Preacher Found Guilty of Staging Wife’s Murder as Suicide

A Minnesota pastor has been found guilty of murder after he staged his wife's death to look like a suicide.

Stephen Allwine was convicted by a Washington County jury Wednesday, Jan. 31 of the premeditated murder of his wife, 43-year-old Amy Allwine, the New York Post reports.

"We can summon no words to describe life without Amy," Amy Allwine's family said in a statement following the conviction. "We loved her and miss her tremendously. We now turn to the path ahead of privately healing and grieving."

In January 2017, authorities found Amy Allwine's body lying in a pool of blood in her bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head after her husband called 911 to report a suicide. Investigators ruled out suicide when no gunpowder was found on the victim's hands. The lack of blood spatter on the bedspread and nightstand, as well as the gun resting on her left elbow even though she was right handed, also pointed to foul play.

Prosecutors allege that Allwine purchased a large quantiy of a nausea drug to sedate his wife. He then shot her in the hallway of their home and moved her body to the bedroom to make it appear as though she had committed suicide.

An investigation into the woman's death found that Allwine, a pastor in the United Church of God, was an avid user of adultery site Ashley Madison and had at least three affairs with women he met through the site, according to the New York Post. Instead of divorcing his wife, Allwine attempted to hire a htiman on the dark web to kill his wife. He allegedly initially paid $6,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoin for the hit, which he requested look like an accident. When the site kept asking for more money and failed to follow through with the murder, Allwine took it upon himself to kill his wife.