When police entered the home of Trent Mallory and his fiancée, Amber Smith, in Levering, Michigan, on March 6, 2014, they found the place to be a mess. Clothes, books and food were thrown everywhere, as if the family had been robbed. And in the bedroom, 35-year-old Trent Mallory was shot while lying in bed.

Smith called 911 around 10:35 a.m., saying she had returned home after taking one son to school and the other to the doctor, before stopping to eat and see her sister. When she returned home, she found that the door was open.

Mallory and Smith had been together for over five years and had a child together, as well as another child that Mallory raised as her own.

“Trent and Amber seemed to love each other a lot,” Trey Sullivan, Smith’s nephew, said on Murderous relationship with Faith Jenkins. “They were never officially married, but you would never have known that from the outside.”

But as police investigated Smith and Mallory’s family and finances more closely, they discovered their relationship wasn’t as perfect as Smith portrayed it.

“Trent was becoming more and more aware of their financial situation,” JL Sumpter, detective sergeant with the Emmet Co. Sheriff’s Office, said on Murderous relationship with Faith Jenkins. “He became aware of unpaid loans. So he starts to piece it all together. We begin to understand why this murder could have happened.

Police discover motive for Trent Mallory’s murder

Trent Mallory’s murder wasn’t the first time the family made headlines. In June 2008, when Smith’s son Marshall was a baby, they discovered he needed a heart transplant. After 10 months of waiting in hospital, he had a successful heart transplant at 18 months old. But the health issue came with hefty hospital bills, and the family raised $10-15,000 through crowdfunding to help.

Despite the public’s help, the family home was in foreclosure at the time of Mallory’s murder, and there were also credit card debts.

“Towards the end of their relationship, I mean, four or five months, I could see that there was something wrong with Trent,” Angela White, Mallory’s sister, said on Murderous relationship with Faith Jenkins. “The happy-go-lucky, fun-loving person that Trent was began to diminish to the point where he kept himself more isolated. We were always talking on the phone or whatever, but he was always working. For me, I didn’t understand why he had to work so hard.

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Police learned that just days before her murder, Mallory received a call from a loan company.

“We learned that a loan had been taken out in Trent’s name and that the company was actively trying to find Trent,” Sumpter said. “Trent had told them he had no idea there was a loan and was very upset that the loan had been taken out in his name.”

The police quickly understood the reason why Amber Smith had taken out a loan in Mallory’s name without her knowledge.

“Amber liked to play on her phone, so she did a lot of shopping on iTunes and she won several thousand dollars in different gaming apps and things,” said Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant Mark Harris. , on Murderous relationship with Faith Jenkins.

“As we dug deeper, it turned out that she wasn’t just playing on her phone, she was playing at the casino,” added Stuart Fenton, chief deputy prosecutor for Emmet Co., on Murderous relationship with Faith Jenkins. “Amber was spending over $25,000 at the casino about a year after the murder. That’s where all the money went.

Amber Smith was under increasing pressure as her fiancé began to learn the truth.

“She had this whole underground world of gambling without Trent knowing,” Harris said. “This made this situation more and more unstable for her, to the point where she had to find an escape route. She had to find a way out. All their debt was in Trenton’s name. There was nothing in his name. So if Trenton was out of the picture, it was a clean slate for her.

Police find gun that killed Trent Mallory in unusual location

The medical examiner concluded that the weapon that killed Trent Mallory appeared to be a .22-caliber rifle, fired less than three feet from him. The approximate time of his death was 9 a.m. Agents learned that Mallory was running a side business to make extra money, and it often included guns. Days before he was killed, he was in talks to buy a .22 rifle. But Amber Smith said the transaction never happened and was unable to name the seller.

“She was extremely vague,” Harris said. “The interesting thing is that she could name other names but could never name this person.”

Police had time to locate the murder weapon when Amy Sullivan, Amber’s sister, called a month after the murder to say she had made a discovery in her yard.

“At that time, the snow was melting, and as it was melting, (she) thought it was the handle of the shovel, and in fact she learned it was a .22 caliber,” he said. Sumpter said.

Police believed it was no coincidence that the murder weapon was found in Smith’s sister’s yard. A shell casing found in the bed with Mallory matched the gun found in the snowbank, and a fingerprint on the gun matched Smith’s. The gun matched the one Mallory was considering turning over before her murder.

“There was a lot of snow there. “The fact that it was hidden in Amy’s snow bank made sense to me, based on Amber’s alibi describing how she had randomly stopped there the morning of Trent’s murder,” Harris said. .

On April 21, 2014, Smith was charged with the murder of her fiancé.

“She didn’t want the community to know that all the money they had raised for her son Marshall was gone, and that if Trent left, no one would need to know what was going on,” said White.

The jury took only an hour to find her guilty of murder. Amber Smith was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Trent Mallory’s parents have custody of both boys.