2/12/2022- 9:28 a.m.
Tristen Wills, 22, Kentucky man police say kidnapped, tortured and threatened to kill a woman over a nearly two-week period last year.
WARNING: This story contains graphic information that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
According to online records, 25-year-old Tristen Wills, of Eastview, was booked into the Meade County Detention Center on Thursday, weeks after he was arrested in Paducah.
Kentucky State Police say sometime between Feb. 28, 2021 and March 8, 2021, Wills kidnapped a woman and imprisoned her in a home on Woodland Road in Meade County.Â
“Tristen Wills repeatedly beat, strangled, cut and sexually abused this victim over the course of approximately two weeks,” police say.
He also held her head underwater at a nearby pond, making her think she was going to drown, and forced her to engage in disturbing sex acts, investigators allege.
According to court documents, Wills told the woman several times that he was going to kill her, and even dug a small grave in a wooded area where he planned to bury her body.
Police say that after about two weeks, he forced the woman to walk to another address, before leaving her with his estranged family and walking away.
The woman was then taken to the hospital, where examinations revealed she had sustained several broken ribs and a lacerated spleen as a result of the attacks.
A warrant was issued for Wills’ arrest on June 21, 2021.
Weeks later, on Dec. 13, 2021, a Meade County grand jury indicted Wills on charges of Kidnapping (with serious physical injury), first-degree Strangulation, first-degree assault, first-degree Unlawful Imprisonment, third-degree Terroristic Threatening and Sex Crimes Against Animals.
On Jan. 12, according to court documents, police in Paducah, Kentucky, found Wills at an apartment on Old North Friendship Road and tried to arrest him on the warrant. When a woman let officers into the apartment, they discovered that Wills had jumped out of a second-story window, police say. Wills then jumped an 8-foot fence before he was finally arrested by Paducah police, according to court documents.
He was charged with second-degree Fleeing or Evading Police on Foot as a result of that chase, according to online records.
“The evidence indicates that the Defendant held his victim for an extended period of time and engaged in such brutality towards her as to shock the conscience of all reasonable persons,” Cash writes. “Wherefore, the Commonwealth hereby notifies the Court, the Defendant, and his counsel that the Commonwealth shall extend no offer to the Defendant in this matter and shall request that the jury sentence him to the maximum available sentence.”
On Feb. 4, after Wills was in custody, Meade County Assistant Commonwealth Attorney J. Anthony Cash issued a legal memorandum flatly rejecting any possible plea deal from Wills, stating in part that Wills.
