- Joined
- Apr 14, 2011
- Messages
- 16,831
- Points
- 113
Joseph Elledge, who killed Chinese wife Mengqi Ji, gets maximum 28 years in prison
The US man had driven her body – with their year-old daughter in the car – to a state park and buried her not far from where he had proposed to her Elledge said Ji hit her head after he pushed her during an argument, and that he did not report her death because he had panicked
On October 10, 2019, with the couple’s year-old daughter in the car, Elledge drove to Rock Bridge State Park, about five miles (8km) south of Columbia. There, he dug a grave and buried Ji not far from where he had proposed to her. He then returned home and reported her missing.
Elledge’s lawyer Scott Rosenblum argued that his client was awkward and made “unbelievably dumb” decisions after Ji died, but that he never intended to kill his wife and should not have been charged with murder.
Joseph Elledge looks at a computer screen displaying text messages he and his late wife Mengqi Ji exchanged before her death, during his murder trial in Columbia, Missouri, in November. Photo: Columbia Daily Tribune via AP
Elledge said he discovered in the days before Ji’s death that she had been exchanging sexually suggestive messages on social media with a man from China.
He also testified that the couple’s relationship suffered because of tension caused by her parents, who moved from China to live with them after their daughter was born in October 2018.
The couple met in 2015 at Nanova, a company that makes dental products, where Ji was Elledge’s supervisor. They began dating the following year and eventually travelled to China, where Elledge asked Ji’s parents for permission to marry her. The couple married in 2017.
Ji earned a master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Missouri in December 2014. Elledge was a student at the university when his wife died.
Grandparents in custody battle over daughter of Chinese woman missing in US
5 Nov 2019
The family’s lawyer, Amy Salladay, said in a statement that Ji’s parents are grateful that Jacobs upheld the jurors’ recommended sentence.“Her husband received one year for every year of her life,” Salladay said.
“This doesn’t bring her back, it doesn’t make the nightmare of waking up every day and not being able to talk or see your child go away but it is justice in terms of what the American court system can provide.”
