Kriti Mehrotra
CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Mysterious Death of Kat West,’ as the title suggests, is an episode that examines the baffling 2018 passing of Kathleen “Kat” Dawn West, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother who also was an online exhibitionist. In the early morning hours of January 13, her partially nude body was found across the street from her Calera, Alabama, home, with a pool of blood beneath her head from the blunt force trauma she endured. Fortunately, though, the authorities soon identified and arrested her perpetrator, her husband, Jeff West. So, let’s find out where he is today, shall we?
Who is Jeff West?
Jeff West was a former United States Army recruiter working as a campus security officer at the Birmingham-Southern College. He was also the husband of Kathleen “Kat” Dawn. Their romance can only be described as a whirlwind as they tied the knot in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2004, after just four months of dating. The following year, they welcomed their first and only child into this world, a daughter whom they named Lola. According to their friends and family, Jeff and Kat were opposites, but they made their relationship work by going on date nights and spending as much time together as possible.
In fact, on the night of January 12, 2018, the last Kat spent alive, the pair got Jeff’s parents to babysit their daughter so that they could go out for dinner. A while later, they made their way back home with two alcohol bottles in tow, and Jeff posted a picture of their drinks on social media. As per the authorities, he subsequently helped his wife take a few snapshots before they had an argument that led to him beating her head with a bottle of Lucid Absinthe. The motive, they said, was Jeff’s dislike towards her explicit lifestyle, which he denied. He was arrested on February 22 of the same year.
Where is Jeff West Now?
Jeff West pleaded not guilty to the murder charge against him and was thus held in jail on a $500,000 bond. He made several requests to have his bail amount reduced, but a judge denied them. From the very beginning, Jeff insisted that he was innocent and would never harm his wife. However, when his case when to court in 2020, he admitted that he and Kat fought that night about the amount of time she spent on her cell, resulting in him throwing the device outside. He asserted that he went to bed soon after and that Kat may have gone to fetch her phone, fell in her drunken state, hit her head on the ground, and died.
Jeff’s theory was partially backed by Kat’s autopsy, which stated that her blood alcohol content was .23%, nearly three times the legal limit. Yet, the forensic examiner explained that it was highly improbable for Kat to have sustained her fatal injury from a fall due to her petite height. Her wound, the pathologist said, was consistent with the liquor bottle found at the scene. The prosecutors further argued that Jeff grabbed the weapon once Kat left to retrieve her phone, followed her, and then struck her from the bottom of the bottle before going to bed. In the end, after five hours of deliberation, he was found guilty of manslaughter.
Before Jeff was handed down his sentence in February 2021, he made a statement detailing all the things he missed out on in the three years he spent in jail awaiting trial. He mentioned his daughter and losing his wife, whom he referred to as his “best friend,” but he never said Kat’s name or talked about the events that led to her death. Ultimately, after taking his lack of criminal history into account, a judge gave him 16 years in prison instead of the maximum 20, with credit for time already served. Therefore, today, at the age of 47, Jeff West is behind bars in state prison, where he is expected to remain until the early 2030s.
Read More: Where is Kat West’s Mother Now?
