In the early morning hours of May 26, 2012, in the quiet, rural town of Agency, Iowa, a frantic 911 call shattered the peace. Seth Techel, 21, claimed he had been in the shower when he heard a gunshot. Rushing to the bedroom, he said he found his 23-year-old wife, Lisa Marie Caldwell Techel, a White female, shot and unresponsive in their bed. Paramedics arrived but were unable to save Lisa, who was 17 weeks pregnant with their first child, a daughter they had already named Zoey Maria.
The investigation initially focused on a neighbor with whom the couple had an ongoing dispute. Seth Techel pointed the finger at this individual, suggesting the shooting was an act of revenge. However, as investigators from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations delved deeper, they found no signs of forced entry or a struggle at the Techel's trailer home. This lack of evidence for an intruder began to raise suspicions. The day after the murder, investigators discovered a 12-gauge shotgun, later determined to be the murder weapon, hidden in tall grass on the Techel's property.
The focus of the investigation soon turned definitively toward Seth. It was discovered that he was having an affair with a coworker, with whom he had been exchanging numerous text messages. In messages sent just a day before his wife's murder, Seth had promised his mistress that he would be leaving Lisa to be with her. This revelation provided a powerful motive. Based on the affair and other inconsistencies in his story, Seth Techel was arrested on May 30, 2012, outside his wife's visitation. He was charged with first-degree murder and the non-consensual termination of a human pregnancy.
The legal proceedings that followed were arduous. Seth Techel's first trial in February 2013 ended in a hung jury. A second trial, moved to a different county due to pretrial publicity, also resulted in a hung jury in October 2013. The defense continued to suggest the neighbor was a viable suspect. Finally, in July 2014, a third jury in Scott County found Seth Techel guilty on both counts. On September 10, 2014, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
