Murder trial in shooting death of "Bizzy" Stevens continues in Owen County
SPENCER — When police investigating the death of 26-year-old Elizabeth "Bizzy" Stevens found the pickup truck she was shot in, bloody water was dripping onto the Walmart parking lot pavement.
That detail was among the testimony police presented in Owen Circuit Court last week in the murder trial of Jay D. White, a 39-year-old Spencer man charged with shooting Stevens in the head with an AR-15 rifle two-and-a-half years ago.
The truck was a black 2007 Dodge Ram, a four-door with an engine prone to overheating and owned by a man named Tyler D. Byers. Whoever tried to clean up the bloody mess inside Byers’ truck after the shooting didn’t do a very good job, evident by the pooled red liquid outside Walmart.
Two versions of the shooting of Bizzy Stevens
On Friday, Byers testified he was behind the wheel of his truck the night of Sept. 14, 2021, driving on Texas Pike in Owen County. He told jurors that White, sitting in the front passenger seat, suddenly raised his AR-15 rifle, turned his upper body to the left and shot Stevens, who was sitting in the back seat, once in the head.
“My mind went blank,” he said. “I was scared and in shock. I’m scared right now.”
Byers said White told him to get out of the truck and open the back seat driver’s side door and get Stevens out. “She fell out,” Byers said. “I didn’t touch her.”
They left her body sprawled on the side of the rural road and drove away. Byers said that just after the gun fired, White grabbed the spent shell casing “and said he was gonna save it as a souvenir.”
He testified the two drove to White’s home, where he said the defendant used a garden hose to clean blood, bone fragments and brain matter from the inside and exterior the Dodge Ram. Then he drove White to his father’s house, where Byers and his fiance were living, to get his own truck.
Byers said he went to sleep. The next morning, a Wednesday, he parked his truck at the Spencer Walmart as usual, where he met up with others on a work crew and departed for a day on the job.
The truck, bloody water dripping from the doors, stayed parked until police searched and processed it later that day and towed it to an evidence storage bay, where it remains.
Byers said he didn’t initially report the incident because he was afraid of White, and also of what might happen to him with the police since he was present when Stevens died.
He said White told him that if investigators contacted him, he was to say they had dropped Stevens at the Circle K in Spencer that September night and then gone on their way.
Instead, he reported that Stevens had given him $10 for gas to drive her to a house in Freeman to get some clothing. He said that after the three left there, Stevens was yelling and complaining in the back seat of the truck. Then he saw the gun in White’s hands, saw him pivot and heard a loud gunblast near his right ear.
When police questioned White after the shooting, at 2 a.m. the next morning and again at noon that day, he repeated the same story several times: that Stevens wanted out of the truck and they dropped her off at the Circle K gas station.
“I swear, we dropped her off. She was on her phone and flipping out. I don’t know how she got to Texas Pike.”
He changed his story after being arrested on charges of murder and obstruction of justice and learning that Byers had named White as Stevens’ killer.
White claims the woman somehow had the rifle in her hands, threatened suicide, then shot herself.
A police detective said White told him Byers was supposed to have cleared up the situation the day after it happened by telling police the “real truth” about Stevens’ death.
“I guess it’s his (Byers’) story against mine, right?” White said during a police interview.
Earlier testimony: Defense, prosecution offer very different scenarios in shooting death of 'Bizzy' Stevens
Evidence gone missing
In this case, several police interviews recorded on body cameras were automatically deleted after six months because they weren’t saved. And there have been references to a missing wig Stevens was wearing when she was shot that wasn’t in its evidence bag when the trial came around.
Defense attorney Megan Schueler pointed out that no measurements of the interior of the truck or the AR-15 rifle were taken to test the accounts of how Stevens ended up shot in the back seat and dead.
Forensic expert ruled death a homicide
Testimony from Dr. Bamidele Adeagbo, the Terre Haute forensic pathologist who did Stevens’ autopsy, was unable to clarify how close the gun was to the right side of Stevens’ head when the bullet was fired. He called it “unlikely” that she died by suicide and listed the manner of death as homicide.
He said .223-caliber bullet entered the victim's head above and behind her right earlobe, then shattered the other side of her head as the bullet continued and flew out the open car widow. There was so much tissue damage he couldn’t locate an exit wound.
During Dr. Adeagbo’s testimony, graphic 8-by-10-inch color photos of Stevens’ injuries taken during the autopsy were visible to the victim’s family members seated nearby. Several rushed from the courtroom in tears; one wailed in the hallway as Adeagbo continued answering questions.
The trial continues and is expected to conclude this week.
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Murder trial in shooting death of "Bizzy" Stevens continues
