This past Thursday, the former star of the St. Louis-based reality show “Welcome to Sweetie Pie” was given a life sentence for orchestrating the shooting death of his nephew in order to cash in on the latter’s life insurance.
At the sentencing hearing for the murder of his nephew, 21-year-old Andre Montgomery Jr., in March 2016, James “Tim” Norman did not offer any statements in his own defense. Both males were featured prominently in an OWN reality show chronicling their family’s St. Louis-based soul food restaurant.
The letters Norman’s lawyers supplied included one from his mother, Robbie Montgomery, who founded the Sweetie Pie’s eateries, pleading for leniency.
“I don’t know whether Tim committed what he was accused and convicted of,” the victim’s grandma Robbie Montgomery stated. For me, he will always be the baby I carried, and he will always have my undying love.
After taking out a $450,000 life insurance policy on Montgomery, prosecutors claim that Norman planned for Montgomery to be brought to a St. Louis street and murdered there.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated that several members of Andre Montgomery’s family, including his mother Michell Griggs, pleaded with the judge to give Norman a life sentence.
A federal judge in the United States, John A. Ross, handed down two life terms, calling the crime “a cold-blooded, terribly premeditated, planned execution of your nephew.”
In September, a court found Norman guilty of conspiracy, murder, and fraud in the hiring. Travell In exchange for $5,000, Anthony Hill acknowledged shooting Montgomery. St. Louis native Hill, age 31, was given a 32-year prison term in October.
Terica Taneisha Ellis, now 39 years old and originally from Memphis, Tennessee, was convicted of fraud and given a three-year prison sentence after admitting that Norman had paid her $10,000 to find Montgomery and reveal his whereabouts to Hill.
Waiel “Wally” Rebhi Yaghnam, an insurance agent, was the fourth person involved; he received a three-year prison term for assisting Norman in filing a fraudulent claim on Montgomery’s life insurance policy and in obtaining other insurance policies.
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