A Minnesota man thought friends’ attempts to find his missing wife with a Facebook post were “blown out of proportion,” witnesses testified at his murder trial Friday.
Jeffery Trevino, 39, of St. Paul, is on trial in Ramsey County on second-degree murder charges. Trevino is accused of killing his wife, Kira Steger, 30, who went missing in February. Her body was found in the Mississippi River more than two months later.
Steger’s childhood friend, Lindsey Wolf of Wisconsin, testified that she posted a picture of Steger on Facebook on Feb. 24 alerting others to her disappearance. The post included a phone number for the St. Paul Police Department and pleaded with others to share the post. Trevino reported Steger missing to police earlier that day.
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Within 10 minutes of the post going up, Trevino messaged her on Facebook, Wolf testified.
“Call me plz,” Trevino’s message said.
Wolf said she called Trevino, and he told her to take down the post, the Star Tribune (http://bit.ly/15c8o5d) reported.
“He was very angry,” she said. “He was agitated.”
Trevino’s attorney, John Conard, noted that Trevino’s concern was that Steger would have to explain her affair with another man if she wasn’t missing, and that if someone had her, the attention would force the person to “get rid of her.”
One of Trevino’s longtime friends, Jesse Mix, testified that he urged Trevino to call Steger’s mother, Marcie Steger in Wisconsin, about the disappearance. Mix said he told Trevino that Marcie Steger needed to know her daughter was missing.
Trevino was “hesitant, but he agreed,” Mix said.
Mix also said Trevino complained about Wolf’s Facebook post.
“He thought it was being blown out of proportion,” Mix testified.
Jurors also heard testimony Friday from Trevino’s 15-year-old daughter, who provided another reason for blood to be in Trevino and Kira Steger’s rental home.
Trevino’s daughter testified that her nose bleeds “a lot” when the weather is dry. She testified that it can bleed two to three times a week in the right conditions, and that it has bled in her father’s rental home. She also testified that she cut her finger in the kitchen and that blood found on a tile in there matched her DNA.
Conard, the defense attorney, said Trevino’s daughter’s blood was found in the home.
In opening statements Thursday, prosecutor Andrew Johnson told jurors that more than 150 small spots of alleged blood evidence were found on the couple’s box spring.
