Man arrested in cold case slaying

SANDPOINT — A Tennessee man has been indicted for the premeditating killing of his wife in Bonner County in 2004.

A Bonner County grand jury indicted Stephen Mathew Lott last month on a charge of first-degree murder, court records show.

Lott, 48, made an initial appearance in Bonner County Magistrate Court on Thursday via videoconferencing with the jail. Judge Debra Heise sustained Lott’s $1 million bail and appointed a public defender to represent him, court records show.

Stephen Lott killed his wife on or about March 25, 2004, according to charging papers. Christine Lott was a 34-year-old mother of three at the time of her death.

Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall said on Wednesday the cause of Christine Lott’s death is undetermined.

Stephen Lott is scheduled to be arraigned in 1st District Court on July 16. A preliminary hearing in the case won’t be conducted because the charge against him was the product of a grand jury proceeding.

Christine Lott’s remains were discovered by a shed antler hunter on U.S. Forest Service Road No. 499 east of Coeur d’Alene in February 2016, although investigators in Kootenai County kept the discovery under wraps until December 2017.

“This case then became a joint investigation with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office,” Bonner County Undersheriff Ror Lakewold said in a statement released on Wednesday. “A substantial amount of follow-up continued, to include examination of evidence and follow-up interviews. Those investigative findings continued to lead detectives towards Stephen Lott as being the primary person of interest.”

After her disappearance, Stephen Lott reportedly told Bonner County sheriff’s investigators that he went into Mitchell’s Harvest Foods while his wife used a pay phone outside the store. He said he witnessed his wife get into a red pickup truck with Washington state tags that drove away westbound on U.S. Highway 2.

However, detectives learned of a letter Stephen Lott wrote to a family member in June in which he portrayed his wife’s death as a suicide.

“This information was contradictory to anything he had told detectives during this investigation,” Lakewold said in the statement.

As a result of the new information, a $1 million warrant was issued for Stephen Lott’s arrest. Later, a grand jury was convened and found probable cause to charge him with first-degree murder and an additional felony charge failing to report the death to the county coroner.

Stephen Lott was arrested on the Bonner County warrant in Murfreesboro, Tenn., on June 19.

Lakewold offered special thanks to detectives in Kootenai County.

“Without the culmination of efforts of their detectives and the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office detectives, this arrest would not have been possible,” Lakewold said.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.