US woman jailed 30 years for pushing hubby off cliff

US woman jailed 30 years for pushing hubby off cliff

UNITED STATES - A US newlywed who pushed her husband off a cliff about a week after they married has been jailed for over 30 years.

Jordan Linn Graham pleaded guilty to murder over the death of her husband, Mr Cody Lee Johnson, last July in Glacier National Park in Montana, where they had gone hiking.

The 22-year-old initially told police that Mr Johnson, 25, had gone missing after telling her he was going for a drive with a friend. But she later admitted she had lied, AFP reported.

On Thursday, a court sentenced Graham to 365 months in jail.

The couple married on June 29 last year. Mr Johnson went missing eight days later and his body was found on July 12 below The Loop, a lookout area in the park.

Friends of Graham told detectives that she had voiced second thoughts about getting married after the wedding, wondering "what the heck I did this all for", prosecutors said.

TEXT MESSAGES

After her husband's disappearance, she had many exchanges, often by text message, with people about what had supposedly happened to him.

Three days after he vanished, Graham created an e-mail account and used it to write to her normal e-mail address. Using that new account, she pretended to be a friend explaining how

Mr Johnson had gone off with other friends.

Pretending to be "Tony", she wrote to herself: "He was saying he needed to be with buddies for a bit and take them for a joyride before they had to go. So he said bye to me and they took off in a black car for a ride."

She eventually told detectives where to find his body: at the bottom of a 90m cliff.


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