Ex-Sweetie Pie star convicted of murdering nephew

ST. LOUIS (AP) – The former star of the St. Louis-based television reality show Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for dating the shooting of his nephew collect a life insurance payment.

James “Tim” Norman did not speak on his own behalf at the sentencing hearing for the killing of his 21-year-old nephew Andre Montgomery Jr. in March 2016. Both men had starred on long-running reality show OWN, about the soul of the family grocery store in the area from St Louis.

Norman’s attorneys filed several letters from family and friends asking for leniency, including Norman’s mother and founder of Sweetie Pie’s restaurants, Robbie Montgomery.

“I don’t know if Tim did what he was accused and convicted of doing,” wrote Robbie Montgomery, who is also the victim’s grandmother. “He’s still the baby I gave birth to and I love him like any mother involved loves her child.”

Prosecutors said Norman bought Montgomery life insurance worth $450,000 and arranged for him to be lured onto a St. Louis street where another man shot him.

Several of Andre Montgomery’s family members, including his mother Michell Griggs, called for Norman to be sentenced to life in prison, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. 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 sentenced in September Conspiracy to commit assassination, contract assassination and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Travell Anthony Hill admitted he shot Montgomery in exchange for $5,000. Hill, 31, from St.Louis, was convicted in October to 32 years imprisonment. Terica Taneisha Ellis, now 39, from Memphis, Tennessee, was convicted to three years in prison after admitting that Norman paid her $10,000 to find Montgomery and tell Hill his whereabouts.

A fourth person, insurance agent Waiel “Wally” Rebhi Yaghnam, was sentenced to three years in prison for helping Norman fraudulently apply for multiple insurance policies and making a claim on Montgomery’s life insurance policy.