Source: Madison County Detention Center/OWN / Madison County Detention Center/OWN
Tim Norman, son of Sweetie Pie’s owner Robbie Montgomery, was arrested in connection with the murder of his nephew Andre Montgomery.
According to a local publication, Riverfront Times, Tim Norman was arrested on Tuesday (Aug 19) at his home in Jackson, Mississippi, on charges of conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in commission of murder-for-hire, resulting in death, after federal authorities say Norman executed a sinister conspiracy to have his teenage nephew killed in 2016. According to the recent unsealed criminal complaint, Norman had taken out $450,000 in life insurance policies on Andre Montgomery in 2014, and he was the sole beneficiary.
The local publication also revealed the timeline of the murder for hire plot uncovered by authorities showing that Norman and a Memphis-based dancer named Teria Ellis headed to St. Louis and communicated over burner phones and places Norman at the scene when his nephew was killed.
Reports show that in 2016, Norman was living in Los Angeles. Phone records obtained by investigators showed that leading up to Andre Montgomery’s murder, Norman and Ellis also started contacting Montgomery, sending him her Instagram account handle, “Alexusdagreat”, and texting that she would be visiting St. Louis.
“I’m on my way in town,” she wrote him in an email on March 10, 2016, according to court records.
Three days later, Norman flew into St. Louis and booked a room at the Chase Park Plaza hotel. The next day, March 14, Ellis contacted Montgomery to figure out where he was, according to the complaint. Cell phone records showed that he texted her the address of a house: 3964 Natural Bridge Ave. in the city. Ellis then called Norman.
That night, at 8:02 p.m., Montgomery was shot to death at the house on Natural Bridge. And investigators believe Ellis was there. Location data from her burner phone put her at the scene, and in one of Montgomery’s final phone calls, he spoke to his girlfriend, who later told investigators she could hear a woman’s voice in the background.
One minute after the eighteen-year-old was shot, Ellis made another call — to Norman.
“Despite being at the scene of Montgomery’s murder at 8:02pm, ELLIS’s first phone call was not to the police, but rather to [NORMAN] at 8:03 p.m., at which time her phone location data showed she was driving in a direction consistent with her returning home in Memphis, Tennessee,” the criminal complaint says.
Phone records would then show the phone moving south along Interstate 55. Norman’s phone showed him flying back to Los Angeles, arriving early the morning after the killing. That same day, March 15, 2016, both the burner phones went dark, authorities say.
After the murder, authorities claim that back in Memphis, Ellis began depositing money, starting with $3,020 in a checking account that previously had a negative balance and another $4,340 in a savings account opened the same day. On March 17, 2016, she deposited another $1,900, before flying to Los Angeles on March 22, 2016, with her mother and daughter with authorities noting that phone data shows she connected with Norman at least once. At the end of April 2016, Norman wired Ellis $700, concluding the money trail for her alleged role in the plot.
Court records note that Norman, who at the time waited a week before contacting the bank to cash out on the policy, still hasn’t been paid on the policy after his initial claim on March 21, 2016, due to him never providing all the documentation required.
Norman, who starred with his family in the show Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s, had feuded with his mother over money in recent years after she sued him for opening restaurants under the Sweetie Pie’s brand without her permission, according to court records.
He’s now being held without bond at a jail in Madison County, Mississippi.
