Killer’s appeal rejected in rural Dubois Co. stabbing death

A man convicted of stabbing his girlfriend to death in rural Dubois County lost his appeal Tuesday that challenged the evidence admitted and excluded at his trial and the manner in which the jury was instructed.

Kyle D. Schneider was convicted of the January 2019 stabbing death of Chloie Lubbehusen at the trailer they shared in southern Indiana. He was sentenced to 85 years in prison — 65 years for the murder conviction and another 20 for his adjudication as a habitual offender.

The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed Tuesday in Kyle D. Schneider v. State of Indiana, 19A-CR-1928, finding the Dubois Circuit Court did not abuse its discretion.

Schneider argued that video of his interviews with law enforcement should have been excluded because he had asked for an attorney, and the trial court did suppress one video on that basis. Schneider also sought to exclude a note he wrote during an interview saying “I stabbed her,” and he claimed the trial court in Jasper also abused its discretion in excluding a purported note from Lubbehusen expressing her affection toward him.

The appellate panel found the purported note from the victim could not be authenticated and that “there is no substantial likelihood that the First and Third Interviews and the Confession contributed to Schneider’s conviction. Any error in the admission of this evidence was therefore harmless.”

“… (O)ur review of the evidence reveals that after finding a naked and bloody Lubbehusen in her trailer, Dubois County Sheriff’s Department deputies found a naked Schneider hiding in insulation in a nearby garage. Schneider asked the officers to let him tell his side of the story. While sitting in the back of Deputy (Brad) Kendall’s police car, Schneider yelled that he wanted to speak with someone who had killed a person. When Deputy Kendall approached his vehicle to roll up the window, Schneider asked the deputy if he had ever killed a person. When Deputy Kendall responded that he had not, Schneider told the deputy that this was his first kill,” Judge Rudy Pyle III wrote for the panel, reciting “overwhelming independent evidence of Schneider’s guilt.”

The panel likewise rejected Schneider’s appeal over the trial court’s refusal to give his tendered lesser-included offense instruction for reckless homicide, noting the severity of the force used when Lubbehusen was stabbed 10 times.