The apartment where Thessalonica Allen killed her husband Randy Allen (screengrab via WSBT). Inset: Thessalonica Allen (via La Porte County (Ind.) Sheriff’s Office).
A jury has convicted a wife accused of killing her husband, chopping up his body with an ax, and making her children help her hide the body.
Thessalonica Allen, 36, was convicted of murdering Randy Allen in their La Porte, Indiana apartment in August 2021. As Law&Crime previously reported, Allen was believed to have fatally shot her husband while her two children, both of whom were identified as being under the age of 16 at the time, were inside the home.
After deliberating for less than 30 minutes, the jury convicted Thessalonica Allen of eight counts: murder, abuse of a corpse, altering a crime scene, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and two counts of neglect of a dependent — all felonies — and a misdemeanor count of interference with the reporting of a crime, local CBS affiliate WSBT reported.
She faces between 45 and 60 years for the murder conviction.
Area Fox affiliate WXIN reported that as he was helping the defendant’s children with their homework, Randy Allen noticed a website he believed his wife may have visited and confronted her about it. WSBT reported that Thessalonica Allen’s 16-year-old son testified at trial that his mother and stepfather were fighting over a social media post that Randy Allen had discovered on her computer, leading him to accuse her of cheating on him.
The children reportedly heard a loud bang and ran into the bedroom. An autopsy later determined that Randy Allen had been shot through his arm, the bullet apparently penetrating the right side of his body, striking his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed.
Thessalonica Allen reportedly told her children to ignore her husband — and his pleas for them to call 911 — as he lay on the floor, bleeding out.
Later that night, Thessalonica Allen allegedly woke the two children up and told them to help her drag Randy Allen’s corpse outside the house and into his car, but the three were unable to move the body because it was too heavy. This allegedly led Thessalonica Allen to resort to even more horrific and grisly tactics to dispose of the body.
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The children reportedly told detectives that their mother went out the next day and brought back an assortment of cleaning supplies as well as an ax, which she allegedly used to dismember Randy Allen’s corpse. She then had the kids help her place the pieces of the dismembered body in a tote bag, but it was still reportedly too heavy for them to move. The children allegedly told investigators that their mother said she planned to load Randy Allen’s body into his car and drive it to a location in South Bend where she would set it on fire, but the body remained too heavy for the three to move.
Police were reportedly notified about the situation by a man who had previously been in a relationship with Thessalonica Allen and who was the father of one of the children. The defendant had reportedly called him asking for help in moving her dead husband’s body. The man refused.
At trial, Thessalonica Allen’s lawyer tried to mount a claim of self-defense, alleging that Randy Allen had lunged at her during the fight, WSBT reported. Prosecutors said that Thessalonica Allen had lied in order to get a protective order against Randy Allen, and that there were notes showing that the defendant had planned to kill her husband.
According to WXIN, police found a handwritten note in the apartment during a subsequent search — essentially a to-do list of tasks apparently related to getting rid of her husband’s body.
That list, per the WXIN report, included:
1. Spray s— in face, hit him in right knee w/ hammer
2. Hit w/hammer/stab him
3. Roll body up in sheets & plastic bags
Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29, WXIN reported.
Law&Crime’s Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
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