Dabbs murder trial underway

The two-week jury trial of Shannon Dabbs, accused of killing his wife and setting their house on fire in 2020, began on Jan. 6 at the Boundary County Courthouse.

Dabbs, 59, of Moyie Springs, pled not guilty in June 2024 to charges of second-degree murder, first-degree arson, and use of a deadly weapon. Dabbs maintains he acted in self-defense. 

The state counsel, co-led by Boundary County Prosecuting Attorney Andrakay Pluid and Bonner County Prosecuting Attorney Louis Marshall, presented its argument first. The state intends to call seven witnesses, according to court records. 

“The case that you’re about to hear over the next two weeks is not a ‘Who done it?’ It’s a ‘How he did it,’” Pluid said in her opening statement to the jury. 

Pluid said Dabbs was on the brink of divorce when the crimes took place in 2020. Out of fear he would lose his dream home in the settlement, Pluid alleges he fatally shot his wife, Susan, multiple times with a semiautomatic pistol in their Moyie Springs cabin and then burned the house down to create a cover story. 

The defense, counseled by criminal defense lawyer Joseph Sullivan of Coeur d’Alene, deferred its opening statement until after the state’s argument. The defense has over 100 items it intends to exhibit as evidence and plans to call 16 witnesses, according to court records. 

In a preliminary hearing in April 2024, the defense claimed that Susan Dabbs was the one to light the house on fire, and she was not shot fatally until after she shot at Shannon, who had run into the burning house after he called the police to try and put out the fire. 

“I was the one defending myself,” Dabbs said in his 911 dispatch call to the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office as the incident in question unfolded. The state exhibited the call as its first piece of evidence in the trial. 

Bonners Ferry Police Chief Willie Cowell, who responded to the house fire, was the second witness called to the stand. In his cross-examination, Cowell pointed out how Shannon Dabbs did not present many visual indicators of having been inside a burning building. 

“It’s kind of weird the things you notice, and the things that stuck out as odd,” he testified. “One was his fingernails looked manicured. The other was how immaculately clean he was except for soot in his nostrils.” 

In law enforcement body camera footage from the site of the incident later exhibited as evidence in the trial, Dabbs said he went back into the house after his wife set it on fire. He coughed and hacked up phlegm periodically, and he requested water many times while handcuffed in a squad car outside the burning house. 

“She pulled a gun. She was going to shoot me,” Dabbs said on a body camera video recording from the night of the incident. “I can’t believe she would do that.” 

The trial is scheduled to continue weekdays at the Boundary County Courthouse until a verdict is reached on Jan. 20.