The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

February 17, 2010

UPDATE: Man sentenced to 20-40 years for strangling wife

By Monica Pryts

GREENVILLE — A Ghanian man has been sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for murdering his wife, Brenda Agbley, formerly of Greenville.

Jude Agbley, 35, was convicted by a jury in November of third-degree homicide in the January 2009 strangulation death of Mrs. Agbley, 40, in their Pittsburgh home, according to the Associated Press.

Common Pleas Judge Kathleen Durkin last Tuesday called the crime “chilling,” citing the presence of the victim’s 7-year-old son.

Authorities said the couple had recently married and 14 threatening text messages on Mrs. Agbley’s phone indicated Agbley believed she was cheating on him. He testified they had gotten into a fight and struggled over a pair of scissors.

Immigration officials had been trying to deport Agbley since 2004 because of unrelated burglary charges, according to the AP story. They caught him a week after the murder in Detroit.

Agbley apologized to his slain wife’s family.

“I can’t believe he was sorry,” said Mrs. Agbley’s mother, Marilyn Allen, of East Fallowfield Township.

The sentencing was intense and emotional and Mrs. Agbley’s son from another relationship, Corey, said he misses his mother and also Agbley, whom he calls “Dad,” she said.

The court proceedings are over, but the family still doesn’t know why Mrs. Agbley was killed, Ms. Allen said. The same goes for another murder that hit the family in May 2008.

Mrs. Agbley’s former husband, Thomas Lorigan, and their daughter Heather Lorigan were stabbed in a brutal attack at Ms. Lorigan’s Greenville apartment.

Lorigan, 44, Greene Township, was killed and Ms. Lorigan, 23, lives with her grandmother, Mrs. Allen, and is still in therapy, recovering from her stab wounds.

“It’s still hard,” Ms. Allen said of dealing with both tragedies.

Krystle Sue Weaver, 22, formerly of Fowler, Ohio, was sentenced in September to two terms of life in prison without parole after a jury convicted her of murder, attempted murder and other charges in the case.

Ms. Weaver and her boyfriend Ronald Victor Machado had once lived in Ms. Lorigan’s apartment with Ms. Lorigan’s two children, who were present during the attack but unharmed.

Machado, 21, Jamestown, who was also charged for the attack, hanged himself May 24, 2008, in his cell at Trumbull County Jail, Warren, while awaiting extradition to Mercer County.

The Mercer County Public Defender’s office is appealing Ms. Weaver’s convictions in state Superior Court.

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