WAHOO — Kolton Barnes' ex-girlfriend told the jury that during their two-year relationship he was emotionally abusive, kicked her in the legs leaving bruises and once threatened her with a shotgun when she said she was leaving him.
The testimony came Wednesday at Barnes' trial for the murder of his fiancée, Kayla Matulka, who was strangled and stabbed more than two dozen times in their Malmo home July 15, 2020.
Lesleigh Seitsinger said she'd started dating Barnes at the age of 16 and moved in with him in late 2014. She said he started physically abusing her, kicking her legs, soon after. It happened once or twice a week, she said.
By the next spring, she decided to pack up and move out.
But when Barnes came home and found her packing, she said, he got a shotgun and shells, which he wrote on: "Lesleigh Kolton gone for good."
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He handed her the shells and said their lives were in her hands and he didn't want her to leave.
She stayed a year more, before Barnes kicked her out in the spring of 2016 and left her for someone else. She moved back in a month later, but he ultimately left her a second time for another woman, which Barnes' attorney, Matt McDonald, suggested gave her motive to hold a grudge.
Why would she move back in with Barnes if he'd abused her and threatened to kill her with a shotgun, he asked. Or keep photos of him on her Facebook page even today.
"For whatever reason, I was in love with him and thought everything was my fault," Seitsinger said.
On July 13, 2020, two days before Matulka, 27, was found dead in her and Barnes' bedroom in Malmo, engagement photos of the seemingly happy couple had been posted to their shared Facebook page.
But texts and internet phone searches showed a stormier reality.
At 1:38 a.m. July 14, 2020, less than 24 hours before her violent killing, Matulka had Googled: "How to separate from a controlling partner" and started researching Lincoln apartments, according to a Nebraska State Patrol Crime Analyst.
Prosecutors say Barnes, now 27 and on trial for first-degree murder, animal cruelty, child abuse and weapons charges, stabbed her and their dog as her two young children slept after she broke off their engagement an hour earlier in a text while he was at the Malmo bar.
"You need help and I can no longer help you," she'd texted him. "I don't want you to come back and lay a single hand on me."
Not long after, Barnes told her: "We're engaged and we're getting married no matter what you're trying to say."
Matulka told him the door was locked and to find somewhere else to stay. She said she would call police if he bothered her or her kids.
In messages Barnes later deleted from his phone, he threatened to kick in the door to get inside.
The next morning after the 911 call came in, Saunders County Sheriff's deputies arrived to find the garage door forced open and Matulka lying on the floor cold to the touch, stab wounds all over her naked body.
Crime scene workers found a man's wedding ring under the bed between slats and a woman's engagement ring in the bathroom.
Jurors on Thursday are expected to hear Barnes' version of what happened.