Murder trial begins for Cache woman accused of killing husband

Following 1½ days of jury selection, opening arguments were heard Wednesday in the trial of a Cache woman accused of killing her husband in September 2019 and staging the scene to look like a suicide.

Loretta Michelle Van Buren, 62, of Cache, is on trial in Chief Comanche County District Judge Scott D. Meaders for a count of first-degree murder. She faces life in prison or life without parole if convicted.

District Attorney Kyle Cabelka told the jury he would show that dire financial straits and built-up issues in the marriage between Van Buren and her husband, Terry would lead to her shooting him in the back of the head on Sept. 2, 2019, in order to collect $300,000 in insurance money.

Cabelka said Terry Van Buren’s concrete business was failing. Loretta Van Buren, who had been laid off from The Lawton Constitution in April 2018 remained unemployed at the time of her husband’s death. Cabelka said those situations led to financial stress and, ultimately, murder. He noted the .40 caliber handgun used had been moved up to three times before law enforcement arrived; the bullet magazine was found removed from the gun.

Loretta Van Buren told investigators she had been out running errands from around 3:30 p.m. and, upon her return home around 5 p.m., discovered her husband dead on the bed, surrounded by a pool of blood around his head.

Cabelka said investigators found an imprint of blood on the blanket that appeared to match the slide of the gun and blood that tracked up Terry Van Buren’s arm that would have defied gravity during a suicide.

John Zelbst, who is representing Loretta Van Buren, opened with a plea to the jury to look at the evidence and testimony and to listen to his client whom, he said, would testify on her own behalf.

Zelbst told the jurors that Loretta Van Buren’s time out running errands was backed by documentation, from the home security cameras and cameras at the various places she visited to the timing of her 911 call after discovering her husband’s body in the bedroom.

“We know he was alive when she leaves,” he said.

The recording of Loretta Van Buren’s phone call with 911 emergency dispatcher Celeste Fowler was played for the jury. With the first strains of her voice, the defendant looked distraught as she relived that moment.

“I think he shot himself,” she told Fowler. “We’ve been having a bad year but, oh my God.”

Loretta Van Buren said her husband’s bad mood was worse than usual that day. It led to her leaving the home at his request, she said.

“He told me to go to the store or something,” she said, “so I did.”

Describing coming home and finding the utility room door shut with the cat’s inside, Loretta Van Buren told the dispatcher she turned on the lights and went into the bedroom. After seeing her husband lying on the bed, she said she shook him, saw blood and went to open the blinds. That’s when she was the gun on the pillow by his head and ran outside to call for an ambulance.

Zelbst asked the jury a question after listening to his client’s call.

“Is that the voice of a woman who shot her husband?” he asked. “That’s not fake, that’s real.”

Although Loretta Van Buren told arriving EMTs she hadn’t touched anything in the bedroom, Zelbst said she told an investigators she had before later saying she didn’t know. He said it wasn’t willful misinformation, it was due to the events unfolding.

“She’s just seen the shock of her life,” he said.

Zelbst also noted that investigators hadn’t checked her hands or clothing for gunshot residue.

In his closing to the argument, Zelbst told the jury another thing the investigators overlooked: taking the data and recordings on Loretta Van Buren’s phone.

On top of financial difficulties, in the months before Terry Van Buren’s death he was suffering from significant health problems, including a recent diagnosis of Hepatitis-C. He also took medication for his depression and used Xanax. Among the side-effects, Zelbst said, was suicidal ideation.

Zelbst said Terry Van Buren would generally be in a better mood in the mornings but, according to Loretta Van Buren, he would get more depressed and suicidal over the course of the day as he took up to 10 times his prescribed dosage of medication and would become “almost drunk.” That’s when she recorded him so he could hear what he was saying.

A recording taken days before the death offered insight into Terry Van Buren’s mindset in his own words:

“If this doesn’t change, I’m going to blow my head off,” he said. “There’s a hair trigger on that (expletive).”

Zelbst called it Terry Van Buren’s “death confession.”

The trial resumes today.