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Missouri man who killed, buried wife sentenced to 28 years

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-year-old 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.”

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