Fentanyl-dealing wife sent to prison, denied chance to attend husband’s funeral

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The wife of a drug addict who hanged himself inside the U.S. courthouse in Downtown last summer after his arrest was sentenced Thursday to four years in federal prison for dealing in fentanyl with him.

U.S. District Judge David Cercone imposed that term on Autumn McClellan, 30, after denying a request from her mother-in-law to let her go temporarily so she could attend the distribution of her husband’s ashes.

Greg Japalucci, 38, a Jeannette native who had been living on the South Side, hanged himself with his shoelaces inside a U.S. marshals’ holding cell Aug. 9 after he and McClellan were arrested at an Oakland hotel. He died Aug. 12 at a hospital. McClellan has been in custody ever since the arrest, but Mr. Japalucci’s mother, Gloria Maruca of Jeannette, asked the judge to allow her to begin her sentence at a later date. Although she held a funeral for her son, who left behind a 15-year-old son from his first marriage, she wanted to bury his ashes with Autumn present.

“I know that my son loved her dearly,” she said.

Judge Cercone said he was sensitive to her request, but could not take the risk of her returning to the world of drug using and dealing. “I can only see negative things happening,” he said. U.S. marshals took her away. The four-year sentence was a foregone conclusion, because McClellan agreed to it as part of a plea deal in October.

The sentence will include a recommendation that she participate in a 500-hour drug treatment program in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

McClellan and Mr. Japalucci, who married in April, had been indicted in June following an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Agents in March searched their Muriel Street apartment, where they found stamp bags, bundles of cash, digital scales and stampers for packaging fentanyl.

McClellan admitted to them that she and her husband sold fentanyl and had up to 50 bricks of it