A Minnesota father-of-one has been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly killing his wife and then staging her lifeless body to make her death look like a suicide.

Stephen Allwine, 43, of Cottage Grove, was taken into custody on Tuesday on a felony charge of second-degree intentional homicide in the slaying of his wife, Amy Allwine, last fall.

A detailed criminal complaint obtained by the Daily Mail Wednesday lays out a series of explosive allegations against Stephen Allwine involving infidelity, multiple failed murder-for-hire plots targeting his wife Amy and the use of Dark Web.

Mrs Allwine, 44, was discovered dead from a gunshot wound to the head inside the couple's home at 7624 110th Street South at around 7pm on November 13, 2016.

Husband charged: Stephen Allwine, 43 (left), has been charged with second-degree intentional homicide in the slaying of his wife, Amy Allwine, 44 (right) in November

Bloody crime scene: On the evening of November 13, Amy Allwine was discovered shot dead inside the family's home (pictured) in a way that made it look like a suicide

According to the statement of probable cause, police who were called to the residence found the victim’s body lying in a pool of blood on a bedroom floor next to a nine-millimeter Springfield XDS handgun.

The gun was lying next to Amy's left elbow, but the woman was right-handed, meaning that she could not have shot herself in the right side of her head, the complaint stated.

The document goes on to say that the victim had no gunpowder residue and no blood on her hands. Testing showed, however, that Amy's husband had a particle on his right hand consistent with gunshot residue. The document notes that the defendant is right-handed.

A toxicology test also determined that Mrs Allwine had in her system a very high concatenation of the nausea drug scopolamine, dubbed 'the devil's drug' for its ability to erase a person's memory and render them incapable to exercise free will.

The complaint alleges that Stephen Allwine shot his wife in the head, then positioned her body to make it appear as if she had shot herself. The husband then called 911 to report a medical emergency.

When interviewed by police, the 43-year-old man said that he returned home with his 9-year-old son and found his wife dead.

Investigators noted that there was no evidence of a forced entry at the Allwines' home, and the woman's death was labelled 'suspicious.'

According to his LinkedIn page, Stephen Allwine works as an IT specialist at an insurance company and has long been active in ministry at the United Church of God.

His late wife was the owner of Active Dogs Sports Training located next door to the family’s home, which went out of business a short time after her death.

Stephen Allwine told police that on the day of his wife's death, he woke up at around 5.50am and went to his home office in the basement to do some IT work until breakfast at 10am.

At 1pm, Allwine went upstairs and Amy told him she was feeling lightheaded, groggy and dizzy.

Allwine said he asked his wife if she wanted to go to the doctor, but she declined, after which he returned to the basement to resume work, but continued checking on her every so often, the probable cause statement read.

Just before 2pm, Allwine said he called Amy's parents and asked to pick up their son so he could get more work done.

At around 5pm, he went back upstairs to check up on his wife and found her kneeling by the bed, as if in prayer, which was not unusual for her, he said. Allwine said Amy told him she was fine and asked him to stop checking on her.

The husband told police he then said to Amy he was going to pick their son up from the grandparents and take him to a class at a gym in Woodbury.

Allwine said he last saw his wife alive at 5.29pm when he left to go pick up their son. On the way to the in-laws, he filled up his car at a gas station, then realized he forgot his son's gym shorts at home.

Allwine picked up the boy from Amy's parents, he told police, but instead of the gym he decided to take him to a restaurant called Culver's. After dinner, the father and son returned home and found Amy dead in the bedroom.

Stephen said his son entered the house first, then asked him, 'Why is Mommy sitting on the floor?' he was quoted as saying in the complaint.

In the boy's retelling of the story to police, when he asked his father why his mom was 'sleeping on the floor,' Stephen Allwine allegedly replied to the 9-year-old, 'she's probably dead,' then added that there was blood all over the room and a handgun lying on the floor.

When asked about an alarm system at the house, Stephen Allwine told police they had installed it after Amy received death threats earlier that year. He also mentioned during one of the interviews with police that his wife had a $700,000 life insurance policy.

In the months leading up to Amy's death, according to the complaint, the FBI contacted the Cottage Grove Police Department about a murder plot, in which someone was trying to hire a hit man on the Dark Web to kill Amy Allwine.

In June of that year, an FBI agent met with the Allwine couple to inform them of the discovery and advise them to install a security system at the house. A short time later, Stephen Allwine purchased the 9-millimeter handgun, the complaint stated.

Stephen Allwine was picked up by Cottage Grove police during a traffic stop at around 9.15am as he was on his way home.

The widower's arrest came at the conclusion of a complex two-month investigation that was carried out by the local police force in conjunction with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

The station Fox 59 reported that Stephen and Amy Allwine met at Ambassador University, a small religious school in Texas, and after they got married they moved to Minnesota to be close to Amy’s family.

Photos of Amy and Stephen shared on a memorial page after her death show a pair of fresh-faced college sweethearts, embracing and grinning at the camera.

There are other photos of the seemingly happy couple kissing on their wedding day, later posing with their young son and other relatives at various joyful family gatherings. But the criminal complaint filed as part of Stephen Allwine's murder case paints a picture of a marriage on the rocks.

In the course of the investigation, Mr Allwine admitted to police that he had a monthslong affair with a 46-year-old woman named Michelle, whom he had met on Ashley Madison, a notorious site for married people seeking extramarital affairs.

When police interviewed Allwine's lover, she confirmed that the two had a sexual tryst, which 'fizzled' in February 2016, according to the document.

It later emerged that Allwine also had gone out on a date with another woman from Ashley Madison in October 2015, which involved a dinner at a golf course. The evening ended with a kiss, according to the statement.

About two weeks after the killing, a detective had obtained digital evidence from the FBI, which included information about a Dark Web site called Besa Mafia, which has been used to solicit murders and assaults for hire, according to the complaint.

At some point, the site had been hacked and posts made on open sources websites revealed lists of used who had allegedly contacted Besa Mafia to its illegal services.

That is how the FBI learned of a conversation on the hacked site involving an individual by the user name ‘dogdaygod.’

Police were ultimately able to link Mr Allwine to the user 'dogdaygod' after discovering a digital bitcoin wallet address on a backed up deleted file on the man's computer; it was the same address that the Dark Web user had provided to Besa Mafia in March 2016 to pay for a hit on Amy Allwine, the probable cause statement read.

The complaint noted that when asked about Dark Web, Stephen Allwine denied knowing anything about it, but evidence found on his computer has revealed that the IT specialist had accessed the Dark Web as early as 2014.

The document states that on February 15, 2016, 'dogdaygod' emailed the Besa Mafia website asking how much it would cost to kill Amy Allwine and make it look like a car accident. Besa Mafia responded it would by $6,000, and that bitcoins could be used to pay for the hit.

The next day, the user posted on the hit site that the 'target' will be traveling to Moline, Illinois, in March, and received a response that the assassination could be carried out then, according to the complaint.

In the end, the car accident murder-for-hire plot in Moline came to naught, and Besa Mafia recommended to 'dogdaygod' to use a sniper, which would cost him $12,000.

The document states that Besa Mafia and the client eventually settled on a new plan to have Amy Allwine killed in her home and then have the residence burned down, but that scheme, too, fell apart.

Having failed to get Mrs Allwine killed, the user 'dogdaygod' in May went again on the Dark Web, asking if anyone had the nausea drug scopolamine for sale in the Minneapolis area.

In July of that year, Amy received a menacing email, quoted in the complaint, which was sent to the mother-of-one from an email account jane@gmail.com,

The letter accused Amy of ruining the sender's life, made specific references to her son and parents, urged her to kill herself in order to save the lives of her loved ones, and even suggested a wide variety of suicide methods.

'Here is how you can save your family. Commit suicide. If you do not, then you will slowly see things taken away from you, and each time you will know that you could have stopped it,' read the missive. 'which will eat you apart from the inside. By the time I am done you will want to end it anyway, so why not do it now and save them.

Stephen Allwine appeared at Washington County District Court on Wednesday and had his bail set at $1million with no conditions, or $500,000 if he agrees to wear a GPS monitor, avoid traveling out of state and having unsupervised contact with his son.

Mr Allwine is due back in court on February 13.