2nd Female Officer Faces Charges In Military Affair Academy Classmate Of Flinn’s Could Get 55 Years In Prison

An Air Force officer - a former classmate of 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn’s - could get 55 years in prison if she’s convicted on charges arising from an affair with a married officer that produced a child.

Charges against 1st Lt. Crista Davis, 28, range from failure to fill out weekly reports to conduct unbecoming an officer: writing her lover’s wife profanity-filled letters boasting about sex.

Unlike Flinn, Davis has not been charged with adultery. But her lawyer says she and her ex-classmate are both victims of sex discrimination.

“This is a clear-cut case of command retaliation against a whistleblower for exposing sexism and racism in the Air Force and also for being a single mother of a child born out of wedlock,” said Louis P. Font by telephone Tuesday night.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for June 9 at Barksdale Air Force Base.

The Air Force would not give phone numbers for Davis or Maj. Greg Russell, whom she has named as the father of her son, Christophe.

Davis, of DeKalb, Ill., said she and Russell began an affair in 1995, two years after she graduated from the Air Force Academy.

That also was a year after Russell, who sported tattoos on both arms and, when off-duty, bracelets, chains, earrings and a ring through his pierced tongue, was suspended from teaching at the academy.

Davis said she ended the relationship last year, after learning Russell was married.

He was never charged with adultery, because that would have delayed prosecution of other substantial charges already brought against him, said Neil Talbott, spokesman for the Air Force Academy.

Charges of misusing an Air Force credit card and failing to pay debts were dismissed in January. Talbott said privacy laws forbade him to say why.

But Russell told the (Colorado Springs) Gazette-Telegraph that the charges were dropped because military psychiatrists decided he had been legally insane since 1992.