Washington County prosecutors allege a Cottage Grove man spent months plotting his wife’s murder rather than divorce her and jeopardize his esteemed role with a local church, but his defense attorney said the state’s evidence has been fraught with “distractions” and “red herrings.”
Opening arguments in the jury trial of Stephen Allwine began Tuesday in Stillwater.
Allwine initially was charged with second-degree murder in January 2017. That charge was raised to first-degree premeditated murder after a grand jury indicted Allwine in March.
Cottage Grove police arrested Allwine, 43, after a two-month investigation into the death of wife, Amy Allwine.
Authorities responding to a 911 call from Stephen Allwine found Amy Allwine dead in her Cottage Grove home in November 2016. She was dead, with a gunshot wound to the head.
A medical examination later revealed excessive doses of scopolamine, a drug used to treat nausea, in Amy Allwine’s body. She did not have a prescription for that drug.
Prosecutors allege Stephen Allwine accessed the “dark web,” a hidden portion of the internet associated with crime, to hire a hit man to kill his wife. After several plans fell through, prosecutors say, Stephen Allwine poisoned his wife and shot her with the family’s 9mm gun.
Defense attorney Kevin Devore said the timeline leading up to Amy Allwine’s death would have made it impossible for Stephen Allwine to have killed her.
The state, Devore said, built a case on “theories with gaps” and used speculation to “bridge those gaps.”
MARRIAGE COUNSELOR, MARITAL AFFAIRS
Assistant Washington County Attorney Jamie Kreuser described Amy Allwine as a loving mother, dog lover, business owner and a woman of faith — not the type of person who would die by suicide.
“Who would want to do this?” Kreuser said of the woman’s alleged murder. “Someone who didn’t want to be married to her anymore.”
Stephen Allwine wrote sermons and counseled married couples at a Newport Church where he served as a deacon and later a church elder.
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Through those capacities, Kreuser said, Stephen learned about Ashley Madison, a dating website catering to married people seeking affairs.
Investigators, according to the criminal complaint, identified at least two women Stephen Allwine met through the website.
Devore acknowledged Stephen Allwine’s relationships with other women, but said having affairs doesn’t mean he killed his wife “or even didn’t love his wife.”
Kreuser said Stephen Allwine’s role as an elder and longtime congregant at the church could have kept him from divorcing his wife, despite wishes to end the marriage.
Officials with the FBI had been in contact with the family since, about anonymous emails Amy Allwine received in July 2016 graphically threatening to harm her family if she did not commit suicide.
Investigators who searched Stephen Allwine’s computer, according to the complaint, found searches for the names of his wife’s family members.
The emails were sent through a Tor, or an anonymous router used to access the dark web.
DARK WEB
FBI officials contacted Cottage Grove police in early 2016 about someone accessing the dark web and soliciting Amy Allwine’s murder under the username “dogdaygod” on “Besa Mafia,” a website associated with hired murders and assaults.
The user, prosecutors say, provided Besa Mafia with Amy Allwine’s description and whereabouts.
The user discussed two possible attempts to kill Amy Allwine, neither of which transpired.
Several months later, the same user inquired on a different dark web site about buying scopolamine, the drug found in Amy Allwines’s body, using a virtual currency called bitcoin.
In the search of the Allwine home following Amy Allwine’s death, detectives found a document backup on Stephen Allwine’s computer from his phone containing a bitcoin code, a sequence Kreuser said would have been “virtually impossible to replicate.”
Investigators found the same code posted to the Besa Mafia website by user “dogdaygod.”
Devore questioned the credibility of the computer analyst who performed forensic examinations on Stephen Allwine’s computers and said the investigation of the home had been “contaminated.”
Police officers, Devore said, removed the gun found near Amy Allwine’s body to remove bullets and take photos before returning it to its original position.
Devore pointed to at least three neighbors who reported seeing Amy Allwine outside her home the night of her death and reported hearing two vehicles “racing” out of the neighborhood around then.
He also said authorities failed to follow up on an unknown user who remotely accessed Stephen Allwine’s computer the day of Amy Allwine’s death.
“It sounds like an amazing story,” Devore said, but he said the narrative was more akin to a movie.