Murder trial testimony focuses on defendant's failed polygraph and victim's 'missing' wig

SPENCER — Jay White not only failed the lie detector test he agreed to take after being charged with killing 26-year-old Elizabeth "Bizzy" Stevens, he failed badly.

That was the opinion a polygraph expert offered Monday during White’s Owen Circuit Court trial on murder and obstruction of justice charges.

“He was nowhere near passing,” said John Campbell, a now-retired state police sergeant who specializes in giving polygraph exams.

Jurors watched a nearly three-hour videotape of the polygraph session, during which White describes how Stevens talked of suicide, eventually holding his loaded AR-15 rifle to her head.

“She pulled the gun up and pretended like she was gonna shoot herself, then she put it down and then she’d hold it back up,” White said during the polygraph. “And I said, ‘Put that down, don’t be stupid.’”

Stevens was the passenger in the back seat of a pickup being driven by Spencer resident Tyler Byers. Last week, Byers testified there was no suicide, that White shot Stevens from the front seat of the Dodge Ram as they drove down Texas Pike.

“The truck was swerving, and I had to grab the wheel because Tyler was driving so sloppy, and he was egging her on saying, ‘Do it, just do it,’ and then the gun went off — boom — and she’s laying there with her head blowed off.”

Both men said Byers stopped the truck, opened the back door and Stevens’ body fell out. They drove away, leaving her there. Not long after that, a man on his way home from Walmart found the body.

Previous day's testimony: Murder trial in shooting death of "Bizzy" Stevens continues in Owen County

White said he agreed to take a polygraph test “to show them that I’m not capable of this … that I’m wrongly accused of a murder. They have me lined up as the one who shot her. I didn’t shoot her.”

White admitted lying to police initially, saying he and Byers had dropped Stevens off, alive, at the Circle K gas station in Spencer that night in the fall of 2021.

The 39-year-old said Byers had promised to tell police the next day what had happened: that Stevens shot herself.

Instead, Byers told investigators White had the rifle in his hands, turned and shot Stevens before he knew what had happened. White said that's a lie.

“I made a mistake by trusting that (expletive) to tell the cops the truth,” White told Campbell. “If I pulled the trigger, I’d admit to that.”

Stevens' bloody wig discovered in evidence room

Another witness solved the mystery of what happened to a wig the Spencer woman was wearing when the .223-caliber bullet was fired into her skull on Sept. 14, 2021.

There had been several references to the wig during the trial, with no insights about where it ended up.

But Monday afternoon, former Owen County Sheriff’s Office deputy Mitchell Fleetwood told jurors that what is believed to be the wig in question was located a few weeks ago in a sheriff’s department evidence room.

Fleetwood, now an officer for the Spencer Police Department, was the lead investigator in the Stevens’ case.

“I believe I did collect the wig,” Fleetwood said when questioned by defense lawyer Megan Schueler, who said the hairpiece wasn’t secured according to evidence-gathering protocols.

She said the item sat on a shelf in an unmarked, unsealed bag from September 2021 until late March of this year.

Fleetwood said the item “appeared to be a dried bloody clump of hair of some sort” that he said “appeared to resemble the hairpiece” from the autopsy.

He said he didn’t know why it wasn’t processed with the other evidence.

During testimony last week, former Owen County Coroner Angi Frank said that when she saw the body where it had been dumped along a rural road, there was a “gaping hole in her head.”

She said the wig held shattered pieces of the victim’s skull in place and that if not for the mesh lining of the wig, “there wouldn’t have been much left” to examine.

When asked if he looked at a wig for brain matter and bullet fragments during Stevens’ autopsy, Terre Haute forensic pathologist Dr. Bamidele Adeagbo responded, “I believe I did.”

A sergeant working on the case who was at the autopsy reportedly held the evidence bag the wig was placed in, but were it ended up was unknown.

Months later, when the bag arrived at the Indiana State Police laboratory in Indianapolis, the wig wasn’t inside.

An ISP evidence technician testified one of the sealed brown paper bags purporting to contain evidence in the case was empty when she cut the security seal and opened the bag to retrieve the contents.

“I had another examiner check” inside the bag, she testified. “It was a first for me. I had never received an empty bag.”

Since it wasn’t preserved and processed, it’s not a part of the evidence in the case.

The trial 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 continues: Focus on failed polygraph and victim's wig