The Dark Web Assassin

Stephen Allwine worked in information technology in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, and was an elder in the United Church of God. His wife, Amy, ran a dog training business. He was conducting affairs arranged online, and Amy’s death would pay him $700,000 in life insurance. During 2016, using the handle “dogdaygod,” he paid a dark web murder-for-hire site $13,000 in Bitcoin to have Amy killed on a trip. The site took the money and did nothing. He also emailed her anonymously, pressing her to end her own life.

On November 13, 2016, Allwine called police to say he had come home from dinner with their nine-year-old son and found Amy shot. The scene did not hold together. The handgun lay by her left side although she was right-handed, her hands carried no gunshot residue while his did, and blood had been cleaned from the floor before officers arrived. An autopsy found scopolamine, a sedative she had no prescription for, at many times a therapeutic dose.

Investigators traced scopolamine searches to his computer and found the Bitcoin address “dogdaygod” had used to pay the hitman site stored on his own devices. A jury convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder on January 31, 2018, and he was sentenced to life without release. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2021 and rejected a second postconviction appeal in 2023.