's passion. He let her out of the car, and she ran toward a group of people and the promise of safety. She didn't know that he had chased her until he stabbed her in the back.

'Standing there to watch me die'

Fairbank fled when bystanders rushed to the woman's aid. He ran into a nearby neighborhood and found his next target — an older woman he told police he perceived to be vulnerable.

"I saw Mr. Fairbank in the distance as I was walking back to my car," the woman told the court, but she said she was not concerned at the time. She did not see him approach or attack her. When he did, she tried to fend him off, and said, "I knew after I had been stabbed I had to lay on my stomach to slow bleeding."

As onlookers ran to her aid, she looked at the man standing at a distance, taking in the scene. "I felt he was standing there to watch me die," she said.

When officers arrested Fairbank, they took a photo of him by the squad car, finding his reaction to the violence so disturbing. In the photo, entered as evidence, Fairbank is standing in handcuffs, blood on his clothes and shoes, smiling.

The medical consequences of the attack were severe. The first victim, weeks away from graduating high school, said she got 60 stitches in her face alone, staples on her head, and sutures in her side. "I will never have full function or mobility in my left hand," she told the court.

The second victim, a tough baseball-jersey-wearing woman with shoulder-length grey hair, 64 at the time of the assault, said the resulting injuries left her close to death multiple times. A collapsed lung and body cavity filled with blood had to be drained. Surgeons had to remove part of the lung due to infection, and medication led to kidney damage.

"I don't believe I will ever completely physically recover, and that scares me," she said.

But the emotional toll on these two, and the loved ones, was even more crippling. "I have mental wounds so deep I don't think they will ever heal," the first victim said, speaking about "constant and vivid nightmares."

"Everything that Kane did to me was irreversible and cruel," she said. "His intentions, his plans and his actions were depraved and inhumane."

The woman — recalling the long, excruciating and still ongoing recovery — said, "How much easier it would have been to let him kill me."

The second victim said, "I am afraid to walk alone anywhere; I know how exposed and vulnerable I am. Sometimes I can't stand to be alone; that is a difficult thing to live with."

She said people used to think of her as outgoing, and the reason the kids were boisterous and lively at gatherings. "I used to be the reason they were loud," she said, but now she shies away from big groups due to severe anxiety.

"I don't want people to see who I am now. It is difficult for me to recognize myself," she said. "Life is just so hard — harder than it used to be."

Throughout the testimony, family members were crying where they sat.

The details of the case were so disturbing that the judge had a sidebar to discuss if the reading into the record could be done a different way. The prosecution was eventually allowed to walk through each detail for the record.

'Enamored with killing people'

Fairbank had specifically got to know his victim with the intent to kill her, prosecutors said. In an initial interview, Fairbank laughed as he spoke about how he couldn't complete the murder because the knife wasn't sharp enough, and he "had fun."

They said Fairbank planned to do sexual acts to the body, hide it, and go out at night in a mask he created to hunt others. They entered into evidence sadistic drawings of his victim with her eyes gouged out. He told police he planned to keep them in a fishing tackle box as a trophy.

Fairbank was thinking about killing his parents and sister with a pickax, according to an hourslong interview.

"He was enamored with killing people in the most intimate and horrific way possible," Larsen said.

Fairbank admitted that he was weak, and the attacks became less exciting when the victims fought back, Larsen explained. "Quite frankly, the victims in this case are extraordinary and amazing. It was only because they fought back that they are alive today," he said.

Fairbank, who never turned around to look at the victims in court, told 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda: "I know what I did can never be undone, but every day I wish it could. I am sincerely sorry."

DiReda said when he examined the facts, he wondered about the same thing the prosecutors said — whether Fairbank was "a serial killer in the making."

'Victims need to prepare themselves'

Defense attorney Jonathan Nish called his client "a scary individual," and said at times "defense counsel's safety was a concern, but that's no longer the case." Nish said the progress Fairbank has made with medication and psychiatric treatment is significant.

"There's hope," he said. "We don't know the person we're going to be dealing with in 10 to 15 years."

Nish called the sentence "a natural crossroads between mercy and justice."

"This is tragic on so many levels," DiReda said, adding that Fairbank was diagnosed with schizoaffective and dissociative disorders. "Mental illness is real; it's not a justification, but this kind of behavior does not occur in individuals that are functioning properly."

"I'm not minimizing what occurred, and I'm not saying we should feel sorry for Mr. Fairbank, because what he did was horrific," DiReda said to the galley. "I hope that you understand, there will come a day when Mr. Fairbank will be paroled. It is an absolute reality that he will be released at some point, and the victims need to prepare themselves."

To Fairbank, DiReda said, "You have, without question, changed the course of many people's lives forever," before Fairbank was escorted out of the room.

Correction: A previous version referred to judge DiReda as Direda.

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