Former Sweetie Pie's star sentenced for nephew's killing
scheduled tribe. LOUIS (AP) – The former star of the St. Louis-based television reality show “Welcome to Sweetie Pie” was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for arranging the shooting death of his nephew in order to collect life insurance payments.
James “Tim” Norman did not speak on his own behalf at the March 2016 sentencing hearing for the murder of his 21-year-old nephew, Andre Montgomery Jr. Both men starred in the long-running OWN reality show about the family soulmate. Food business in the St. Louis area.
Norman’s attorneys submitted several letters of generosity from family and friends, including Norman’s mother and Robbie Montgomery, the founder of Sweetie Pie’s restaurants.
“I don’t know why Tim did what he was accused of and was convicted of,” wrote Robbie Montgomery, who is also the victim’s grandmother. “She’s still the child I gave birth to, and I love her as every mother involved loves her child.”
Prosecutors said Norman took out a $450,000 life insurance policy on Montgomery and arranged to lure her to a St. Louis street, where another man shot her.
As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, several members of Andre Montgomery’s family, including his mother, Michelle Griggs, called for Norman to be sentenced to life in prison. US District Judge John A. Ross sentenced him to two life terms, calling it “a cold-blooded, incredibly premeditated, planned execution of your nephew”.
Norman was convicted in September of murder for hire, murder for hire and conspiracy to commit fraud.
Traveler Anthony Hill admitted that he had shot Montgomery in exchange for $5,000. Hill, 31, of St. Louis, was sentenced in October to 32 years in prison. Terika Tanisha Ellis, now 39, of Memphis, Tennessee, was sentenced to three years in prison after admitting that Norman paid her $10,000 to find Montgomery and reveal his location to Hill .
A fourth man, insurance agent Wiel “Wally” Rebhi Yaghnam, was sentenced to three years in prison for helping Norman fraudulently apply for multiple insurance policies and file a claim on Montgomery’s life insurance policy.
