A trial is under way in Minnesota for a husband, father and devout Christian who stands accused of shooting dead his wife and staging the crime scene to make it look like a suicide after failing to hire an assassin on the Dark Web.
Prosecutors allege that Stephen Allwine, 44, a deacon and church elder with the United Church of God, had at least three extramarital affairs with women he had met on the notorious cheaters’ website Ashley Madison, and that he no longer wanted to be married to his wife, Amy Allwine.
Because of his position within the church, which views marriage as a lifelong commitment and prohibits divorce for its members, Washington County prosecutor Jamie Kreuser told the court on Tuesday that the defendant decided to rid himself of Amy by killing her following a botched murder-for-hire plot.
Husband on trial: Stephen Allwine, 44, is seen in a Minnesota court on Tuesday, which was the first day of testimony in his murder trial
Allwine (left), a church elder, is charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the November 2016 shooting death of wife Amy, 44 (pictured right with their son)
Staged scene: Mrs Allwine was found dead inside the couple’s Cottage Grove, Minnesota, home; police later said that the scene had been staged to like like a suicide
Mrs Allwine, 44, a mother-of-one and a dog trainer, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head inside the family’s home in Cottage Grove on the evening of November 13, 2016.
Her husband told police he and their adopted son discovered the body and suggested that Amy had taken her own life, but police quickly determined that physical and ballistic evidence were inconsistent with a suicide.
Allwine, an information technology specialist, was arrested after a two-month investigation and was initially charged with second-degree murder, before a grand jury indicted him on a charge of first-degree premeditated murder in March 2017. The upgraded count carries a mandatory life sentence.
Kreuser told the court on Tuesday that months before Amy’s death, her philandering spouse had begun scouring the Dark Web in search of a hit man to kill his wife, reported the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Using the nickname ‘dogdaygod,’ the prosecutor alleged that Allwine went on a website called Besa Mafia, which has been used to solicit murders and assaults for hire, and forked out $6,000 for a hit on his wife Amy, which was never carried out.
According to the prosecution, Stephen Allwine then decided to take matters into his own hands and concocted an elaborate plot, which involved sending his wife threatening emails urging her to kill herself, buying the nausea drug scoplamine – dubbed the ‘devils’ drug’ for its ability to erase memory – and ultimately killing her and disguising the crime as a suicide.
What lies beneath: On the outside, the Allwines were happily married, but prosecutors say Stephen had had at least three affairs through the cheaters’ site Ashley Madison
Motive: In court Tuesday, the prosecution argued that Allwine decided to kill his wife because he no longer wanted to be with her, but could not divorce her because of his faith
Kreuser said the church elder drugged Amy with the nausea medication, shot her in the right ear, then dragged her body from the hallway into the bedroom inside the family’s home on 110th Street South in Cottage Grove on November 16, 2016.
To cover his tracks, Allwine allegedly tried to clean up the blood from the hallway, but police using a special chemical later found traces of a large bloodstain at the spot where Amy had been shot.
As part of the alleged scheme, Kreuser told the court that on the afternoon of the murder, Allwine had his eight-year-old son leave the house so he could then bring him back at around 7pm that evening to discover his mother’s body.
Amy was found with her head resting in a large pool of blood in the bedroom. The handgun was resting on her left forearm, even though she was right-handed, meaning that she could not have shot herself in the right side of her head, according to a detailed criminal complaint.
The document, obtained by the DailyMail.com in April 2017, went on to say that the victim had no gunpowder residue and no blood on her hands. Testing showed, however, that Amy’s husband, who is right-handed, had a particle on his right hand consistent with gunshot residue.
A toxicology test also determined that Mrs Allwine’s blood contained over 45 times higher concentration of scopolamine than prescribed for medical purposes.
In his opening statement on Tuesday, defense attorney Kevin DeVore argued that his client’s dalliances with other women were ‘red herrings and distractions,’ and claimed that the prosecution had no ‘traditional evidence’ that Stepehn Allwine committed murder, such as the suspect’s confession, fingerprint or DNA.
‘Just because he had an affair doesn’t mean he killed his wife,’ the lawyer told the jury.
College sweethearts: Stephen and Amy Allwine met at Ambassador University, a small religious school in Texas (pictured in their youth)
Bride and groom: The seemingly happy couple are pictured kissing on their wedding day
DeVore also accused police of contaminating evidence at the scene by removing the 9mm handgun to unload it before it was documented by a police photographer, and of overlooking other pieces of evidence, including neighbors’ reports that two cars were heard speeding away from the Allwines’ home on the day of the killing, and that Stephen’s computer was remotely accessed that same day.
The defense lawyer warned the jurors that his opponent would try to convict his client on ‘theories.’
‘It sounds like an amazing story, but it’s not a TV show or a movie but real life,’ he said.
According to his LinkedIn page, Stephen Allwine works as an IT specialist at an insurance company and has long been active in ministry at the United Church of God.
His late wife was the owner of Active Dogs Sports Training located next door to the family’s home, which went out of business a short time after her death.
Stephen Allwine told police that on the day of his wife’s death, he woke up at around 5.50am and went to his home office in the basement to do some IT work until breakfast at 10am.
At 1pm, Allwine went upstairs and Amy told him she was feeling lightheaded, groggy and dizzy.
Allwine said he asked his wife if she wanted to go to the doctor, but she declined, after which he returned to the basement to resume work, but continued checking on her every so often, the probable cause statement read.
Amy ran a dog training business and was raising the couple’s adopted son (pictured)
Just before 2pm, Allwine said he called Amy’s parents and asked them to pick up their son so he could get more work done.
At around 5pm, he went back upstairs to check up on his wife and found her kneeling by the bed, as if in prayer, which was not unusual for her, he said. Allwine said Amy told him she was fine and asked him to stop checking on her.
The husband told police he then said to Amy he was going to pick their son up from the grandparents and take him to a class at a gym in Woodbury.
Allwine said he last saw his wife alive at 5.29pm when he left to go pick up their son. On the way to the in-laws, he filled up his car at a gas station, then realized he forgot his son’s gym shorts at home.
Allwine picked up the boy from Amy’s parents, he told police, but instead of the gym he decided to take him to a restaurant called Culver’s. After dinner, the father and son returned home and found Amy dead in the bedroom.
Stephen said his son entered the house first, then asked him, ‘Why is Mommy sitting on the floor?’ he was quoted as saying in the complaint.
In the boy’s retelling of the story to police, when he asked his father why his mom was ‘sleeping on the floor,’ Stephen Allwine allegedly replied to the nine-year-old, ‘she’s probably dead,’ then added that there was blood all over the room and a handgun lying on the floor.
When asked about an alarm system at the house, Stephen Allwine told police they had installed it after Amy received death threats earlier that year. He also mentioned during one of the interviews with police that his wife had a $700,000 life insurance policy.
In the months leading up to Amy’s death, according to the complaint, the FBI contacted the Cottage Grove Police Department about a murder plot, in which someone was trying to hire a hit man on the Dark Web to kill Amy Allwine.
In June of that year, an FBI agent met with the Allwine couple to inform them of the discovery and advise them to install a security system at the house. A short time later, Stephen Allwine purchased the 9-millimeter handgun, the complaint stated.
Stephen Allwine was picked up by Cottage Grove police during a traffic stop at around 9.15am as he was on his way home.
The widower’s arrest came at the conclusion of a complex two-month investigation that was carried out by the local police force in conjunction with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
The station Fox 59 reported that Stephen and Amy Allwine met at Ambassador University, a small religious school in Texas, and after they got married they moved to Minnesota to be close to Amy’s family.
Photos of Amy and Stephen shared on a memorial page after her death show a pair of fresh-faced college sweethearts, embracing and grinning at the camera.
There are other photos of the seemingly happy couple kissing on their wedding day, later posing with their young son and other relatives at various joyful family gatherings. But the criminal complaint filed as part of Stephen Allwine’s murder case paints a picture of a marriage on the rocks.
In the course of the investigation, Stephen Allwine admitted to police that he had a monthslong affair with a 46-year-old woman named Michelle, whom he had met on Ashley Madison.
When police interviewed Allwine’s lover, she confirmed that the two had a sexual tryst, which ‘fizzled’ in February 2016, according to the document.
It later emerged that Allwine also had gone out on a date with another woman from Ashley Madison in October 2015, which involved a dinner at a golf course. The evening ended with a kiss, according to the statement.
About two weeks after the killing, a detective had obtained digital evidence from the FBI, which included information from Besa Mafia.
At some point, the Dark Web site had been hacked and posts made on open sources websites revealed lists of used who had allegedly contacted Besa Mafia to its illegal services.
That is how the FBI learned of a conversation on the hacked site involving an individual by the user name ‘dogdaygod.’
Police were ultimately able to link Mr Allwine to the user ‘dogdaygod’ after discovering a digital bitcoin wallet address on a backed up deleted file on the man’s computer; it was the same address that the Dark Web user had provided to Besa Mafia in March 2016 to pay for a hit on Amy Allwine, the probable cause statement read.
The complaint noted that when asked about Dark Web, Stephen Allwine denied knowing anything about it, but evidence found on his computer has revealed that the IT specialist had accessed the Dark Web as early as 2014.
Prosecutors say Allwine had his eight-year-old son leave the house so he could then bring him back at around 7pm that evening to discover his mother’s body
The document states that on February 15, 2016, ‘dogdaygod’ emailed the Besa Mafia website asking how much it would cost to kill Amy Allwine and make it look like a car accident. Besa Mafia responded it would by $6,000, and that bitcoins could be used to pay for the hit.
The next day, the user posted on the hit site that the ‘target’ will be traveling to Moline, Illinois, in March, and received a response that the assassination could be carried out then, according to the complaint.
In the end, the car accident murder-for-hire plot in Moline came to naught, and Besa Mafia recommended to ‘dogdaygod’ to use a sniper, which would cost him $12,000.
The document states that Besa Mafia and the client eventually settled on a new plan to have Amy Allwine killed in her home and then have the residence burned down, but that scheme, too, fell apart.
Having failed to get Mrs Allwine killed, the user ‘dogdaygod’ in May went again on the Dark Web, asking if anyone had the nausea drug scopolamine for sale in the Minneapolis area.
In July of that year, Amy received a menacing email, quoted in the complaint, which was sent to the mother-of-one from an email account jane@gmail.com.
The letter accused Amy of ruining the sender’s life, made specific references to her son and parents, urged her to kill herself in order to save the lives of her loved ones, and even suggested a wide variety of suicide methods.
‘Here is how you can save your family. Commit suicide. If you do not, then you will slowly see things taken away from you, and each time you will know that you could have stopped it,’ read the missive. ‘which will eat you apart from the inside. By the time I am done you will want to end it anyway, so why not do it now and save them.’
The Allwine murder trial is expected to last two weeks.