text: 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. 
   
   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. 
   
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   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. ||||| Stephen Carl Allwine shot and killed his wife in their Cottage Grove house after would-be hit men he tried to hire on the dark web bilked him out of his money, jurors were told Tuesday as his trial began in Stillwater. 
   
   Washington County prosecutor Jamie Kreuser said Allwine was having extramarital affairs, didn't want to stay married and killed his wife in November 2016 to end their relationship. 
   
   "He was seeing other women but he didn't want to divorce her because of his position in the church," said Kreuser, referring to the defendant's role as an elder in the United Church of God. 
   
   But defense attorney Kevin DeVore refuted those allegations, telling the jury that the affairs were "red herrings and distractions" and that the prosecution had no evidence Allwine committed a crime. 
   
   "Just because he had an affair doesn't mean he killed his wife," DeVore said, adding that evidence at the death scene was "contaminated" because police officers removed a 9-millimeter handgun to unload it before photographs were taken. 
   
   Allwine, who is being held at the county jail, was charged with second-degree murder before a grand jury indicted him with first-degree premeditated murder in March. The penalty for a first-degree murder conviction is mandatory life in prison. 
   
   Allwine 
   
   In November 2016, police were summoned to the family's house on S. 110th Street in Cottage Grove after Stephen Allwine called 911 and told the dispatcher his wife had shot herself. A recording of the call, played in court, included the voice of the couple's 9-year-old son who was heard asking, "Why did she do that?" 
   
   Allwine, an IT specialist who was then 43, replied, "I don't know, bud, I don't know." 
   
   As the courtroom audience listened to the recording, Allwine sat with his head down. 
   
   The dispatcher who took that call, Victoria Herrmann, testified that Allwine's demeanor ranged "from calm to hysterical" before officers arrived at the house. 
   
   "He never asked if responders were en route," she said. 
   
   Two Cottage Grove police officers found Amy Allwine, 43, on her back in the bedroom, a large pool of blood surrounding her head. She was the owner of Active Dog Sports Training, a business that closed after her death. 
   
   'Not a TV show' 
   
   Kreuser, in her opening statement, told jurors that months before the death of his wife, Stephen Allwine was having affairs with women he had met through the Ashley Madison website, which he had learned about while counseling married couples at his church. He began exploring the dark web, the portion of the internet that search engines don't index. 
   
   It was there that Allwine, using the nickname "dogdaygod," looked for someone to kill his wife, Kreuser said. A website known as Besa Mafia, where people solicit murders and assaults for hire, bilked Allwine out of thousands of dollars, she said. 
   
   So, Kreuser said, Allwine figured out an elaborate plot to disguise his wife's murder as a suicide, which included having their son leave the house that afternoon and then bringing him back to discover her body. 
   
   Allwine drugged his wife and then shot her in the right ear, Kreuser said. He dragged her body from the hallway into the bedroom to stage a suicide, Kreuser said; police found the gun resting on her left forearm. 
   
   Investigators, using a special chemical, found a large bloodstain in the hallway that had been wiped away, she said. 
   
   When DeVore took his turn speaking to the jury, he said the prosecution lacked "traditional evidence" of a crime. Prosecutors would instead try to sway the jury through the findings of a forensic computer analyst, he said. 
   
   "It sounds like an amazing story, but it's not a TV show or a movie but real life," DeVore said. The prosecution would try to convict Allwine with theories, he said, but "that's not good enough in this courtroom." 
   
   Amy Allwine had gunshot residue on her hands, he said, and police ruined the shooting scene when an officer removed the weapon to unload it. An officer put it back on her body before crime photos were taken. Two police officers who testified Tuesday said no photos were taken beforehand. 
   
   DeVore also said witnesses saw two cars accelerating rapidly and leaving the neighborhood before Stephen Allwine reported his wife dead. That happened when Allwine had gone to Woodbury to get his son from his father-in-law's house, DeVore said. 
   
   Allwine and the boy entered the house together and the boy saw his mother's body. 
   
   The trial continues this week in District Judge B. William Ekstrum's court in Washington County.
target: – Stephen Allwine allegedly had no moral objection to sleeping with women other than his wife, but he was opposed to divorce—or, at least, his church was. It's for that reason that he tried to arrange his wife's murder through the dark web and finally killed her himself when no other killer appeared, prosecutors allege. At the start of Allwine's murder trial in Minnesota this week, prosecutors claimed the United Church of God elder began having affairs through the Ashley Madison website, which he learned about while counseling married couples at church, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Since his church views marriage as a lifelong commitment, per the Washington Post, prosecutors believe the then-43-year-old Allwine decided his wife should be killed and paid $6,000 in bitcoin to dark web site Besa Mafia, which claimed a link to organized crime. Though law enforcement officials now suspect Besa Mafia was a scam, they warned the couple that user "Dogdaygod" was plotting Amy Allwine's death. Stephen Allwine then bought a gun, which was found next to his wife's body in the couple's Cottage Grove home three months later on Nov. 13, 2016. Prosecutors say Allwine drugged Amy, 43, with scopolamine, shot her in the head, and staged the scene to look like a suicide—failing to erase gun residue from his hand and traces of blood leading from the scene. A computer search also linked him to "Dogdaygod," prosecutors say. Allwine's defense attorney, on the other hand, says the prosecution has only theories and alleges police contaminated the scene by moving the gun before photos were taken, per the Pioneer Press. "Just because he had an affair doesn't mean he killed his wife," he says of his client, per the Post.