Baker City, OR: Husband faces at least 25 years in wife’s death

He is sentenced to life with a possibility of parole for the August murder in their Eastern Oregon home

BY JACK MORAN
The Register-Guard
Posted to Web: Friday, Jan 21, 2011 11:58PM


A former Lane County resident pleaded guilty Friday in Eastern Oregon to murdering his wife, a Springfield native who left her job at a Thurston hair salon two years ago to move with her husband to Baker City.

Kevin Michael Blankenship, 41, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, Baker County District Attorney Matt Shirtcliff said.

Blankenship admitted to fatally shooting his wife in their home on Aug. 26. The victim, Christina Dawn Blanken­ship, 38, attended Springfield schools and graduated from the Springfield College of Beauty. She owned her own hair salon at one time in the Thurston area before moving to Eastern Oregon, her family members said.

Shirtcliff said Blanken- ship initially told investigators he had accidentally shot his wife while cleaning a gun. But evidence showed he intentionally killed her because he knew that she planned to divorce him, Blankenship said.

Family members said the couple had been married about nine years and had two daughters together. Neither of the girls — who are 9 and 10 — were home when Christina Blankenship was killed, authorities said.

“Those children lost a mother and a father,” said Christina Blankenship’s aunt, Baker City resident Carol Free.

Court records show that the Blankenships had domestic problems dating back to when they lived in Lane County.

Christina Blankenship, 38, filed for divorce and sought a stalking order and a restraining order against her husband in 2004 in Lane County Circuit Court. All of those matters were later dismissed, court records show.

When he was arrested for his wife’s death, Kevin Blankenship was on probation after he pleaded guilty last April to assaulting her a month earlier. A Baker County judge sentenced him to 18 months’ probation and ordered him to enroll in a domestic violence intervention program in that case, court records show.

Free said her niece lived most of her life in Springfield. Christina Blankenship had known her husband since childhood, when both lived in the Thurston area, Free said.

Blankenship was one of several women with Lane County ties who died in 2010 as a result of domestic violence.