
HOULTON, Maine — The defendant in an Aroostook County murder trial clearly described an alleged kitchen altercation that he said led to the shooting death of his girlfriend, but he said he was unable to recall any details about how, when or why he discarded her body.
Jayme Schnackenberg, 41, who is charged with the intentional and knowing 2023 murder of his live-in girlfriend, Kimberly Hardy, took the stand in Aroostook County Superior Court in his own defense on Thursday afternoon in Houlton.
In the first day of the trial in Aroostook County Superior Court, the state told the jurors — 11 men and five women — that Schnackenberg murdered his girlfriend of six years by shooting her twice in the head and that he thought he could get away with it because he had hidden her body in a remote wooded area off the Harvey Siding Road where she would not be found.
In opening arguments, Adam Swanson, one of Schnackenberg’s attorneys, said his client shot and killed his girlfriend, but that it was not murder.
“Jayme Schnackenberg shot and killed Kimberly Hardy, but that is not what this case is about,” Swanson said. “The fact that Jay shot and killed Kim is not what matters. What matters is whether the state can prove that he did so knowingly or intentionally. The state will be unable to prove the why. Why did Jay shoot Kim?”
In 2023, Schnackenberg told Maine State Police that at 5 a.m. June 16, 2023, Hardy was upset with him and left their Monticello home on foot after packing some items. She did not take her cell phone, her car or her bankcards, he said.
During his testimony Thursday, he admitted that he had lied and by the time police interviewed him, Hardy was dead and her body already discarded.
Prior to detailing the events of her death, Schnackenberg shared with the court the story of his relationship with Hardy and how together they veered into a life of daily drug use, as well as violence.
By June 2023, they were using meth every day, and Schnackenberg was also using heroin and fentanyl all the time, he said, adding that he hid his heroin use from Hardy because she did not want him to do it.
“I would get high as often as possible,” he said. “I would get high before work, on the way to work, during work, after work and when I got home.”
In his testimony, Schnackenberg attempted to paint Hardy as violent, detailing several occasions when she allegedly pulled a knife on him while he did nothing.
In the week before her death, he said that he had been on a heavy bender and hadn’t slept for more than a week. By the early morning hours of June 16, the couple were fighting upstairs. When Hardy went down into the kitchen, he followed her because she had their meth and he wanted it, he said.
According to Schnackenberg, as the argument escalated in the kitchen, Hardy pulled a knife on him, and when he tried to wrestle it from her he couldn’t.
“She was pushing me all over the freakin’ place. She was thrashing, and when she started to pull away from me I grabbed my pistol off my hip and told her to drop the knife,” he said. “She swung her head back into my face and it fired.”
While Hardy was on the kitchen floor, Schnackenberg did not call 911 and went back upstairs and got high, he said.
On cross-examination, the state asked Schnackenberg why he tied her head to her feet.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
Assistant Attorney General Kate Bozeman asked a series of questions about Schnackenberg’s lies to state police and about how he disposed of Hardy’s body.
Each time, he said he did not remember.
“You don’t remember how you carried your dead fiance’s body?” she asked.
Bozeman talked about how Schnackenberg’s story changed after he had knowledge of all the evidence of blood in the kitchen and video surveillance of his comings and goings in the days following Hardy’s death.
When she asked him to explain how the kitchen altercation ensued, he said Hardy had her back to him and he was unable to explain why he shot her twice in the head.
“How did she get a second bullet in her head?” Bozeman asked. “After the kickback, you would have had to pull the trigger again.”
Schnackenberg said he did not know what happened.
On Friday, the defense and prosecution will present closing arguments and the jury will deliberate.
Schnackenberg is currently being held in the Aroostook County jail without bail.