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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