Alabama man, 47, who killed camgirl wife with liquor bottle sentenced to 16 years after iPhone exposed his movements

AN ALABAMA man who killed his camgirl wife in 2018 was sentenced to prison after prosecutors found out his health app had recorded he had been walking when he said he was fast asleep.

William Jeffrey West was sentenced on Monday to serve 16 years in prison for the death of his wife, Kathleen Dawn West, 42, whom West was alleged to have killed on January 12, 2018.


Prosecutors in Birmingham looked to West's iPhone as proof that he killed his wife Kathleen, after beating her with a Lucid Absinthe bottle.

Kathleen was found dead wearing only a pink bra on the street outside the couple's Calera home, about 30 miles south of Birmingham.

Prosecutors say West, 47, initially killed her when he struck the back of her head with a liquor bottle.

However, West's defense lawyers argued Kathleen died due to an accidental fall after a night of drinking.


Kathleen was a stay-at-home mom who worked as a camgirl and charged viewers $15.99 for revealing images of herself.

Prosecutors said West was "fed up with this Instagram stuff" regarding his wife's lingerie pictures. He even reportedly told police she was unhappy he "wasn't as sexual as she was."

West's defense attorneys countered those claims, saying Kathleen's photos, posted under the name "Kitty Kat West," were not a cause of rift between the two, and that West would assist her.

On the night of Kathleen's murder, West told authorities he went to bed at 10:30PM only to find out his wife was dead the next morning.

Prosecutors instead looked at West's iPhone Health app data, showing he had taken 18 steps between 11:03PM and 11:10PM.

That alone instrumental in West's trial, prosecutors also pointed to his fingerprints on the Absinthe bottle.

"He grabs her phone and chucks it out the front door where it lands in the street," said prosecutor Daniel McBrayer, adding a fight had started over her sexual posts.


When Kathleen went to retrieve the phone in only her bra, West hit her on the back of the head with the Absinthe bottle.

"This marriage was not in a good place," McBrayer said last year. "This was a relationship on the rocks."

West, a former Birmingham-Southern College campus officer, would get credit for the three years he has already served in jail after he was convicted in November 2018 for his wife's manslaughter after he was facing another 20 years in jail.

Before his sentencing, West addressed the Shelby County courtroom, never mentioning his wife's name but instead saying "I lost my best friend."

Judge William Bostick III heard West's pleas as well as those from his daughter and mother-in-law, all who urged leniency in his case. Bostick also considered West's 21 years of service in the US Army and his lack of a criminal record.

"We don’t drag people into courts of law and try them for who they are. We drag people into courts of law and try them for what they did," Bostick said. "Our laws designed to punish people not for who they are but for what they do."


"In this case the the jury found you to be responsible for your wife’s death. They imposed that responsibility on you," the judge continued. "You were afforded the opportunity to accept responsibility for causing your wife’s death."

"You have, for your own reasons, taken the position that you don’t intend to do that. So the jury had to do that for you."

Bostick is referring to a plea deal prosecutors offered West at the beginning of last year's trial, allowing him to be released immediately for time served, which West refused.

"That is our standard practice," McBrayer said. "Here in this case we did make an offer that was within the voluntary guidelines but that was premised on the defendant accepting responsibility for this crime and he didn’t."

McBrayer did comment on West's remarks to the courtroom.

"It struck me that he mentioned very little other than himself," he said.

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