SPENCER — Six days of testimony wrapped up Tuesday in the Owen Circuit Court trial of Jay White, charged with murder and obstruction of justice.
Investigators say the 39-year-old Spencer man shot Elizabeth “Bizzy” Stevens in the head with no warning as they were riding in a pickup along Texas Pike in rural Owen County.
White claims it was 26-year-old Stevens who fired the bullet that ended her life.
The 11 men and one woman selected as jurors were to hear closing statements from the lawyers Wednesday and then be sequestered to deliberate on White’s guilt or innocence.
Defense expert explains bullet trajectory
During the trial Tuesday, defense experts testified the bullet that killed Stevens was most likely fired not from the front seat where White was sitting, but in the back seat where Stevens was a passenger.
Dr. Andre Loyd, a Minnesota-based biomechanical and accident reconstructionist who specializes in head injuries, described a trip to Owen County to examine and measure the Dodge Ram truck where the Sept. 14, 2021, shooting happened.
He said there were two theories: The gun was fired from the front seat, or in the back seat toward the driver’s side window. He said that given the way the bullet entered and exited the victim’s head, the shot did not originate from the front seat where White was seated.
Previous day's testimony:Murder trial in shooting death of "Bizzy" Stevens continues in Owen County
Firearms specialist re-enacted shooting
Col. Anthony Dill, a military firearms specialist who works with Loyd at a firm called Engineering Systems Inc., used Loyd’s bullet trajectory data, an AR-15 rifle and actual people to re-enact the shooting inside a matching Dodge Ram.
Dill’s aim was to test both theories to determine how the gun could have been fired through the victim’s head within the confines of the four-door pickup.
Dill said it was impossible to re-create the scene exactly as it was the night Stevens died. He determined, after extensive testing, that the bullet trajectory did not match up with the gun being fired from the front seat.
But the alignment of the bullet from start to finish did match the scenario that Stevens pulled the trigger. “My testing did support hypothesis two, an accidental shooting in the back seat,” Dill told jurors.
Defense pathologist questions autopsy results
Dr. Jennifer Nara, a forensic pathologist based in Washington, reviewed the official autopsy report, photos and other evidence from the investigation. She agreed with Dill, determining the AR-15 Stevens was shot with was likely fired in the back seat.
That concurs with White’s claim that a distraught Stevens somehow got ahold of his loaded rifle, pointed it at her head and fired the shot that killed her.
White was a passenger in the front seat of a 2007 Dodge Ram pickup, and Stevens was in the back seat behind driver Tyler Byers.
Byers testified that White shot Stevens, describing how the defendant raised his AR-15, swung his body around to the left and fired one bullet into Stevens’ head, which entered behind her right ear.
Testimony indicated the bullet traveled upward and exited from the upper left side of her head. The window was rolled down, and the bullet, bone fragments, blood, tissue and other matter went out the window. The bullet never was found.
And a wig Stevens was wearing when she was shot, which went missing and never was turned over to the state police lab for testing, was discovered in an evidence room just weeks before White’s trial began.
Former Owen County Sheriff’s Office detective Mitchell Fleetwood described finding “what appeared to be a dried bloody clump of hair of some sort” that resembled the hairpiece he had seen removed from Stevens’ head during the autopsy.
During questioning last week, the Terre Haute pathologist who performed the autopsy said he couldn’t determine how close the gun muzzle was to her head when the bullet was fired.
He ruled her death a homicide, saying it was unlikely she had shot herself.
Dr. Nara disagreed. She studied the trajectory of the bullet through Stevens’ head — right to left, back to front and upward — and said she would rule the manner of death as undetermined, saying it may well have been an accident, not a homicide.
Missing wig never tested
Nara said examining the wig under a microscope would have helped determine how close the gun barrel was to Stevens’ head when the bullet was fired. Gunpowder residue or skin damage may have been absorbed by the wig, she said, making it appear the shot came from farther away.
She estimated the distance from the end of the gun to Stevens’ skull from a few inches to a foot.
“The hairpiece could have blocked the gunpowder and stippling usually seen on skin from a close-up shot,” she said. “I would have called the manner of death undetermined because it could have been an accidental discharge.”
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
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