The trial of a Center Township man accused of murdering his wife moved Wednesday to one of her former clients and friends, who testified he bought her a gun for her 21st birthday.
Prosecutors have argued that Steven Lindsey, 36, used the gun to kill Melinda Lindsey on Jan. 16, 2015, in their home on Indiana 149.
In the fourth day of testimony, Trinidad Alfaro, 65, of Hobart, told the jury that he met Melinda Lindsey when she was 19 and working as a stripper at PoleKatz in Hammond.
The millwright had not gone to the strip club before but soon after became a regular, going several times a week, to get several lap dances a night from Lindsey, who he knew then by her stage name Tiffany.
Several months after he first met her, Alfaro testified, the two began hanging out away from the club.
“She reached out to me for some funds, needed money to pay the rent,” he said. “I helped her out.”
That included paying about $700 to $800 for surgery on her wisdom teeth, another $700 to $800 to help her go to a photo shoot in Texas to help her start a modeling career, giving her a 1991 Chevrolet Blazer and then giving her another car, a 2004 Lincoln, that she paid the remaining $5,000 on. He would also watch her dogs sometimes, Alfaro said.
He also sold her a gun on her 21st birthday, more than a year before she was killed, for $200, he said. He had bought the gun just a few weeks prior for $500, knowing he would sell it to her.
Melinda Lindsey never mentioned any specific threats against her when he bought it, although Steven Lindsey told police shortly after she was killed that she started keeping it on her nightstand while sleeping because she thought someone was stalking her.
Defense attorney Larry Rogers grilled Alfaro on these gifts, asking why he bought them for her.
“Isn’t it true you became infatuated with the girl you knew as Tiffany?” Rogers asked.
“I would call it a friendship,” Alfaro said, adding that she had told him she had no one else to help her out.
He added that there was never a romantic relationship outside of the lap dances he paid for at the club and that they stopped seeing each other once she started seeing Steven Lindsey and stopped working at the strip club.
“I didn’t want to cause problems,” he said.
Rogers has argued that police never properly investigated some of Lindsey’s former clients as a suspect, but Alfaro was at work when she was killed, which deputy prosecuting attorney Cheryl Polarek said was confirmed by security footage and records of him swiping his badge.
Lindsey took notes throughout Alfaro’s testimony, as he has for much of the trial.
Porter County Detective Roger Bowles, who was then working as a crime scene investigator, testified later about what he saw at the scene of the shooting, including the lack of any sign of damage or other sign of a forced entry to the front door and a looped zip tie found near the foot of Melinda Lindsey. Bowles testified that another officer had told him that other than moving a blanket that was on top of her, nothing else had been touched, which led him to believe that’s where the zip tie was before police arrived.
The trial, which is expected to last about a month, is set to continue Tuesday.
