A reader here with impeccable sources made the following comment:
Steve Allwine wanted to keep his position in the church. Do you know how we know this? Because he stayed in the church during the two years he was actively attempting to kill his wife through a series of failed attempts, because he didn't just divorce her, because he kept giving sermons after he had killed her, and he has promised to preach COG doctrine in prison going forward. To say that for Steve, in his brain, that the church wasn't any kind of consideration in his plans to commit this atrocity, is completely delusional, and the prosecution was correct to call attention to that into their arguments.
I get that church people feel hurt by the notion that their community culture could be entangled in the origins of such a terrible crime, but these things don't happen in a vacuum. Steve Allwine didn't just instantly become evil. His thoughts are actions were influenced by the various presences in his life, as it is with all of us, and the church was one of them. Adulterous dating websites were another. An unhappy marriage yet another. There's no telling what else he was up to and what else was leaking into his brain. But to try and disconnect him from the church, as UCG has desperately been trying to do, is completely missing the mark.
When I asked this person if Allwine actually said such a thing, I was referred to an article on the site for Fox9 News.
Stephen Allwine sentenced to life in prison for wife's murder
TAKING HIS BIBLE TO PRISON
Allwine did not take the stand in his own defense during the trial. His defense attorney said they spoke exhaustively about the decision. Allwine’s rambling and disjointed eight-minute statement before sentencing represents his only public comments.
“I never went to sleep, and I never woke up without kissing her,” Allwine told the court before he was sentenced. “The grief of losing her is tremendous.”
“No one ever talked bad about our relationship,” said Allwine. He said they never even argued.
Allwine said he has met drug addicts, child molestors, and kidnappers while in the Washington County Jail, and he’s been conducting Bible study.
“I’m going to take my Bible to St. Cloud (Prison), and see what happens,” Allwine said.
The salacious nature of the case has attracted the interest of news networks like CBS’s “48 Hours,” NBC’s “Dateline,” and CNN.
But Washington County Assistant Attorney Jamie Lynn Kreuser said prosecutors remained focused on the victim. “At the end of the day justice was served, and I’m glad for Amy and her family.”The defenders of UCG will lash out in anger saying he won't be teaching UCG doctrines, but really, what else does he know? The only Bible knowledge he has was from United Church of God, a legalistic subgroup of Armstrongism.
He will teach the restless prisoners all about the Sabbath and holy days.
He won't eat pork in the prison cafeteria or participate in Christmas events, even though it was OK to poison his wife and then shoot her.
He will teach his fellow prisoners to look forward to the kingdom where they will be free at last, just as he will be. Though he will have a planet to rule over and they won't.
Months will go by and UCG ministers will start visiting him, encouraging him to witness to the disenfranchised lost souls in the prison. Gradually he will earn enough merits through good works to be allowed back into the fold. UCG will quietly tout its new found prison minister and soon all will be forgiven.