The former wife of murder defendant James Pavatt fell to the floor sobbing Tuesday as she left the courtroom, after testifying she returned to South Korea because she was told her life was in danger.
Suk Hui Pavatt said her ex-husband said she needed protection because of his involvement in the special forces.
The woman testified while alternating between crying and smiling at James Pavatt, the man she was married to for nine years.
"I believed him 100 percent," she said. "He was the most lovable man in the whole world. I still care for him."
Suk Kui Pavatt testified that James Pavatt borrowed a credit card from his co-defendant, Brenda Andrew, and her estranged husband, Rob, to buy her airline ticket to South Korea.
Pavatt's service as a police officer in the Air Force included a stint at Tinker Air Force Base in the late 1980s or early 1990s. His military records do not mention the special forces. Witnesses have testified that James Pavatt told them he had a secret job in which he killed people.
Rob Andrew, 39, was fatally shot at his wife's home at 6112 Shaftsbury Road when he went to pick up the couple's two children for the Thanksgiving holiday. Brenda Andrew was hit once with a .22-caliber bullet. She said two masked men shot them.
Brenda Andrew, 38, and James Pavatt, 48, are charged with first-degree murder.
Testimony in their preliminary hearing is expected to continue today for the fourth day before Oklahoma County District Judge Carol Ann Hubbard. The hearing also is scheduled for three days in July.
Rob Andrew suspected his wife and James Pavatt were having an affair. Suk Hui Pavatt, of New Orleans, said her ex-husband denied having a relationship with Brenda Andrew.
While in South Korea, she said, she received divorce papers from James Pavatt to sign and return. They were divorced Sept. 6.
She testified that her ex-husband had changed a lot when she returned to Oklahoma City in late October.
"He was nervous," she said. "He wasn't the same person."
She said her ex-husband told her he was trying to protect himself.
"He said Rob was accusing him of something."
On Thanksgiving Day, two days after the slaying, Suk Hui Pavatt said, James Pavatt called denying he killed Rob Andrew. He borrowed a car she was driving twice after the killing, she said.
The second time she swapped Pavatt's pickup for the car he had loaned her to drive was Nov. 25, the day prosecutors claim the defendants and Brenda Andrew's children left Oklahoma City to go into hiding. None of them attended Rob Andrew's funeral the next day.
Brenda Andrew and Pavatt were arrested Feb. 28 in Hidalgo, Texas, as they attempted to re-enter the United States from Mexico.
Suk Hui Pavatt said James Pavatt told her he wanted the car to get rid of the news media.
Prosecutors say the motive for the slaying was $800,000 in life insurance benefits.
Suk Hui Pavatt admitted the Pavatts had money problems - about $30,000, mostly credit card debt.
The witness said that when she learned about the debt in January 2001, she made arrangements with the credit card companies to make specific monthly payments in an effort to pay off the bills. The Pavatts were paying $1,500 a month on credit cards.
"I had to drop out of school to pay off the credit cards," she said.
"I asked him if he paid my school off. He said he did, but he didn't."
In other testimony Tuesday, Oklahoma City police officer Roger Frost, one of the first officers at the scene of the shooting, testified that Brenda Andrew appeared calm while her estranged husband was dead on the garage floor.
"She was crying... like fake crying," Frost said. "She wasn't hysterical like most people involved in this kind of crime."
Frost testified that her demeanor didn't change at the hospital before she was interviewed by homicide detectives. The officer said she asked about her children a couple of times.
The children were found in a back bedroom of the house with the door closed. Frost said Parker, then 7, was asleep while a movie played loudly. Tricity, then 10, was watching the movie, he testified.
Frost said he had worked an extra job as security in the Andrews' neighborhood for 13 years. He had written a driver a traffic ticket in front of the Andrews' house less than an hour before the slaying.
Brenda Andrew asked the security company for extra patrol around her home after the couple separated, Frost said.
Defense attorney George Miskovsky Jr. said he questions why Brenda Andrew would ask for extra security at the house where she was planning to kill someone.
Frost testified he didn't think Brenda Andrew was the shooter in the slaying, but that she was involved.
Archive ID: 1034952
