WINFIELD, W.Va. — “Why Jennifer? Why?” a mother asked her daughter’s killer inside a Putnam County courtroom Thursday moments before a judge sentenced him to life in prison without mercy.
“The pain will always be there,” said Leora McCoy, the mother of Jennifer Evans. “But knowing that we got justice for Jennifer is the most important thing.”
Evans, 27, was shot and killed inside her Teays Valley apartment on Sept. 10, 2015. Her shooter, Philip Casto, 35, of Scott Depot, previously pleaded guilty to first degree murder in a Kennedy Plea. He showed no remorse during McCoy’s testimony Thursday. In all, 10 witnesses testified for nearly two hours.
Casto did, however, wipe away tears when his family members and co-workers spoke about the caring person he was months before the deadly shooting.
“I couldn’t believe that he had done it,” said Brandy Paterson, an employee with the state Division of Highways. “If I had a list of people on my floor who had the capability of doing something like that, Phil would be at the very bottom of that list.”
Yvonne Flowers, Casto’s grandmother, was the first witness the defense called to the stand where she asked the judge to grant him life with mercy.
“I’d like to ask your honor to please have mercy on him. Give him mercy. He was a good kid — no trouble — nothing,” Flowers said. She then apologized to Evans’ family. “To the girl’s mother, I want to say I’m so sorry for your loss.”
His father, Harold Casto, told the court his son became “paranoid” six months prior to the murder.
“He seemed to become distant with me. Not much communication,” he said. “From probably six months before that, it just went different.”
It was only a point in time that Casto was a changed man, said his attorney David Moye.
“It was just a very short snap shot and while it’s an atrocious type of a crime that he has entered a plea to here, it is just a very small segment of what his life had been otherwise,” Moye said.
Casto, who was employed as a DOH transportation analyst for about five years, was always “helpful” and “reliable”, according to co-workers. His former supervisor Tressie Bryant said she noticed a change in Casto’s behavior beginning in Feb. 2015.
“I had to have several talks with him because he was late for work a lot. His work had deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t trust his work to turn it in,” Bryant said.
Evans and Casto had been involved in a love affair. According to prosecutors, Evans got back together with her husband and tried to break it off with Casto.
Putnam County Detective Lt. Lisa Arthur, who testified Thursday, said Casto bought a .40 caliber Glock gun from the Ultimate Pawn shop in Hurricane the day before the incident. Prosecutors said Casto was in Evans’ apartment for 16 minutes before fleeing the scene. He was captured at a shopping mall in the Boston suburb of Braintree, Massachusetts the day after the shooting.
According to the criminal complaint, Evans’ husband found her body in the kitchen when he returned home.
“She had been shot with a .40 caliber handgun in the head and it was a through and through gunshot wound,” Arthur told the court. “His vehicle was towed back to West Virginia where it was searched and the gun was found in the car here when it was searched.”
Arthur read text messages between Casto and his friend — a conversation via Kik app during the hours before and after the shooting.
Casto said in the message, “Honestly, if all this happens and she doesn’t leave, I’m going to be pissed and my last act out of town is going to be brutal.”
At times, Casto referred to himself in the texts as a character in a video game, but the judge told him what he did was not a game. “I have to deal in realities, not in reset buttons with video games,” said Putnam County Circuit Judge Phillip Stowers. “You thought that taking a life would be nothing more than resetting a game.”
Evan’s stepfather and younger brother both asked the judge for life with mercy.
“I would like for him to have the same mercy that he gave my daughter when he put her on her knees,” said Charles McCoy. “I know that she said ‘please don’t’ and he disregarded that as he pulled the trigger and shot her in the head.”
The McCoys said Jennifer had the most beautiful smile and would light up a room when she walked in. “She was the anchor that held our family together,” Leora McCoy said.
“I know his family is feeling a loss like mine,” she said. “But they can see him. I no longer will ever see Jennifer.”