BOISE - Two young women, one a beautiful blonde Ukrainian, played significant roles on Monday during the murder-for-hire trial of former Richard Butler and Aryan Nations lawyer Edgar J. Steele in federal court in Boise.

Jurors heard from his daughter, 20-year-old Kelsey Steele, of Oregon City, Ore., who also is the daughter of Cyndi Steele, the person prosecutors say Edgar Steele targeted in his alleged murder-for-hire plot. And via a video-recorded deposition, jurors got to hear from the woman prosecutors have said 65-year-old Steele was gushing over in an online courtship, 25-year-old Tatiyana Loganova, of Lugansk, Ukraine.

Kelsey Steele testified that she doesn't believe the audio recordings, gathered secretly by a hitman who turned into a FBI informant against her father, are entirely authentic.

"It's just not the way that he talks," Kelsey Steele said.

She also thought some of the background sounds, including a train going by, were suspicious. She didn't recall being able to hear trains from the Steeles' Sagle home.

She, along with her mother, supports Steele "100 percent," she told the jury in U.S. District Court.

Kelsey Steele, who works as an assistant manager at a retail clothing shop, said she's heard the recordings several times of her father and his handyman turned alleged hitman Larry Fairfax, 50, discussing the alleged plot on her mother. Fairfax is to be sentenced for a car bomb he attached to Cyndi Steele's SUV, which was discovered June 15 when she was getting an oil change in Coeur d'Alene.

Jurors listened to Loganova as she described establishing communications with Steele in the spring of 2010, after meeting on a dating website.

She said they communicated by Skype and emails until his arrest; then he sent her letters. She doesn't read or speak English, so she needed a translator from a dating agency to assist her.

Kelsey Steele said that she sent her father books on Russian, paid for by supporters of his.

Loganova said Steele told her he lives alone and is divorced. In a letter, shown to the jury, Steele tells her he wants to have a permanent home with her in Ukraine. He promised to live in that country most of the year, so she can be close to her family. He also wanted them to spend time in the U.S. with his kids.

He told her, in his letters, that he would provide for them with money from the books he'd write. He said there would be plenty for her to do while he wrote: Make love to him, take care of their kids, and go to school.

She discussed his plan to travel to Ukraine to visit her in August 2010. Steele's defense has said he was only in contact with Loganova and other "Russian brides" for researching a case, and he planned to write a book on the topic.

"Your surprise is a teddy bear that I have named Eddie Bear," Steele wrote in a letter to Loganova. She never got the gift after he was arrested, he wrote, because his "ex-wife" never mailed it as he understood she would.

He wrote that he was arrested on a phony charge.

He told her the U.S. government has been gunning for him for a long time because of his outspoken criticism of the government in his writings and public speeches.

"I miss you so much," he wrote to her from jail. "I seem to dream about you every night. I found myself daydreaming about you being near me... It has been nearly 3 weeks since we last saw each other via Skype."

Prosecutors have sought to show through witness testimony and evidence that Steele wanted his wife dead. He was tired of her and believed she might have a boyfriend in Portland, where she had been spending a lot of time taking care of her mother, who was sick. He hoped an auto insurance policy would pay out upon her death, and that he could end up with Loganova, prosecutors have sought to show.

He added in a letter to Loganova that he can't help imagining her "climbing in (bed) beside me and what it would be like to hold you and see your smile up close and kiss me."

Jurors have heard four recordings of Steele. Two are of Steele and Fairfax discussing the alleged plot. The authenticity of two other audio recording has not been disputed. In those, Steele talks with his wife and son while Steele was locked up at the Kootenai County jail.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan said the jurors can make up their own minds on whether it's Edgar Steele speaking to Larry Fairfax at the Steele property on June 9 and 10, comparing those recordings with the jail calls days later.

The government rested its case just after 11 a.m. Monday.

Prosecutors said at the beginning of the day Monday, outside the jury's presence, that they had reviewed Larry Fairfax's writings that he planned to weave into a fictional book. Whelan told the court there was nothing within the 200-plus pages that would constitute exculpatory evidence.

Steele is facing up to possibly the rest of his life in prison if found guilty of the four felony counts against him.

His trial resumes today with defense witnesses.