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. Two Cottage Grove police officers found Amy Allwine, 43, on her back in the bedroom, a large pool of blood surrounding her head. 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.  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. 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. “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. '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. 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. 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. “It sounds like an amazing story,” Devore said, but he said the narrative was more akin to a movie.
– 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.