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Venus Stewart

July 16, 2011 by · Comments Off on Venus Stewart 

Venus StewartVenus Stewart, Showing little emotion, Doug Stewart told a “Dateline NBC” correspondent believes his wife is alive and that he killed her. Stewart’s remarks came during a 90-minute piece on the program, which aired from 9:30 to 11 tonight. “I have to believe he’s alive,” said Stewart, Venus Stewart during his exclusive interview with Dateline correspondent Dennis Murphy. “If she is not, I do not think I can handle it. My kids could not stand it.” Stewart, 30, was convicted in March of first-degree premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree premeditated murder in connection with the April 26, 2010, kidnapping and murder of Venus Stewart, 32. He is serving a life sentence in the Carson City Correctional Center.

Stewart claims of innocence prompted Murphy joked during the show that if Venus Stewart were alive, “it would be very cruel what you are doing.”

“I could never forgive her,” Stewart said, with tears in his eyes.

The show featured several interviews, including St. Joseph County Prosecutor John McDonough, assistant chief of McDonough, Chuck Herman and Stewart’s defense team, Jeffrey and Kymberly Schroder.

“He was very good in class to present himself as an All-American type,” McDonough said of Stewart. “None of this seemed to affect the least.”

The show was Doug Stewart in detail how he met his co-defendant, Ricky Spencer, 21, Bear, Delaware, met on Xbox Live, an online gaming system, and how convinced Spencer Stewart to act as his alibi and an impostor in Newport News, Virginia, where Doug Stewart resided in April 2010, while Stewart went to Michigan to kill Venus Stewart.

“Ricky is not a murderer,” McDonough said the key witness in the case against Doug Stewart. “It’s an extremely impressionable boy who made a mistake horrible, horrible.”

However, Schroders backed by his client during an appearance on Dateline, saying that Murphy had doubts about the veracity of the testimony of Spencer.

“My defense, my story has to do with Ricky avoid life in prison, Ricky is a liar,” said Jeffrey Schroeder Murphy. “And if you believe his testimony he decided to help commit the murder instead of calling the authorities … I was trained many times to give testimony and how he did it … I think I had to do a good job. ”

Attorney Spencer, David Moore, of Portage, said during the presentation that Spencer “deeply regrets” what happened to Venus Stewart and suffers from “depression” and “not live” a few days.

Spencer is scheduled to be sentenced July 22 in San Jose, the County Court for his role in the murder of Venus Stewart. Under the terms of a plea agreement that is to serve no more than one year in county jail.

Stewart, who declined to speak to Murphy any concrete evidence presented at trial by the prosecution said, “not understanding” the testimony of Spencer.

“After listening to everything I’ve heard, I have not seen anything to show that my wife is injured, that is harmed.”

Meanwhile, Murphy said during the presentation that Venus Stewart’s family is pushing for a harsher sentence of at least 10 years of Spencer in Michigan and Virginia are urging the authorities to seek charges of murder conspiracy against him in that state.

“(Spencer) could have saved my sister,” said Dustin Jasper, Venus’s brother Stewart. “I could have let the authorities know and may have been waiting (Doug Stewart) in my house and it would have been.”

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