When police entered the Levering, Michigan home of Trent Mallory and his fiancee, Amber Smith, on March 6, 2014, they found the place in disarray. Clothes, books and food were thrown everywhere, as if the family had been robbed. And in the bedroom, 35-year-old Trent Mallory was shot dead as he lay in his bed.

Smith called 911 around 10:35 a.m., claiming she was returning home after taking one son to school and the other to the doctor before stopping for food and to see her sister. Upon returning home, she found the door open.

Mallory and Smith had been together for more than five years and had a child together, as well as another child that Mallory was raising as his own.

“Trent and Amber seemed to love each other very much,” said Trey Sullivan, Smith’s nephew, Fr Criminal relationship with Faith Jenkins. “They were never officially married, but you’d never know it from the outside.”

But as police looked deeper into Smith and Mallory’s family and finances, they discovered their relationship was not as perfect as Smith described.

“Trent was becoming more and more aware of their financial situation,” JL Sumpter, a detective sergeant with the Emmet Co. Sheriff’s Office, said on Criminal relationship with Faith Jenkins. “He was learning about unpaid loans. So, start putting it all together. We’re starting to look at why this crime might have happened.”

Police uncover a motive for Trent Mallory’s murder

Trent Mallory’s murder wasn’t the first time the family was in the news. In June 2008, when Smith’s son Marshall was a baby, they learned he needed a heart transplant. After 10 months of waiting in the hospital, he had a successful heart transplant at 18 months. But with that health problem came big hospital bills, and the family raised $10,000 to $15,000 through crowdfunding to help.

Despite assistance from the public, the family home was in foreclosure at the time of Mallory’s murder, and there was also credit card debt.

“Towards the end of their relationship, I mean four or five months, I could tell there was something wrong with Trent,” Angela White, Mallory’s sister, said on Criminal relationship with Faith Jenkins. “The fun-loving, fun-loving person that Trent was started to shrink to where he became more isolated. We were still talking on the phone or whatever, but he was always working. To me, I didn’t understand why he had to work so hard.”

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Police learned that just days before his murder, Mallory received a call from a loan company.

“We found out that a loan had been taken out in Trent’s name and the company was actively trying to find Trent,” Sumpter said. “Trent had told them he had no idea there was a loan out there and was very upset that the loan was actually taken out in his name.”

The police soon realized why Amber Smith had taken out a loan in Mallory’s name without his knowledge.

“Amberi liked to play games on her phone, so she had a bunch of iTunes purchases and she was making several thousand dollars in different gambling apps and things,” said Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant Mark Harris. on Criminal relationship with Faith Jenkins.

“As we dug deeper, it turns out that she’s not just gambling on her phone, she’s gambling at the casino,” added Stuart Fenton, Chief Deputy Emmet Co. Attorney, on Criminal relationship with Faith Jenkins. “Amber was spending over $25,000 at the casino in about a year after the murder. That’s where all the money went.”

Amber Smith was under increasing pressure as her fiance began to learn the truth.

“He had the whole underworld of gambling going on outside of Trent’s knowledge,” Harris said. “It made this situation more and more volatile for her, that she had to find an escape route. He had to find a way out. All the debt they had was in Trenton’s name. There was nothing in her name. So if Trenton was out of the picture, it was a clean slate for her.”

Police find the gun that killed Trent Mallory in an unusual place

The medical examiner concluded that the weapon that killed Trent Mallory appeared to be a .22 caliber rifle, fired less than ten feet away from him. The approximate time of his death was 9 am. Officers learned that Mallory ran a bartering business for extra cash and often included guns. A few days before he was killed, he was in talks to buy a .22 rifle. But Amber Smith said the transaction never happened and she could not name the seller.

“It was extremely vague,” Harris said. “The interesting part was that he could name other names, but he could never name that person.”

Police got a break in locating the murder weapon when Amy Sullivan, Amber’s sister, called a month after the murder to say she had made a discovery in her front yard.

“At that time the snow was melting and as the snow was melting, (she) thought it was the handle of the shovel and actually found out it was a .22,” Sumpter said.

Police believed it was no coincidence that the murder weapon was found in Smith’s sister’s yard. A shell casing found in Mallory’s bed matched the gun found in the snowbank, and the fingerprint on the gun matched Smith. The gun matched the one Mallory was considering flipping before killing him.

“There was a lot of snow there. The fact that it was hidden in Amy’s snowbank made sense to me based on Amber’s alibi describing how she randomly stopped there the morning of Trent’s murder,” Harris said.

On April 21, 2014, Smith was charged with murdering her fiancé.

“She didn’t want the community to know that all the money they raised for her son Marshall was gone, and if Trent is gone, then no one has to know about these things,” White said.

The jury took only an hour to convict her of murder. Amber Smith was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Trent Mallory’s parents have custody of both boys.