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It was just before 9 pm on the night of Friday, September 14, 2018 when a frantic 911 call came in & the man on the line, Jimmy Allan, yelled. “My wife tried to kill herself. She in the f**king basement.” Jimmy went on to tell the dispatcher that he had gone down into the basement of their Michigan home & found his wife, Amy Allan. She was hanging from the ceiling with an extension cord wrapped around her neck & Jimmy immediately pulled her down & began CPR.
Tecumseh Police officer BJ Horn was the first to arrive only minutes later & as he entered the home, he found it “strangely quiet” to the point that he questioned if he was at the correct address. He entered through the door that led into the kitchen & it wasn’t until after he yelled, “Police! Police!” that he heard someone. As he went down the stairs into the basement, Horn found Jimmy performing CPR on his wife who lay motionless on the ground.
Minutes later, emergency responders arrived & began to take over & in the meantime, Jimmy threw his shirtless body face down onto the basement floor & began loudly moaning, screaming & crying. First responders found a cord still wrapped around Amy’s neck with a slip knot at her neck & another knot tied in the end of the cord where it would have been tied to a hook that was screwed into a joist in the basement ceiling.
Officer Horn finally convinced Jimmy to leave the basement & head up to the kitchen so paramedics could focus on tending to his wife. As Horn followed Jimmy upstairs & they entered the kitchen, Jimmy slammed his fist onto the table & sent a bowl of potato chips flying. Horn spoke with Jimmy, trying to piece together what had happened that night & Jimmy told him that he & Amy had been “irritated” with each other while they were out having drinks at a bar. Amy ended up walking home & then went down into the basement alone.
Investigators later recovered surveillance footage of the couple from only hours earlier where they were having a beer together at a local pub after they dropped their 15-year-old high school daughter & a friend off at a football game at Tecumseh High School. They were first at Embers Bar & Grill & then JR’s Hometown Grill & Pub.
Investigators were left to wonder what had transpired in the short window of time that the couple was home & if Amy, who was a devoted stay-at-home mom, had actually tried to take her life or if something more sinister had happened.
As Jimmy continued to sob & moan in the kitchen, he told Horn what had happened, “I went back down & check on her & she’s f**cking – f**cking hanging from a goddamn extension cord.” He also clarified that Amy had no history of mental health issues & continued to insist that her death had been a suicide. As he stood in the kitchen, still shirtless, there were no signs of defensive wounds on his body.
As paramedics continued to work on Amy in the basement, Jimmy called their daughter Ashley & told her they had an emergency & not to go anywhere. He then called his parents where he howled & said that he didn’t know what to do.
Neighbors began to gather outside as more police & first responders continued to arrive & next-door-neighbor Stacy Downing watched as Amy’s unconscious body was carried from the home on a gurney. Stacy remembers the family moving in one year prior & saw Amy & Jimmy as a nice, young couple.
Amy, Jimmy & their daughter Ashley had moved to Michigan from Ocala, Florida one year earlier in 2017 after Jimmy took a job with an automotive accessories company in Ann Arbor, working in video production. Neighbor Stacy questioned Amy as to why they would leave the warmth of Florida & come to Michigan & Amy explained that it was for Jimmy’s dream job. The Downings saw Amy as friendly but more reserved whereas Jimmy had a more outgoing personality. Jimmy was very interested in physical fitness & often encouraged Amy to participate with him in rollerblading, rock climbing & running.
He explained that they left the bar just before 8 pm; Amy was captured walking home on surveillance video at 7:51 pm while Jimmy drove home. Tensions continued to rise & once back home, Jimmy said that Amy had gone down to the basement & he went to watch TV. He said that he’d gone down to check on her at about 8:15 pm & she began to swear at him so he went back upstairs.
He said at about 8:40 pm, he realized that they needed to pick their daughter up so he went back downstairs & this was when he found Amy hanging from the extension cord.
Amy was transferred to the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor & medical personnel at the hospital as well as first responders, went on to raise concerns to police. First responders noted that the knots in the extension cord weren’t as tight as would be expected from hanging & the ceiling seemed too low to allow Amy to hang herself. There was very little to no trauma to her neck & Jimmy’s demeanor struck authorities as strange.
Amy’s family were obviously devastated when they learned what had happened & they were also unsettled by the fact that they were initially told by Jimmy’s father, Billy, that Amy was dead despite the fact that she was on life support at the hospital. Billy told them that Amy had hung herself & it wasn’t until they spoke with police they learned that Amy had not actually died & was on life support.
Amy’s older sister Heather Krug said, “We were told that she was dead. End of story & that was after 14 hours, after everyone knew about it. You know, when there’s an emergency, you know, you call.” When the family was finally notified, they rushed to the hospital & were able to make it in time to say their final goodbyes. Despite the fact that paramedics were able to restore a faint pulse, Amy never regained consciousness at the hospital & she was taken off life support & died on September 17, 2018, three days later. Amy’s family was understandably upset that they hadn’t been notified sooner.
The day after Amy was found in the basement, detectives headed back to the Allan home & with Jimmy’s help, they put the pieces together of Amy’s last day. He explained that Friday, September 14 started just like any other day & Amy went about her morning with a smile on her face. At about 7:30 am Ashley was headed to school while Jimmy set off to work. Phone & computer records indicate that Amy was texting with a friend at 11: 44 am & at 12:30 pm, Jimmy came home early from work & took a nap. At 1 pm, Amy was texting again with that same friend & school ended for Ashley at 2:45 pm when Amy picked her up along with a friend from school.
Amy made dinner, they all ate together & headed out at 6:30 pm to take Ashley & her friend to the football game. Amy & Jimmy ended up at JR’s local bar at about 7 pm where they sat at the bar having drinks. Police spoke with the bartender who had served them that evening & indicated that the mood seemed tense between the couple, but nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Jimmy said that they were arguing about their future after he mentioned the idea of selling their Michigan home & potentially moving to North Carolina. He said despite Amy’s typically positive attitude, she was very negative about the hypothetical plan & had said, “Well, I hope that works out for you.”
At 7:51 pm, a security camera picked up a video of Amy walking home from the bar to their home just down the street. Jimmy got home first & at 8 pm, he turned the TV on & Amy went to the basement. When Jimmy checked on her to find out why she was in the basement, he said she was petting the cat & that’s when she began to swear at him. Less than forty minutes later, he found Amy hanging.
Jimmy said he managed to get Amy down where he then checked for a pulse. He said when he found her, Amy’s feet were off the ground & an upturned kitty litter pail was nearby. He said he could not understand why she had done what she’d done. She had a very healthy lifestyle & she had never struggled with depression or any mental health conditions of any kind. They had no financial struggles; Jimmy was making the best money he ever had.
When 15-year-old Ashley was questioned by officer Horn, she was obviously upset. While she was being questioned on the patio, Jimmy’s parents sat with her in support. She indicated that when she left for the football game, everything was normal & her parents didn’t have a history of fighting. Her mom had never talked about hurting herself. Amy & Ashley were exceptionally close & Amy’s family couldn’t imagine that Amy would ever take her own life.
Amy’s mom, Jeanne said it just did not make sense that a mother would prepare tacos for the family, take her daughter to a football game & suddenly come home & take her own life, knowing that her daughter was out & she would have been leaving her or risk her daughter coming home & finding her that way. Amy’s family, the Winchesters, who were in town from Florida, stopped at the police department before they headed back home.
The Winchesters voiced their doubts that Amy had actually taken her life. Police had their own doubts at that time, starting with Jimmy’s behavior when police arrived at the house. Officer Horn would later say that despite all the noise & hysterics coming from Jimmy, there were no tears. Even more alarming, Jimmy seemed taken aback when a paramedic rushed through the kitchen & indicated that Amy was still alive & “fighting.” Rather than being thankful that his wife was still alive, he replied, “Dude, what in the f’ing hell. How is this f’ing happening?”
Neighbors, Stacy & Bill Downing felt the same way; Jimmy had gone over to their house the day after Amy was found & Stacy noticed that he was sobbing & shaking with his head & his hands but there were never any tears in his eyes. Bill noticed that during Jimmy’s hysterics, he would peek through his fingers to see if they were watching him as he appeared to sob.
Amy had grown up with two sisters & her family described her as a very girly girl who loved dresses, playing with makeup & reading. Amy & Jimmy had met & began dating while attending high school in Florida. Amy was described as a quiet & shy girl, whereas Jimmy was said to be extremely controlling. Amy’s mother, Jeanne Winchester, believed that Amy was initially attracted to Jimmy because he was accepting of her complicated past. When Amy was in middle school, her sister noticed that she began acting differently so her sister turned to Amy’s diary for answers. This is when the family discovered that Amy had gotten pregnant at age 13. She ended up giving birth to her son Caleb when she was in eighth grade. As Amy went on to high school, she & her parents worked together to raise Caleb & when Amy met Jimmy, Caleb was three. When she was 19, she got pregnant again, this time with Jimmy’s child & they raised Caleb & Ashley together.
Jeanne felt that Jimmy was a hard worker & provider for his family which allowed Amy to stay home as a mother & wife. However, Jeanne also believed that part of the reason for this arrangement was because Jimmy didn’t want Amy to be out & part of the working world.
As their relationship progressed, Jeanne noticed that Jimmy only grew to be increasingly controlling to the point that Amy had to get permission from Jimmy before she was able to agree to go to lunch with her family & everyone within their household was expected to adhere to his strict rules.
Amy’s son Caleb Winchester explained that some of these rules included not eating without first asking & basically being required to ask for permission before doing anything. Caleb was often spanked as a little boy & forced to sit & stare at the wall for hours as a form of punishment. He was allowed to come out of his room to eat & use the restroom, but was otherwise forced to stay in his room. At 17-years-old, Caleb could no longer stand living in this controlling environment & chose to move out & live with his grandparents. Amy’s family indicated that eventually, Jimmy forced Amy to cut off all contact from Caleb & the rest of her family.
When police wanted to question Jimmy further, they found that he & Ashley had left the state & moved back to Ocala, Florida within a week of Amy’s death to live with his parents.
After red flags were raised in Amy’s death & an investigation was opened, it was soon discovered that Amy had been keeping some secrets of her own. For three years, she had been having an online affair with a man named George & she had been texting with him while at the bar with Jimmy that night.
They had met up a couple of times & had a fairly significant amount of communication between them.The first time they met was at a coffee shop & the second time at a hotel. It was clear that when Amy was communicating with George, she was a completely different, much more positive person.
As investigators combed through Amy’s electronic history, it was clear that Jimmy had been monitoring her location; instead of asking where she was via text, he would text, “You’re at McDonalds.. Why?” Electronic evidence also indicated that Amy was someone on the verge of suicide. She was making future plans in terms of vacations, meals & holidays. She had even made plans to meet up with George, who was a married man living on the east coast, the following month.
Jimmy’s recollections of what happened when he found Amy in the basement weren’t adding up since he told investigators that he found her hanging off the ground. With the extension cord & the height of the ceiling, this would have been physically impossible. Tests using the same type of extension cord confirmed that even if Amy had been hanging, the cord would have stretched to the point that Amy’s feet would have been touching the ground.
One month after Amy’s death, Jimmy was back in Michigan to retrieve more items & detectives brought him in for an interview. They speculated that Jimmy had discovered Amy’s secret relationship that night & lashed out in anger, however, when he was confronted with the information of her affair as he sat in an interrogation room, he seemed genuinely surprised. When he was initially asked if Amy could be having an affair, it was his belief that his wife lacked “the capacity to do that” because she was so shy & introverted. This was when Jimmy was told that Amy had an extensive emotional electronic relationship with another man & he was shown the text messages which were sexual in nature. The texts also proved that Amy had been in love with George.
When investigators first spoke with Jimmy, he was very firm on the fact that Amy was a healthy woman who had no mental struggles. This time around, he mentioned that she had some issues, such as struggling with social anxiety. She struggled in developing relationships & having friends & compulsively played video games, isolating herself. Jimmy also confided in detectives that he had had a couple of affairs during their marriage. Jimmy took a polygraph during this time which was inconclusive.
Three months after Amy’s death, Michigan police got the autopsy report where the medical examiner determined her death as indeterminate pending additional investigative information.
After a pathologist reviewed the reports, they concluded that Amy’s death was likely a homicide & this led to Jimmy’s arrest. After two months, the Tecumseh police asked Michigan State Police to take over the investigation & two years later, the Lenawee County Prosecutor’s Office filed an open murder charge against James Allan who was living with a fiance in Ocala, ready to get remarried that same week. Five days before his wedding, he was arrested on October 19, 2020.
During the trial in September 2021, three years after Amy’s death, jurors heard nearly two weeks of testimony from the Tecumseh police,emergenc y medical personnel who responded to the 911 call as well as an ER nurse & doctor, three forensic pathologists who each reached different conclusion as to the manner of death. The ER doctor indicated that on Amy’s arrival, there were no visible injuries to her neck which was not consistent with previous cases of suicide by hanging that he had dealt with. Instead, damage within her neck was consistent with what would be seen in a chokehold. They also heard from neighbors of the Allans, co-workers of James Allan as well as George, who was in the online relationship with Amy.
The prosecution theorized that when the Allans returned home, the argument that began at the bar continued at home. What’s likely is that Amy stood up for herself which was something that Jimmy wasn’t used to. While in the basement of their home on North Maumee Street in Tecumseh, Jimmy put Amy in a chokehold with his arm around her neck which caused her to lose consciousness. He then strangled her with an extension cord, staged the scene to look like a suicide by hanging & called 911. They painted a picture of Jimmy as a controlling husband & father who kept close tabs on his family, had access to Amy’s phone & limited her use of social media & video games.
The defense argue that the timeline of Amy’s death didn’t allow enough time to stage a suicide. They also said that after fifteen years of marriage, it’s unlikely that he snapped & suddenly killed his wife. Review of Jimmy’s online searches lined up with what he told investigators happened that night. He indicated that he had been watching a Jim Carey movie upstairs & records show that he had searched for Jim Carey movies online.
When Ashley Allan, Amy’s daughter took the stand, she indicated that her mom frequently overindulged in alcohol & often became intoxicated & when she was intoxicated, she was often mean & violent. The defense painted a picture of a woman who was isolated, drinking excessively & feeling guilt from a long-term affair which led to her decision of commiting suicide. When Amy was transferred to the hospital she had a blood alcohol level of 0.09 & a psychiatrist, Dr Normal Miller, testified that alcohol induces depression when consumed in larger amounts & also impairs judgment & lowers inhibitions. He said that the time between deciding to attempt suicide & making the attempt often happens within minutes.
However, this was in contrast to statements Jimmy made to police & hospital personnel after Amy was found in the basement; Jimmy could be seen on body cam footage saying that she had no history of alcohol or drug abuse & no history of mental health issues.
Amy’s son, Caleb testified about an incident that happened when he was in high school where Jimmy became upset & placed him in a chokehold when he was gasping for air & trying to get away from his step-father. This proved that Jimmy was capable of violence & was consistent with testimony that Amy could have been placed in a chokehold. Amy had also been planning & looking forward to future events. On Amy’s last day alive, George testified that they had been texting about their love for one another & the fact that they were looking forward to meeting again at the end of October.
Dr Elizabeth Buc who ran tests on the extension cord, testified that she demonstrated experiments where a 140# weight in the shape of a human body was tied to a cord identical to what was around Amy’s neck. With full weight on the cord, the cord stretched whereas the cord around Amy’s neck showed no sign of stretching.
The defense argued that Jimmy’s DNA was not found under Amy’s nails nor were there defensive wounds on Jimmy’s body which would be unlikely had she been choked as she would have fought for her life. Heather Goff, who specializes in DNA & Sgt Mike Lee, who specializes in tool marks were the final two witnesses for the defense. Goff indicated that she found both Amy & Jimmy’s DNA at the knot in the extension cord that was supposed to have been tied to the hook & at the part of the cord past the loop that was around Amy’s neck. She said that only Amy’s DNA was at the loop & had Jimmy touched it, she would have expected to find Jimmy’s DNA as well. She went on to clarify that some people shed more DNA than others & whether the cord was soiled could affect the ability to detect DNA.
Lee was asked by detectives if the hook from the basement could have left marks on the extension cord & he indicated that with the use of a microscope, he was able to see abrasions inside the bottom of the knot that was said to be tied to the hook. The defense attorney also showed pictures from Lee’s report that showed Lee had tied the opposite end of the 50-foot extension cord to the hook, grabbed onto the cord & suspended himself while indicating that he weighed 150-155#, for a full minute. He did the test twice & the cord did not break or elongate & he did find marks after one of the tests, but it was inconclusive if they matched the abrasion he found on the original knot. This was in contrast to Elizabeth Buc who used a 140# test & found that a similar cord would elongate or break & the knots at both the hook & at the neck would have become very tight.
On September 24, 2021, the eighth day of the trial, the jurors were faced with making the decision of first-degree vs. second-degree murder. On the second day of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder & sentenced to 20-45 years in prison.
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