Kendra Hatcher’s Shooter Kristopher Love Now on Death Row in ‘Brutal’ Conditions

Kristopher Love was convicted of the 2015 murder of 35-year-old Dallas Pediatric Dentist Dr.  Kendra Hatcher in a murder for hire plot concocted by a jealous ex-girlfriend named Brenda Delgado and her friend and accomplice Crystal Cortes.

While Love didn’t know Hatcher and had only recently met Cortes and Delgado through a mutual friend of Cortes’, according to Cortes’ court testimony, Love agreed to be part of the plot to kill Delgado’s ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, Hatcher, for “drugs and money.”

Cortes testified against Love and Delgado as part of a deal struck with prosecutors that would limit her prison sentence to 35-years in exchange for testifying against her co-defendants, Dallas Fort Worth CBS reported.

According to Cortes’ testimony, Delgado “wanted to get rid of Kendra Hatcher because she was envious of her,” and while the three now convicted killers plotted together how best to murder Hatcher and get away with it, only Love was sentenced to death for his role as the shooter in the murder.

Cortes Testified That Love Obtained the Gun Used to Kill Hatcher & He Volunteered to Shoot the Dentist

From left: Brenda Delgado, Crystal Cortes, Kristopher Love. Dallas County Police Department

According to Cortes’ court testimony, the group decided that shooting Hatcher would be the quickest way to kill her, and after scoping out her job and where she lived they decided to make their move at Hatcher’s apartment building. Cortes and Love went together to kill and rob the dentist.

Cortes said that she agreed to be the shooter, but when it came down to it she remained the driver of the getaway vehicle because she knew her way around Dallas better than Love, so he said he would shoot Hatcher since Cortes would make a better getaway driver.

Love and Cortes waited in the borrowed vehicle they were driving for Hatcher to come home. While they waited, Cortes told the court Love was cleaning the gun and the bullets to make sure there were no fingerprints for police to find.

According to Cortes:

Miss Kendra comes in and she parks catty-corner to where we park and Kristopher Love gets off the vehicle through the driver’s side in the back. And he exits the vehicle and closes the vehicle. And he approaches Kendra and I didn’t see him kill her but I heard the shots fired and I backed out. When I backed out he ran into the jeep with Kendra’s belongings — her purse and a Nikon camera.

An autopsy would show that Hatcher was shot in the top of the back of the head and the bullet came out of her chin area, according to court documents. Gunpowder residue on both of her hands led investigators to believe that she had both hands up and behind her head when she was shot.

Cortes testified that Delgado paid her $500 for her role in the murder. She said Delgado also gave Love cash but she isn’t sure how much, and she bought them $300 worth of cocaine and $600 worth of marijuana.

Love Is on Death Row at an All Solitary Confinement Death Row Unit of a Prison Called Polunsky

Texas Department of Criminal JusticeKristopher Love

Love was sentenced to death on October 31, 2018, after the jury deliberated for three hours, according to NBC News.

He is slated to die by lethal injection but according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a date has not been set. Love began appealing the verdict three months after his conviction in January 2019, according to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The process is ongoing.

Love is serving his time on death row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas.

According to Solitary Watch, Polunsky is among the most “brutal” places in the U.S. to be on death row because those sentenced there live in solitary confinement with virtually no human contact until they are executed.

Mother Jones reported:

…the all-solitary Allan B. Polunsky Unit houses condemned Texans under some of the nation’s harshest death row conditions. The prisoners are housed in single cells on 22-hour-a-day lockdown, and even during their daily “recreation” hour, they are confined in separate cages. With no access to phones, televisions, contact visits, they remain in essentially a concrete tomb until execution day—a stretch of at least three years for the mandatory appeals, and far longer if they opt to keep fighting. Some have been known to commit suicide or waive their appeals rather than continue living under such conditions.

Prior to his conviction for killing Hatcher, Love’s criminal record consists of “12 arrests involving 6 violent offenses,” according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

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