Man who killed, buried wife gets 28-year sentence
COLUMBIA, MO. >> A judge on Friday sentenced a Missouri man to 28 years in prison — the maximum he could impose — for the 2019 killing of his wife, whose body he buried in a state park and whose death he misled the authorities about for more than a year.
The sentence Judge Brouck Jacobs gave to 26-yearold Joseph Elledge was the one jurors recommended in November when they convicted Elledge of second-degree murder in the killing of his wife, Mengqi Ji, 28. Ji met Elledge after she moved to the U.S. from China to study engineering at the University of Missouri.
Before Jacobs handed down his sentence, which couldn’t have exceeded the jury’s recommended one, Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Knight called for him to put Elledge behind bars for as long as he could, KOMU-TV reported.
“The defendant deserves no break because he displayed no remorse,” Knight said.
Knight also called Elledge the “biggest complainer in the history of the Boone County Jail,” noting that he filed 28 grievances about its temperature and the noise made by its heating system, plumbing, faucets, toilets and TV. Elledge called the noises “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Elledge’s second-degree murder conviction will require him to serve at least 85% of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
Elledge reported Ji missing in October 2019, prompting months of extensive searches. Her remains were found last March in a park near Columbia, where the couple lived.
During the trial, Knight described Elledge as a “stone cold killer” and argued that he was guilty of first-degree murder because he intentionally killed Ji. Prosecutors used social media posts, audiotapes and a journal Elledge kept to document the couple’s volatile relationship.
But Elledge said Ji’s death was accidental. He said Ji fell and hit her head on Oct. 8, 2019, after he pushed her during an argument, and that he found her dead in bed the next morning.