Minn. Pastor Involved In Ashley Madison Affairs Killed Wife: Jury

WASHINGTON COUNTY, MN – A jury recently found Twin Cities preacher Stephen Carl Allwine, 44, of Cottage Grove, guilty in using the "dark web" to order his wife's murder before deciding to poison and shoot her himself, ultimately staging her death as a suicide. Judge B. William Ekstrum sentenced Allwine to life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors said Allwine, who worked as a preacher for a nearby United Church of God congregation, had affairs with at least two women he met on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking extramarital affairs.

Allwine first learned of the website while counseling married couples from the church, according to investigators.

“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 the jury, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Allwine then turned to the dark web for answers. The dark web, sometimes called the deep web, is the part of the internet that contains a vast amount of information that isn't indexed by search engines, including information that could be useful to track criminals and terrorist activities.

Allwine eventually landed on "Besa Mafia," a site purportedly used for people to hire murderers and assaulters for a price, according to court documents. In reality, Besa Mafia was a scam.

Court records show Besa Mafia told user "dogdaygod," later reveled to be Allwine, that killing someone would cost $5,000. The website said it would cost $6,000 to make the murder look like a car accident, but was later told that the recommended murder method was to have his wife killed by a sniper, which would cost $12,000.

As the elaborate scam unfolded, Besa Mafia told dogdaygod that at one point, the hitman followed his wife, Amy, but did not have an opportunity to kill her. Prosecutors said dogdaygod suggested his wife could be murdered during her trip to Atlanta or at her home, which was to have been burned down after she was killed.

When neither happened, Besa Mafia told dogdaygod that their hitman had been arrested, though police said no such arrest took place.

The hit never happened, but Besa Mafia continued to ask for money from dogdaygod, prosecutors said. Allwine paid the site at least $6000 in Bitcoin, The Washington Post reported.

Investigators said a Bitcoin account transferred from Allwine's phone to his computer proved that he is "dogdaygod."

In November 2016, Allwine called 911 to report he found his wife dead. Allwine told police that Amy killed herself. However, investigators were suspicious after gunpowder residue was found on Allwine's right hand while an autopsy on his wife found no gunpowder or blood on either of her hands, indicating there were no self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Allwine was arrested and charged in January 2017. It took a jury just eight hours to find him guilty of first-degree premeditated murder on Jan. 31, KMSP reported.

Photo: AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File