The pictures of Steven Lindsey’s home on the day his wife died show a cluttered house: a bag of chips laying next to a purse on the coffee table, a blanket wadded up on the couch with a remote on top of it and even a kitchen pot laying on a loveseat in the living room.
But Porter County Detective Roger Bowles testified Tuesday that despite the items scattered around the house, there was no sign that a struggle had ensued the morning Melinda Kirby Lindsey, 23, was shot to death on Jan. 16, 2015.
Steven Lindsey, 36, claims he woke up just after 6 a.m. that morning to someone putting him in a chokehold before knocking him out, tying him up and taking him to his daughter’s bedroom. Lindsey told police he woke up to the sound of a gunshot.
Prosecutors argue he made up that story to hide that he shot his wife.
Bowles, who continued his testimony from Monday afternoon, worked the scene as a crime scene investigator and said he was looking for items knocked over or other signs of a struggle. He noted that the blanket lay entirely on the couch and was bunched up, which didn’t match Lindsey’s story that he fell asleep lying on the couch. Bowles also pointed to the fact that the coffee table had hinged legs that buckled easily when he tried to move it, yet the coffee table remained standing when police arrived and a child’s chair was tucked neatly into it.
A few small items can be seen lying on the floor in the living room in pictures police took but the floor in both the living room and kitchen, where someone would have had to walk through to take Lindsey to the child’s bedroom, were otherwise clear. Various items were sitting on the kitchen countertop undisturbed and a mop was propped up next to a doorway that leads to the child’s bedroom.
Inside the child’s bedroom, various toys were lined up neatly around the room, and a small child’s table and two chairs, which Bowles called flimsy, sat upright and tucked in.
“I’m not seeing a disturbance in this room,” he said.
Bowles also pointed out a picture of the home’s kitchen sink, where a large pot was filled with water with a pair of white cotton gloves sitting inside.
Bowles said that someone could have worn the gloves when shooting Melinda Lindsey and then put them in the water to wash any gunpowder residue off. He said residue is fragile and that he doesn’t know of any way to test for it in water.
“It’s very easy to just wash that stuff off,” he said.
Lindsey told police they used the gloves to clean ashes out of their fireplace, Bowles testified, but the water did not appear ashy.
He also described photos taken the next day at the Lindsey’s house in which another officer attempted to tie his hands himself behind his back to match how Lindsey was found. Bowles said the officer was able to do it, get down on the floor and then get back up and open the door. When police arrived at the house and heard Lindsey in the child’s bedroom, he told them he couldn’t get up.
Bowles also told the jury about arresting Lindsey about a month after his wife was killed by conducting a traffic stop on him as he was on his way to see his daughter. Bowles said about five to six officers took part and had their guns drawn.
Bowles said Lindsey appeared calm, never asking about why he was being arrested.
“What struck me odd was he was pretty relaxed and he never questioned me about what the warrant was for,” he testified.
However, defense attorney Larry Rogers questioned this, asking if having five or six officers with guns drawn would seem to be a normal traffic stop.
He also questioned Bowles on evidence that police did not collect, such as dusting doorknobs for fingerprints on door handles or inspecting Melinda Lindsey’s car after learning she had reported someone had broken into it just a week before she was killed.
“Bottom line, that vehicle should have been impounded,” Rogers said.
Bowles said, though, that he knew other people, including police who first arrived at the scene, had already opened the car door since then and that the items taken would likely have been sitting out in the open, meaning whoever took them would not have needed to touch the inside of the car. He also questioned whether the items were stolen as one of the items reported missing, a set of identification tags for their dogs, was found in a file inside the house.
As for the doorknobs, Bowles told the jury that he knew police had been touching them when they first arrived and that they would be contaminated.
The trial, which is in the second week, could be delayed Wednesday depending on weather.
