Cravens avoids jail for recruiting men to steal from ex-husband

By DUANE SHERRILL / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

CRAVENS

A woman who recruited three men over the Internet to exact revenge on her ex-husband five years ago has avoided jail while her three online friends were sent to the penitentiary, one of whom is still doing hard time.

The defendant, Angela Jean Cravens, 40, was granted a pre-trial diversion last week by Circuit Court Judge Bart Stanley on the charge of theft. The diversion means the charges will be erased from her record as long as she can go one year without any further brushes with the law. Should she get in trouble again, the charges could be brought back against her; however, she was not required to plead guilty to the charge to get the pre-trial diversion, a twist in the law which any person with a clean criminal record can request depending on the seriousness of the charges against them.

Prosecutors say Cravens set in motion a chain of events which escalated out of control and ended with a home invasion where her ex-husband’s wife was victimized. In evidence presented in pre-trial hearings, prosecutors said Cravens recruited three men, William T. Ramsey, 21, Freddie A. Myers, 20, and Rongie L. Taylor, 37, to help her steal her ex-husband’s vehicle so she could get revenge for unknown reasons. It was the vehicle theft which led to her charges.

It was months later her three Internet cohorts returned to the Francis Ferry home from where they stole the truck to commit a home invasion robbery. During the robbery, the men handcuffed Cravens’ ex-husband’s wife to a chair and held her at knife-point while they robbed her house of a computer and other valuables. After fleeing the scene, the men were taken into custody a short time later, with each pointing the finger at the other with at least one claiming to have been coerced into helping commit the crime.

The three men eventually entered guilty pleas to robbery charges with both Ramsey and Myers getting nine-year sentences. Ramsey is free on parole and will remain on probation until 2008 while Myers was denied parole and will not be eligible for release until 2007. Taylor received five years and has served all his sentence.

According to District Attorney General Dale Potter, a pre-trial diversion is at the discretion of the court and is based on several factors. In the case of Cravens, lawmen believe the robbery was committed without her knowledge. Potter added she cooperated with investigators about what she knew of how the men were first brought into town and that she had no prior criminal record.