February 18, 2011 in City

Prosecutors say Steele sought ‘relationship’ with woman outside U.S.

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Edgar J. Steele
(Full-size photo)

A North Idaho lawyer accused of hiring a hit man to kill his wife was involved with another woman who received a letter from him after his arrest, federal prosecutors allege.

Edgar J. Steele, 65, wanted his wife murdered because he “had been establishing a relationship with a young woman who lives outside of the United States,” according to documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene.

Ukrainian officials interviewed the woman and say she provided them with a letter she received from Steele after his arrest last June. Prosecutors say they plan to show jurors other letters and evidence outlining steps Steele took to meet the woman.

The new information regarding Steele’s alleged motive in the murder-for-hire plot was included in documents filed by prosecutors seeking to keep Steele in custody without bail pending his trial next month.

Steele’s new private attorneys, Gary Amendola, of Coeur d’Alene, and Robert McAllister, of Denver, asked U.S. Magistrate Candy Dale to allow Steele’s wife and alleged victim, Cyndi Steele, to testify Wednesday regarding her willingness to put up her property in exchange for her husband’s release.

But Dale refused and questioned their claim that her decision to keep Steele in jail last June was based on “foundation-less, hearsay-filled evidence.”

“I think if you had taken the time to listen to the detention hearing … that you would not have even submitted this motion to the court,” Dale told McAllister. “There has not been a single change in circumstances.”

Dale said there was no legal basis for reopening Steele’s detention hearing, which took place June 22, so the motion for $1 million property-backed bond never was considered.

Steele, a self-described “lawyer for the damned” who defended the Aryan Nations, remains at the Spokane County Jail. He faces four federal felony charges alleging he hired a hit man-turned-FBI-informant, Larry Fairfax, who rigged a pipe bomb to Cyndi Steele’s SUV. Fairfax has pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges for the device and is to be sentenced after Steele’s trial.

Steele faces an additional charge of tampering with a victim for a phone call he made to his wife after his arrest. His lawyers filed a request Thursday for him to be tried separately on that charge.

Amendola and McAllister said in court documents filed Feb. 7 they intend to “introduce expert evidence relating to a mental disease or defect bearing on (Steele’s) guilt.”

Neither lawyer could be reached for comment Thursday.

Prosecutors cited the mental defect defense in documents arguing against Steele’s release.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan said in court documents that she doesn’t know what defect or disease Steele may suffer but said the claim was “concerning” if Steele leaves jail.

“If the defendant could not control his actions and that is why he hired a hit man, what is to stop that from happening again?”

McAllister emphasized that Cyndi Steele supports her husband and doesn’t believe the allegations against him.

He said he plans to appeal Dale’s decision to detain Steele without bail.

One comment on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  FreeTheInnocent on February 22 at 7:06 p.m.

  Again, the prosecution has it wrong. In pursuing the Ukrainian connection to my husband, First Amendment lawyer Edgar Steele, the Government is grasping at straws because there is no motive for the alleged murder-for-hire. The Government knows that, as my husband’s legal assistant, I was fully aware that the Ukrainian woman was suspected to be a part of a “Russian-Bride” scam which cheated one of his clients out of thousands of dollars. By communicating with this woman, my husband was working a case to bring down the people involved in stealing from Americans. Now, instead of doing her job, AUSA Traci Whelan, in seeking an all expense trip abroad and has turned this into a Media-Op.
  When my husband was first arrested, the FBI claimed his “motive” was to cash in on our life insurance proceeds. When I told them that we had canceled our life insurance years ago, the FBI claimed my husband had a private investigator following me who supposedly had pictures of me with a “boyfriend.” Oops, the FBI lied again. There was no private investigator, no pictures and no boyfriend. Now the Gov. is using my husband’s investigation of a human trafficking ring to claim he had a girlfriend. This is just another example of the FBI using fraud to prosecute the innocent.
  In response to AUSA Traci Whelan’s comment: “If the defendant could not control his actions and that is why he hired a hit man, what is to stop that from happening again?” First, my husband was weak from four surgeries and the prescription drugs taken during his recovery, so he didn’t see Larry Fairfax taking advantage of him. Second, he did not hire Larry Fairfax or anyone to be a hitman. And, Third, AUSA Whelan well knows that Larry Fairfax is a liar because he lied to the FBI by not disclosing that he had attached a bomb to my car in June when he promised to “come forward” with all his criminal activity. AUSA Whelan has seen the theft report and knows that Fairfax stole $45,000 in silver savings from my husband and me. AUSA Whelan also knows that Fairfax was covering up his theft by blaming my husband in a supposed murder-for-hire scam. AUSA Whelan even told my attorney and me that Fairfax had confessed he was trying to “scam” us. So what does it take to get AUSA Whelan to do her job? She has the real criminal and she knows who his accomplices are but she will not properly charge either with the serious crimes committed by them.
  I’m standing up for my husband because he is innocent. It was the FBI that was tampering with my testimony, trying to persuade me to accept one of their many versions of this case. But, I took the time to look at the evidence, without accepting anyone else’s perspective, in order to make up my own mind. After I looked, I realized that it was the FBI who knew there was a bomb on my car many days before I found it attached to my muffler on June 15th. Did the Gov. say anything to me or do anything to warn the public? No!
  The same day I found the bomb, a US Marshall told me that the Gov. was not going to provide me any protection. This was the official word!!! At that point, the Gov. supposedly didn’t know who had put the bomb on my car; because, supposedly, Larry Fairfax had not come forward with that information yet. But, all the same, I was being denied protection.