True Crime Chronicles: A young Fort Smith woman who refused to end her pregnancy was shot twice in 2012
On the night of April 8, 2012, Ka’Loni Marie Flynn left her Fort Smith apartment around 10:30.
The 20-year-old had been dating Christopher Kenyon Simpson of Spiro for roughly three months. She was eight to twelve weeks pregnant with his child, a fact confirmed later by DNA. Flynn was excited about becoming a mother.
She did not believe in abortion and had already begun preparing. Prenatal vitamins and a pregnancy test were found in her purse.
She had named the baby Za’Kaylynn.
Simpson already had a child from an earlier relationship and was behind on child support. According to a police affidavit he told at least one person that if Flynn would not end the pregnancy he would “get rid of it for her.”
Witnesses later said he repeatedly made clear he did not want another child to support. He also told someone the killing would never be solved because “it was too clean; it was the perfect murder.”
That evening Simpson used a prepaid phone he had bought days earlier at a Fort Smith Walmart. Video showed the purchase. Six calls from that Texas number reached Flynn’s phone between roughly 10:37 and 11:01 p.m.
Cell tower records placed the calls along the U.S. 271 corridor, moving from the area of a relative’s home in Fort Smith toward rural McGinnis Lane between Pocola and Spiro.
Flynn’s roommate said she left around the time of one of those calls.
Early the next morning, deputies responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle on McGinnis Lane. They found Flynn’s car still running. She sat in the driver’s seat, shot twice in the head, once between the eyes. She was dressed in sweat pants and a tank top.
The unborn child died with her. There was no sign of a struggle or robbery. The scene looked planned and clinical.
Simpson was arrested in June 2012 and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. He denied the killing. At tri,al he claimed he bought the prepaid phone for his “weed man” and that he never left his cousin’s garage that night except for a quick trip to a convenience store. He also said he and Flynn had been together only once and that she was unsure who the father was.
Prosecutors showed the Walmart video, the cell tower maps, the timing of the calls, and the DNA result. In closing they displayed a photograph of Flynn’s body in the car. Jurors gasped.
After nearly seven hours of deliberation, a LeFlore County jury of nine women and three men found Simpson guilty on both counts on September 26, 2013. They recommended life without the possibility of parole and a $10,000 fine on each count.
On November 8 Judge Jon Sullivan imposed the sentences, to run concurrently. Simpson’s attorney said the evidence was only circumstantial and that his client maintained his innocence.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later affirmed the convictions.
Herbert Flynn, Ka’Loni’s father, said afterward that he was glad it was over and that she deserved the verdict. He added that both families had lost a child and that he held no hard feelings toward Simpson’s relatives. The children from both sides still went to school together.
Ka’Loni’s family later placed a memorial headstone at her grave. Simpson remains in prison serving life without parole for the two deaths he caused on that rural Oklahoma road.
