After spending the past two days appearing stoic and composed sitting at the defense table as the prosecution presented its case against him, Dowagiac murder suspect Terry Stineback appeared distraught — his head down with his eyes closed — while the speakers to his right played the audio of the 911 call he placed last May, minutes after fatally shooting his wife Laura in their bedroom.

“It’s pretty bad,” Stineback said in the call, after telling the dispatcher on the end of the line, Sean Wakefield, there had been shooting at his residence on Flanders Street in Wayne Township.

“What’s going on over there?” Wakefield asked in response.

“My wife, she needs medical assistance,” Stineback says on the recording.

“What happened to your wife?”

“She got shot.”

“Did you shoot her?”

“…Yeah.”

After telling the dispatcher that he used a handgun to shoot the victim, Stineback told Wakefield that he and his wife’s adopted daughter was still in the house with him and that he didn’t see his wife breathing.

“Do you think your wife is beyond any medical attention?” Wakefield asked, repeating his question after Stineback failed to answer the first time.

“…I think so,” the man eventually responded.

 

Prosecution concludes case

The dramatic call marked the opening of what was an emotional and intense third day of testimony in Stineback’s trial before Judge Michael Dodge in Cass County Court Thursday. Both Assistant Prosecutor Tiffiny Vohwinkle and defense attorney Edwin Johnson presented their cases to the 12 jurors that day, with both resting their cases and delivering their closing arguments to the men and women tasked with deciding the 44-year-old Dowagiac man’s fate.

With all witnesses and evidence presented before the panel, the jury is set to begin deliberations Friday, where they decide whether or not Stineback is guilty on charges of open murder, assault with intent to murder and felony firearm charges.

Under state law, open murder charges mean the jury can possibly find Stineback guilty of first- or second-degree murder, or of voluntary manslaughter.

The charges against the man stem from the shooting death of his 42-year-old wife, Laura Stineback, who he killed at their home outside Dowagiac last year, on May 12.

Following the presentation of Stineback’s 911 call, Vohwinkle called Dr. Stephen Cohle, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy upon the victim’s body, to share his findings with the jury.

During his presentation, the doctor concluded that the woman was shot three different times, with two of the bullets penetrating her heart, lungs and other vital organs — wounds that would have likely caused her to die within minutes, he said. Based of the lack of residual gunpowder left on her remains, Cohle concluded that Stineback must have been at least four feet away from the victim when he fired those rounds into her body.

During Johnson’s cross-examination of the coroner, Cohle admitted that, based on the evidence, he could not conclude whether or not Laura Stineback was executed by her husband or he killed her while she was reaching for what Stineback believed was a gun she stowed behind the bed, as he is claiming.

In addition, the doctor said he did not find any physical wounds on the woman’s neck or body that indicated she had been strangled by the defendant, as is claimed by the prosecution, he said.

“Certainly, I would expect that a violent confrontation would leave some marks on the victim,” Cohle said.

Following Cohle’s testimony, Vohwinkle rested the people’s case.

 

Defendant gives account of events

Johnson opened his client’s defense by calling Stineback himself to the stand, to describe to the jury his account of what happened that day.

According to the defendant, soon after his arrival to the Michigan Department of Transportation garage he worked at in Niles, he began receiving text messages from his wife that he claimed “irked” him, he said. The messages prompted him to call his wife, which turned into a heated conversation between the two, Stineback said.

He admitted to the court that he did refer to his wife at one point as a “crazy b****,” but that it was a label he — and she — often used to describe herself, he said.

“It’s what she referred to herself as, so it was natural to refer to her the same way,” he said. “She owned the word with pride.”

Due to his wife’s persistent texting, which Stineback claimed was causing him to fear having a panic attack, he left work early that day, returning to their home to have a couple beers and go turkey hunting, he said. He later went to the Eagle’s Club shortly after his wife returned home from taking her father to a doctor’s appointment. Stineback said he ordered a few drinks and dinner.

Moments after returning home that night, he said Laura hit him in his in chest after making a remark about his phone. She then began flailing at him, causing him to grab her waist and take her down to restrain her, Stineback said.

After their daughter got between the two of them, he said that he briefly followed the two to their respective bedrooms before going to the property’s pole barn to smoke and contemplate where to sleep that night.

Upon returning to the master bedroom where his wife was to grab a spare pillow and blankets, they resumed their fight. When he asked her if she wanted him to move out and into the other home she owned, he said she responded by saying, “f*** you. You’re done.” Stineback said his wife spun around and reached behind the bed, where he said she kept her .380 caliber handgun.

In response, he reached behind him into the dresser drawer where he kept a 9 millimeter pistol, and then fired the initial two shots at her body, followed closely by a third round.

After firing his salvo, Stineback asked his wife where her gun was, but received no response. After hearing her rasping breathing and seeing one of the wounds she received on her back, he realized he had hit her, he said.

Noticing that she did not in fact draw a gun on him, he initially contemplated suicide, noting that given the fact she was unarmed and that he had been drinking earlier that day, the circumstances didn’t look good for him. However, he chose to instead call 911 and tell the police what happened after hearing his daughter knock on the closed bedroom door, he said.

When asked by Johnson if Stineback felt he made a mistake shooting his wife, the man replied that he believed so.

“It’s one I live with every day,” he said.

In spite of that, Stineback said he legitimately felt his life was threatened by Laura, saying that she had been physically abusive with him the past and had even threatened once to shoot him and “feed him to the pigs,” he said.

Johnson also called three of Laura Stineback’s children (who she had before marrying the defendant), who all said that their mother had a short temper and was argumentative, and had gotten into a physical altercation with her sister once. They also spoke highly of their stepfather, saying they had rarely seen him angry.

 

Prosecution, defense offered impassioned closing statements

In her closing argument to the jury, Vohwinkle said Stineback’s claim of self-defense did not mesh with the evidence presented during the trial. She said that on top of the fact the handgun he claimed his wife was reaching for wasn’t actually nearby the bed, the fact that the bloodstains the bed sheets were not disturbed during the shooting showed that she was not diving behind the bed.

Vohwinkle characterized the defendant as a man who wanted to get out of his marriage at any cost and would have strangled his wife to death in their kitchen had their daughter not intervened.

“Terry Stineback thought about Terry Stineback; he thought about himself,” Vohwinkle said. “He went up, he walked up those stairs, he followed his wife of 10 years, locked her in the door and locked her inside. He shot her more than once. He shot her more than twice. He shot her three times.”

Johnson, in his closing argument, also said the evidence demonstrated his client’s innocence of murder, stating that the coroner’s findings show that the shooting wasn’t an execution and that the lack of markings on Laura’s body shows that he didn’t intend to kill her during their altercation in the kitchen before the shooting.

“If he was attempting to kill her downstairs, then she would either be hurt or she would be dead, because as the prosecution pointed out, he was 5 foot 8 and 205 pounds,” Johnson said.

The attorney instead said Stineback made an error in judgment and shot his unarmed wife in a misguided attempt at self-defense; however, under Michigan law, even if you are wrong in your belief, if you have a reasonable belief your life is threatened you can take deadly force to defend yourself and not be culpable of murder, the attorney said.

Judge Dodge will deliver instructions to the 12 jurors Friday in Cass County court. After that, deliberations will begin.

Leader Publications will have results of Friday’s proceedings online, assuming the jury delivers a verdict that day.