LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The thing about family pictures is you never see the trouble that can lurk between one snap and the next. That holds true for the pictures of Dennis and Amanda Devers.
"He wanted the relationship to work, but he walked around on pins and needles," Kathleen Devers, Dennis' sister-in-law, said.
She added, Dennis used to struggle a lot.
"Yes, he used to have a drinking problem," she said. "He hasn't drank in a few years. Yes he had anger issues. Who doesn't?"
His relationship with his wife, Amanda, was particularly problematic. There were protective orders and allegations of poisoning and abuse that the neighbors even knew about.
"He tried to stab her, so she called the cops and they came and arrested him, and how bad were her injuries? Just two little marks in the side, didn't look like a knife, looked like a pencil or something," Larry Gadlage, a neighbor, said.
Still, no one saw what happened at the couple's home Wednesday coming.
"He's gone. We'll never see him again," Kathleen said.
Dennis' body was discovered outside the couple's Breckinridge County home. He was naked, with two gunshot wounds. Investigators believe Amanda shot him in the chest inside the home, then in the head outside.
"I believe with all my heart that it was premeditated," said Kathleen.
Dennis' sister-in-law said that, based on the timeline of what happened in the days leading up to the shooting.
On Tuesday, court records show, Dennis' assault and violating an EPO charges were dropped at Amanda's request.
"If you're that scared of somebody, you don't drop an EPO," Kathleen said. "We've seen her scratch her face up. We've seen her do things to try and manipulate people, and to manipulate the system to get that EPO."
Investigators said she killed her husband the very next day, and it's now up to them to sort out the drama that led to death. The people who suffer in the meantime, all the smiling faces in those family photos, and the couple's one-year-old son.
Amanda Devers was charged with murder and was lodged in the Breckinridge County Detention Center.
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