By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — In a remarkably quick deliberation, a Payne County jury took less than 10 minutes Monday to recommend a life prison sentence for a Stillwater man convicted of killing his new girlfriend whose body was never found.
The jury of nine men and three women had deliberated 90 minutes Monday before finding Earl Oswalt Jr., 56, guilty of first-degree manslaughter for fatally punching 29-year-old Chelsey Chaffin in the head early on the morning of May 26, 2019, the day before Memorial Day.
“We feel great about the verdict. He deserves life,” District Attorney Laura Thomas commented Tuesday == emphasizing Oswalt was convicted in 1998 of first-degree rape by a Bryan County jury recommending a 40-year prison term, but he was released from Oklahoma in 2014 to Texas to serve two 20-year terms for child sexual assault in Grayson County and paroled in 2017.
Oswalt, who called no defense witnesses at his week-long trial, remains jailed pending his sentencing on Dec. 1 by Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler.
In her closing argument, prosecutor Debra Vincent said that Oswalt’s fiancee, described by the defense as intellectually challenged, “was left in a trailer house for 12 hours with a dead body.” She said she wasn’t present when the killing occurred.
Oswalt’s fiancee testified “he washed Chelsey’s body” with bleach before they took her naked body to the Cimarron River north of Ripley and dumped her in the water, the prosecutor reminded the jury.
Although the prosecutor said Oswalt said she didn’t have anything to do with the slaying, defense attorney Jarrod Stevenson suggested to the jury that she was the killer: “All of a sudden in May, Mr. Oswalt says ‘I’m moving in Chelsey Chaffin,’ who the defense attorney said was ‘younger and prettier’ and told his fiancee to move out.
Urging acquittal to the jury, the defense attorney said, “You don’t have to like Mr.Oswalt. You may think he’s a jerk boyfriend.”
In his closing argument, prosecutor Kevin Etherington said, “What is his defense? Is it that (his fiancee) did it? We call it the kitchen sink argument, the shotgun argument.”
“He takes a week to clean the house up — only then does he come out of the woodwork,” the prosecutor noted.
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