The defense attorney for a Porter County man accused of killing his wife has focused during his trial on the fact that no blood was ever found on his clothes.
But a witness for the prosecution, LaPorte County Detective Capt. Patrick Cicero, a blood spatter expert, testified Tuesday that that does not rule Steven Lindsey, 36, out as the killer.
Lindsey is standing trial on the charge that he shot his wife, Melinda Lindsey, 23, in the head in their bedroom on the morning of Jan. 16, 2015.
Lindsey claims an intruder caught him by surprise, tied him and left him in their daughter’s bedroom before shooting his wife.
Previous witnesses have testified that they could not find any blood on the clothing Lindsey was wearing that morning, and Cicero, who did not testify during Lindsey’s November trial that ended in a hung jury, also told the jury that he went over the clothing for more than an hour as well without finding any sign of blood.
He also explained to the jury that when a bullet enters the head, it’s common for blood and other bodily fluid to fly backwards anywhere from 3 to 12 feet.
However, Cicero said that if something blocks it, such as the kind of curly hair that Melinda Lindsey had, then it’s not uncommon for there to be very little or no back spatter.
“It could very well block all the back spatter,” Cicero said of her hair.
He also testified that several spots of blood found on the wall near where the shooter would have stood did not match a gunshot wound, as they were too big and more circular in shape than elliptical. Other witnesses previously testified that at least two of the spots on the wall actually matched the DNA of Steven Lindsey and not his wife.
Earlier in the day, Deputy Prosecutor Cheryl Polarek and a police officer read to the jury testimony Lindsey made during the November trial, including statements by him he had taken time off work in December 2014 and January 2015 to help his wife wean herself off of an addiction to prescription painkillers and his concern about several incidences that happened to their home in the week before his wife’s death, including coming home to find a window open and a screen cut, items missing from Melinda Lindsey’s car, and footprints coming toward their house from the back.
Rogers has argued throughout the trial that these are signs of a stalker, but the police officer, reading in a monotone voice as instructed, read out Lindsey’s testimony that it could also have been a thief staking out the house.
When pressed by the government why he didn’t take more precautions with the house in response to these incidences, such as making sure all windows and doors were locked, Lindsey testified that he never thought it would escalate to his wife being shot.
“I could never fathom that that was going to happen,” the officer read from Lindsey’s testimony.
Lindsey, wearing black pants and a light blue dress shirt, looked down at paper on the table in front of him as the police officer read his words from four months ago.
According to the transcript, he also testified that he had taken one dose of Xanax and two doses of Valium along with at least five shots of whiskey the night before, which the government also questioned him about doing if he was so concerned for his wife.
“It was a bad decision,” Lindsey says in the transcript.
He was also grilled in November about his claim that when he woke up in his daughter’s bedroom at the sound of the gunshot that he couldn’t get up even though only his hands were tied, not his feet.
“I don’t know that I could have,” he says in the transcript.
Lindsey also testified according to the transcript at the time that the reason he tried to collect on a $1.1 million life insurance policy for his wife was because he could tell police suspected him and he wanted the money to pay for his own private investigator. The claim was later denied because of inaccuracies on the application.
The trial, which is in its fourth week, is expected to continue Wednesday.
