STATESBORO, Ga. (AP) - A Bulloch County jury on Friday convicted a man in the slaying of a Statesboro preacher after prosecutors said the man plotted with the preacher’s wife and stepdaughter from his prison cell.
The jury convicted Tarell Momon, 36, of malice murder in the June 2013 shooting death of 51-year-old Michael Anthony Riley, the Statesboro Herald reports (https://bit.ly/1p6KpOS). Riley was shot in the left eye as he slept.
Prosecutors say Momon, who was already serving a life sentence for Newton County crimes dating to 1995, ordered someone to kill Riley. A judge on Friday sentenced Momon to serve life sentence without parole following the life sentence he’s currently serving.
Jurors also acquitted Terrance Ray Griswould, a 30-year-old music producer from Augusat, in Riley’s killing.
Authorities said cellphone records showed Griswould traveled from Augusta to Statesboro and back at the time of the killing, and witnesses saw his car at the scene. Jurors viewed a recorded interview in which Griswould told police he left his cellphone charging in his car when he lent it to Travis Lorenzo Berrian.
Berrian, 29, shot and wounded a probation officer before fatally shooting himself when officers tried to arrest him in a probation office in July 2013.
Riley’s wife, Antoinette Braddy Riley, 50, and her daughter, Katrina Denise Ledford, 30, of Davisboro, both pleaded guilty in June to malice murder in Riley’s death. They are each serving a sentence of life without parole.
Ledford testified that she and Momon were in a relationship and that she had visited him frequently and spoke to him on his contraband cellphone daily.
Antoinette Riley told jurors she and her husband, who was listed as pastor of New Birth Nondenominational Church in Statesboro, had been having problems and that she had planned to file for divorce in July 2013. Her husband ransacked her things in a fit of anger because she spent too much time with family in Sandersville and worked too much, she testified. The jury also heard about an argument during which, she said, he physically attacked her.
Prosecutors said text messages between Ledford, Antoinette Riley and Momon demonstrated how they planned the killing. Antoinette Riley testified that she thought Momon was going to send someone to beat her husband, not kill him. Ledford also said she didn’t know about plans to shoot her stepfather.
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Information from: Statesboro Herald, https://www.statesboroherald.com
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