Death Penalty Sought For Nunn

We've been following the strange case of Steve Nunn ever since the murder of his former fiancee, Amanda Ross. A manhunt for Nunn ensued after her body was found, and police tracked him down in a Hart County cemetery where his mother and father (former Gov. Louie B. Nunn) are buried. Reportedly, Nunn fired a pistol into the air when officers arrived, and was discovered to be bleeding profusely - he had slit his own wrists in an attempted suicide.

Fayette County Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson says his office has "filed a notice of aggravating circumstance and notice of intent to seek the death penalty in the Nunn case."

The Dark Side of Steve Nunn

As reported here on the 12th, Republican politician Steve Nunn was found bleeding in a graveyard during a manhunt for him after the woman who filed a restraining order against him was mysteriously shot and killed.

Now they're saying Nunn has officially been charged with the murder of Amanda Ross, and that his attorney Astrida Lemkins is publicly maintaining his innocence. Be that as it may, police have revealed that Nunn was certainly talking like a guilty man while in custody. Reportedly, he openly spoke of his desire for revenge on Ross, and how he would go to the penitentiary for what he had done.

Nunn's ex-wife Tracey Damron has granted an interview to the Courier-Journal, in which she says something very strange came over him in the Spring of 2004. She says that Nunn was a model husband until she went alone to Florida for a weeklong family visit, and then....

When she returned, she said, Nunn was a different person.

"I came back to an absolute stranger. And I don't know what happened to him that week," she said. "He had kind of a beard. Steve didn't ever have a beard. And he was very, very distant. He did not want me around him."

"I asked Steve to seek help. But obviously to Steve — this new being that he is — he thought he was perfectly fine."

Damron said it was clear she and her husband were on “different paths” and they agreed to separate, and later divorce.

While she said she was aware of her ex-husband's problems, she wasn’t aware how severe they were, Damron said: "I knew it was dark, but I had no clue it was utter darkness."

The mind reels, wondering just what happened to Nunn during those seven days that transformed him so radically. A blow to the head? A mini-stroke? Did he drop acid? Too much Splenda and Nutrasweet? Mind control black-ops? Reaction to toxic anti-depressants? Or some sort of spiritual dark night of the soul, a Black Satori of the sort that comes with knowledge of things after which no man, having learned them, can ever be the same?

Or was it, maybe, just a good old fashioned midlife crisis?

Reportedly, Nunn was placing personals ads on dating sites, swingers sites, and "sugardaddy" sites, wherein rich men agree to lavish their dates with money and gifts in exchange for companionship, just barely skirting around prostitution laws by a wafer-thin margin.

And it gets weirder. According to this report:

A day before former state Rep. Steve Nunn was found by state police in a Hart County cemetery with his wrists slit, he stopped by Borders Monument Co. to make a request: He wanted to add some details to his gravestone.

Abe Shelton, owner of the Glasgow business that specializes in monuments and memorials, said Nunn came in Thursday to discuss designs and wrote down what he wanted to say on the stone. His request freaked out Shelton.

Shelton refused to say what Nunn asked him to put on the stone. He declined to say whether Nunn requested a Sept. 11 death date.

But based on Nunn's demeanor — and what Nunn wanted put on the stone — Shelton said he could tell Nunn was distraught and needed help.

"That's what freaked me out," he said. "I was absolutely floored."

Steve Nunn Arrested in Graveyard

Back in March, a judge ordered Kentucky Republican politician Steve Nunn to have no contact for a year with his ex-fiance Amanda Ross, (division director for the Kentucky Department of Insurance). The restraining order was placed because of a domestic-violence charge against Nunn in February, in which it was alleged Nunn punched Ross in the face and held her arms while slamming her against a wall. Nunn also smashed a lamp and threw a cup of bourbon at her.

In August, Nunn was in trouble again. Ross asked a family court judge to hold Nunn in contempt of court over embarrassing photos of her. The judge required Nunn to "return to Ross all photographs of her and to take steps to destroy photos outside of his possession but provided by him to a third party".

On Friday, September 11, approximately 6:30am, Amanda Ross was found shot to death in the parking lot of her condo at 541 W. Short Street, Lexington.

Nunn, being the logical first suspect, became the subject of a manhunt. He turned up three hours later, when Barren County Sheriff Chris Eaton found him disoriented in Horse Cave's Cosby Church Cemetery, where his parents are buried. He had slashed his own wrists and was bleeding profusely. He also had a handgun and stated to Eaton that he'd tried but failed to shoot himself. (Some news reports are contradicting this and saying he did indeed have a gunshot wound.) At this writing, it has not yet been determined if the gun is the same one that was used to shoot Amanda Ross, and currently no murder charge has been filed against Nunn.


The son of former Governor Louie B. Nunn, Steve Nunn ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2003. Oddly, he was chosen by the allegedly Democratic Governor Steve Beshear for the post of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services' Deputy Secretary. Nunn was forced to resign after the domestic violence/stalking charges.