Jeremy Lee Sappington Got Tired Of Paying For Rent With Sex

Jeremy Lee Sappington Got Tired Of Paying For Rent With Sex

Posted on March 14, 2014

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A man is accused of fatally shooting his aunt last weekend and attempting to set her home on fire because he was tired of having sex with her in exchange for housing, an affidavit in the case states.

Prosecutors and police allege that Jeremy Lee Sappington, 37, shot 50-year-old Verna Sarten in the head with a .22-caliber revolver between Saturday night and Sunday morning in the 1400 block of East Jones Street, then left the scene in her boyfriend’s Dodge pickup.

Around 1:10 a.m. Monday, Mayes County sheriff’s deputies told the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation about her death after finding the circumstances suspicious, spokeswoman Jessica Brown said at the time.

Sarten’s boyfriend, Gerald Howard, told investigators Sappington lived with Sarten and that he was worried after being unable to reach Sarten or Sappington by phone. Howard told a family member to check on her, and when he arrived he saw Sarten partially clothed and lying on the floor, court records show.

Investigators also reported the carpet began melting due to papers catching fire near a space heater. The oven was turned on with its door open, and the central heat in the home was activated, the affidavit says.

Sappington had been booked into the Mayes County Jail just before 11 a.m. Sunday on suspicion of public intoxication after police were called to the scene of a disturbance at the 5000 block of West 590th Street. Police reported finding an H&R .22-caliber, 9-shot revolver with a spent shell under the driver’s seat of the Dodge, Mayes County chief prosecutor Marny Hill said Monday.

Late Monday morning, deputies interviewed Sappington at the jail, where he claimed he was having sex with Sarten in exchange for a place to live, court records show. He told them he wanted to end the sexual relationship, and took the revolver from under Sarten’s mattress, walked up behind her in the living room and fired at her before leaving, the affidavit says.

Susan Kerr, Sappington’s sister who now lives in Georgia, said the siblings had difficult childhoods, which only worsened after their mother’s death in 1984. Her brother went in and out of juvenile custody as a teenager, she said.

Kerr said she believed Sappington’s and Sarten’s alleged sexual relationship was not consensual and that Sarten was close to her mother when they were children.

“She was very nice, and everyone in my family has come from this continuous cycle of a bad childhood,” Kerr said.

The Oklahoma State Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet ruled on the cause of death, and the state has not ruled out the possibility of additional charges being filed in the case, she said.