2018-01-23
Posted January 23, 2018 08:45 pm - Updated January 24, 2018 12:07 pm
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Spielbauer capital murder trial: Child support may have played role in murder, prosecution says
Jeremy Spielbauer
CANYON - Nearing the end of its case, the prosecution presented more details to jurors Tuesday about what may have driven Jeremy “J.D.” Spielbauer to allegedly murder his ex-wife Robin in April 2014.
Spielbauer, 34, is on trial in Randall County for capital murder in Robin’s death.
Investigators say the body of the 32-year-old victim was found a day after she was killed, on April 8, 2014, west of Amarillo near the intersection of Helium Road and West County Road 34 with a gunshot wound to the back of the head and blunt-force trauma.
Testimony depicted Robin in the days leading up to her death as readying to end an ongoing affair with Jeremy, who divorced her in 2012 and remarried the next year.
She had also been planning to take him to court to sort out potentially costly child support issues, according to the testimony.
Alisha Osburn, who said she was a close friend of Robin and also friends with Jeremy, told jurors that Robin told her in a phone conversation “a few days” prior to her death that she had met a new romantic interest and was getting ready to stop an affair with Spielbauer.
“She was happy to talk to this guy and she just wanted to see where this was going to go,” Osburn said from the witness stand. “She just wanted to make sure things were over first.”
Osburn said Robin told her she was going to start legal proceedings to “set in stone” the amount of child support Jeremy was required to pay.
“She wanted it set in stone because it wasn’t being followed … and she needed that to survive on,” Osburn said.
An expert testified that it appeared the two had a divorce decree, signed Nov. 14, 2012, requiring Jeremy Spielbauer to pay $710 per month in child support.
Robin at the time of the divorce had two young daughters with Jeremy.
The expert, Claire Grammer, an assistant district attorney in the Randall County District Attorney’s Office, said that based on the decree it was “quite possible” that a court would not give Jeremy credit for any payments he had been making to Robin.
Grammer said that was because he was not sending the payments through the Texas Child Support State Disbursement Unit, a part of the Texas Attorney General’s Office that serves as an official registry to track child support payments.
Instead, according to testimony from a manager at the credit union where Spielbauer and his wife both banked, Spielbauer had an arrangement to have child support payments directly deposited from his employer into Robin’s account.
Grammer testified that a judge may not find that those payments qualify as child support — which means at the time of the murder Jeremy could’ve been facing back payments stretching over more than a year.
“The evidence we presented today shows that there’s every possibility a court could order that he had never paid any child support, that he was going to owe it all,” Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren told reporters after the trial recessed for the evening.
Pressure related to child support was one factor “playing on (Jeremy’s) mind” before the murder, Farren said.
On the first day of testimony last week, Jessica Huffman testified that Jeremy was an ex-boyfriend of hers and told her several days before the murder that sorting out his child support with the Texas Attorney General’s Office was “too much work” and that he would “handle it himself.”
Spielbauer also said “it would be better if (Robin) just had a bullet in her head,” an emotional Huffman said from the witness stand.
The prosecution’s case has also revolved around Jeremy committing the murder while facing pressure from his then-wife, Katie Phipps.
Phipps testified Monday that by April 2014 she suspected an affair between Robin and Jeremy, and that Phipps and Jeremy had been fighting and arguing about it.
Phipps was originally arrested for the murder, three days after the victim’s body was found, but she was released more than a year later after prosecutors said cellphone tracking data cleared her.
Spielbauer’s defense attorney, Joe Marr Wilson, maintains that Phipps still committed the murder after finding Robin and Jeremy meeting at the secluded Helium Road location.
Phipps was arrested after the alleged murder weapon — a pink-and-black .22 caliber Sig Sauer pistol — was found in a bedroom she shared with Jeremy at their South Manhattan Street home.
Prosecutors say Spielbauer, seeking to remove both women from his life, used the gun to kill Robin and intended for it to be linked back to Phipps.
Farren told reporters he expected to finish presenting his case tomorrow, calling three more witnesses.
After that, the defense will have the opportunity to make its case, with closing statements possibly coming this week.
The trial continues today in 251st District Court with Judge Ana Estevez presiding.