In November of 2016, United Church of God elder, Stephen Allwine, shot his wife in the head. The serial adulterer and frequent user of the Ashely Madison adultery website then took his young son out to dinner. When they arrived home he let his son go into the house first just so the child could discover his dead mother. Things quickly started to unravel when police pegged him as the prime suspect and searched his many IT devices. They soon discovered his use of the Ashely Madison adultery site and even more sinister his use of the dark web to hire a paid assassin to kill his wife. After paying them money, they refused to do it, so Allwine developed his own strategy. (Those details are included in the links below.)
This week Allwine went on trial for premeditated first-degree murder. The situation laid out by prosecutors was a mix of religious guilt and piety, online double lives and desperate measures. According to the prosecutors, Stephen, an Internet technology specialist, had begun cheating on his wife using the infidelity site, Ashley Madison. But to him, divorce was not an option.
“He was seeing other women but he didn’t want to divorce her because of his position in the church,” Washington County prosecutor Jamie Kreuser told a jury this week, the Star Tribune reported. Washington Post
Needless to say, Allwine was soon arrested and after a lengthy court trial by jury, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
His motive was simple they said, leaving Amy was not an option, not for the church-going, well-respected family man who taught others how to have healthy marriages. Murder, however, was an option, he could play the grieving widower, who would no doubt be encouraged to go on with his life, and find a new wife. The $700,000 life insurance would be the financial security he needed to do so.
Despite the defences best efforts to refute the theory put forward by the prosecution, the jury returned after just 8 hours of deliberation, they found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Medium
Allwine went to court recently to have his case overturned. Court documents state the following for refusing his appeal: Minnesota Courts.gov
SYLLABUS1. Sufficient evidence supports the jury’s verdict that appellant is guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.2. The district court did not abuse its discretion by denying appellant’s claim of prosecutorial misconduct without an evidentiary hearing because, even if the alleged facts were proven by a preponderance of the evidence, appellant is conclusively entitled to no relief on that claim.
3. Based on the information before the district court when it denied appellant’s claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel without an evidentiary hearing, the district court did not abuse its discretion because, even if the then-alleged facts were proven by a preponderance of the evidence, appellant is conclusively entitled to no relief on that claim.
4. A motion for reconsideration of a postconviction order that denies relief cannot introduce new evidence.
Affirmed.
MCKEIG, Justice.
After being convicted of first-degree premeditated murder for killing his wife,After being convicted of first-degree premeditated murder for killing his wife, appellant Stephen Allwine1 appeals from his conviction and from the district court’s denial of his petition for postconviction relief. Allwine presents four issues on appeal. First, he argues his conviction must be reversed because the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict that he is guilty. Second, he claims his conviction must be reversed, or alternatively, a postconviction evidentiary hearing must be held, because the State committed prosecutorial misconduct. Third, he argues he is entitled to a new trial because his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance of counsel. Last, he contends an evidentiary hearing must be held to review the opinions of two experts to determine if a new trial is warranted. Because we conclude that these claims have no merit, we affirm the judgment of conviction and the decision of the district court that denied postconviction relief.
FACTS
Stephen and Amy Allwine married in 1998. Stephen worked in information technology. Amy ran a dog training business from the Allwine family residence. Stephen and Amy had a son, J.A. Stephen and Amy were very involved in their church, which does not condone infidelity or divorce. Stephen was a church elder who gave sermons and counseled others in the congregation. If a church elder is found to have committed adultery, that person could no longer serve as an elder and may be asked to leave the congregation. Beginning in 2014, Stephen engaged in multiple extramarital affairs.
In February 2016, a person using the online screen name “dogdayGod” sent a message to Besa Mafia2 on the dark web,3 seeking to hire a person to kill Amy. Soon after, dogdayGod sent a second message to Besa Mafia requesting that Amy be killed while she was on a business trip in Moline, Illinois. DogdayGod provided Besa Mafia with the address of the hotel where Amy would be staying, a physical description of Amy, a description of Amy’s vehicle, and a photograph of Amy. DogdayGod paid Besa Mafia in Bitcoin4 to kill Amy.
In May 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) learned through an anonymous source that dogdayGod was trying to hire a hitman to kill Amy. An FBI agent and a Cottage Grove police detective notified Amy of the threat against her life. Law enforcement advised Amy to take security precautions and to report any suspicious activity to police. The next month, Amy notified the FBI that she had received two anonymous emails threatening to harm her and her family unless she committed suicide. In response to the threats, the FBI began an investigation. Investigators interviewed Stephen and Amy’s work colleagues, and searched Stephen and Amy’s two HP Notebook laptop computers.5 The investigation did not result in any leads.
November 13, 2016: The Day Amy Allwine Was Killed
Stephen awoke shortly before 6:00 a.m. and went to his basement office to work. Around 12:00 p.m., Stephen went upstairs to have lunch with Amy and J.A. Soon after, Amy told Stephen that she was feeling dizzy, lightheaded, and that she was going to bed to rest. Around 1:00 p.m., C.Z., Amy’s father, arrived at the Allwine residence to finish a home project that he had started a few days earlier. Stephen told C.Z. that Amy was in bed and not feeling well. C.Z. did not see his daughter while he was at the Allwine residence.
Around 2:00 p.m., C.Z. left. Minutes later, Stephen called C.Z. and asked him to return and pick up J.A., so that he could take Amy to the clinic for medical attention. C.Z. returned to the Allwine residence, picked up J.A., and the two left.
Around 5:30 p.m., Stephen arrived at C.Z.’s residence to pick up J.A. C.Z. asked Stephen what he learned about Amy’s illness at the clinic. Stephen told C.Z. that Amy decided not to go to the clinic. Following a brief conversation, Stephen and J.A. left. Stephen and J.A. returned to the Allwine residence at approximately 6:52 p.m. Upon entering their home, J.A. saw his mother lying on the floor with a pool of blood around her head. At approximately 7:00 p.m., Stephen called 911. On the 911 call, Stephen told the emergency dispatcher: “I think my wife shot herself. There’s blood all over.” Minutes later, Cottage Grove police arrived at the Allwine residence. Officers went into the master bedroom and saw Amy lying face up on the floor with her pants unbuttoned and unzipped, her hands at her sides, blood on the floor, and a handgun laying on Amy’s left forearm. Officers discovered Amy suffered a gunshot wound to the right side of her head.
Stephen Allwine’s Trial
Following an investigation, a grand jury indicted Stephen Allwine on the charge of first-degree premeditated murder. Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2020). Allwine retained private defense counsel. On January 23, 2018, the case proceeded to trial. The State presented several witnesses and experts, including law enforcement officials, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Amy’s body, and a computer forensic expert who analyzed over 60 electronic devices that were seized from the Allwine residence—including a MacBook Pro laptop computer with the username “S Allwine” and an iPhone 6S named “S Allwine’s iPhone.”
A retired officer testified that Allwine reported to police that he had been scammed out of $6,000 while trying to purchase Bitcoin in March 2016. Another officer testified that the crime scene was “strange” and not consistent with a suicide. The medical examiner testified that she discovered a nontherapeutic amount of scopolamine6 in Amy’s system. Based on the level of scopolamine, the medical examiner agreed with law enforcement’s assessment that Amy died at 3:15 p.m. or earlier on November 13, 2016. The medical examiner also agreed with law enforcement’s assessment that the evidence was not consistent with a suicide.
The computer forensic expert testified that the user S Allwine downloaded TOR— a web browser needed to access the dark web—on the MacBook Pro laptop computer.7 The expert testified that he found a “note” on the MacBook Pro laptop computer with an email address “sharklasers.com,” which allows users to send anonymous emails. The expert testified that the user S Allwine composed an anonymous email on the MacBook Pro laptop computer. The expert testified that minutes before dogdayGod sent a message to Besa Mafia, requesting that Amy be killed while traveling to Moline, Illinois, the user S Allwine ran a Google search of Moline, Illinois on the MacBook Pro laptop computer. The expert testified that the user S Allwine used the MacBook Pro laptop computer to view Amy’s Facebook account and browsed her photographs the day before dogdayGod sent a photo of Amy to Besa Mafia. The expert testified that dogdayGod sought to buy the drug scopolamine online. Last, the expert testified that the same unique 34-digit alphanumeric code that dogdayGod used to pay Besa Mafia in Bitcoin was found on the MacBook Pro laptop computer with the username S Allwine.
The defense argued that Stephen could not have murdered Amy because he was not home at the time Amy was murdered. The defense presented several witnesses8 who all testified to either seeing Amy sometime in the afternoon in her driveway or to hearing an anonymous vehicle speed off quickly around the Allwine residence. On January 31, 2018, the jury found Stephen Allwine guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. The district court sentenced him to life without the possibility of release.
To this day there are many in the United Church of God who give Allwine undying support and believe he is totally innocent. Some even went on to brag what a wonderful opportunity he now had to be able to preach the gospel to his fellow inmates.
Nothing is shocking in the Church of God movement anymore.
A few links to the story:
Preacher Murders Wife and Has Son Find Her Body: What happens when the ones we love and trust, turn out to be the ones we should fear?
A church elder’s Ashley Madison affairs led him to the dark Web — and murder, police say
