Wife-killer Andrew Griggs sentenced to 3 more years in prison

KentOnline / KMTV

After being imprisoned for life for Debbie Griggs' murder, he admitted to trying to trick the police into believing his wife might still be alive.  Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00A devious and conniving killer who attempted to lie to get away with the murder of his

00:05own wife Debbie.

00:07That was how the judge described Andrew Griggs today at Canterbury Crown Court, just before

00:11sentencing him to an additional three years on top of the life sentence he's currently

00:16serving for murder, which has a minimum term of 20 years.

00:20He murdered Debbie in 1999 and was only given his life sentence in 2019.

00:26But his new charge was perverting the course of justice, which he heard from prison on

00:30the Isle of Wight for trying to get his own son to dig up the victim and send a lock of

00:34her hair from abroad in an attempt to trick the authorities into believing she was still alive.

00:39Despite his guilty plea, Debbie's family say they still haven't gotten closure for her

00:44murder.

00:45We thought we had justice for Debbie in 2019.

00:48We were wrong.

00:49We have been tormented and consistently laughed at by A.G.

00:53When we got Debbie back in November 2022, we were able to bury her and we thought that

00:58was closure.

00:59Also, it's worth adding that despite us holding out an olive branch, Jeremy, Jake and Luke failed

01:06to attend or even acknowledge.

01:08It would appear that we are never going to be able to put us to bed.

01:11And now we are all seeing, seeing, feeling that the déjà vu will ensure that we never

01:17get justice or 100% closure.

01:20Despite the serious nature of the offence, the added years to his sentence were reduced

01:24to three years.

01:25Now, of those three years that have been added to his minimum life sentence, he'll actually

01:29only end up serving just more than half of them.

01:32This is because Griggs will be eligible to apply for parole at the halfway point of this

01:36additional sentence.

01:37There were two options open to the judge.

01:39The judge could have made it a concurrent sentence.

01:41However, he chose to make it a consecutive sentence and actually acknowledged the seriousness

01:46and the gravity of the offence, making it the highest culpability.

01:50So in terms of that, I think the judge absolutely took into account everything that was available

01:55to him and sentenced accordingly.

01:59It was a consecutive sentence, which is very much welcomed.

02:04Judge Simon James also made reference to Andrew Griggs' character and said he showed

02:08a lack of remorse during the trial, not only for murdering his wife, but for using his

02:13own son to attempt to provide himself with an alibi.

02:16But the consecutive sentence does mean that Griggs will have to wait longer to apply for

02:20parole.

02:21His family say they still want closure from him by him saying exactly what happened on

02:25the night Debbie was murdered.

02:27Finn McDermid for KMTV in Canterbury.

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