Shivangi Sinha
In November 2014, police were called to Tiffany Pugh’s house in East Point, Georgia, after the alarm system went off. By the time they arrived, they found Tiffany’s remains in the guest room of the house, as she had been shot. Her 2-year-old son, Andre Jr., was on the bed with her, crying and trying to wake her up. The incident triggered a massive public reaction, but soon, phone records helped the police find their way to the killer. A&E’s ‘Sex, Money, Murder,’ especially the episode ‘Monsters Among Us,’ gives the whole timeline of the case and details how it was eventually solved.
Tiffany Pugh’s Toddler Son Was With Her When Her Remains Were Found
Tiffany Nicole Jackson was born on September 9, 1984, in Rochester, New York. Her parents, Tommy and Patricia Jackson, raised her and her brother, Brandon, in a modest but happy home. She was a bright girl with big aspirations and eventually joined Clark Atlanta University (CAU). In 2006, she graduated with a BBA in Logistics, Materials and Supply Chain Management. She was in college when she met Andre Jason Pugh, an Atlanta club DJ who performed as DJ Awesome at Club Onyx. The two shared a love for music, and they eventually fell in love.
Tiffany joined Delta Air Lines in 2006, working in supply chain management roles. Her personal life also seemed to fall into place as she married Andre in 2009. The couple was blessed with two children, a daughter named Jasmine and a son named Andre J., who was born around 2011. Tiffany never left work, and in 2010, she started working as a Pricing Analyst. In 2013, she was promoted to Commodity Manager and seemed to have a great future within the company. From the outside, everything she had built appeared picture-perfect.
On November 23, 2014, around 6 am, Andre called his boss and told him that the alarm bells at his house had gone off. He then called the police and also made his way to the house. The emergency responders found Tiffany’s remains in the guest room of the house. Her 2-year-old son, Andre Jr., was in bed with her, crying and calling for his mother to wake up. Tiffany had sustained two gunshot wounds, one to her chest and another from close range to her eye. A third round had also been fired, but it had missed her.
Tiffany Pugh’s Killer Had Hired His Best Friend to Carry Out the Attack
Just 10 months before Tiffany Pugh’s killing, William Fernando Barnes, aka DJ Nando, had been killed. Since Nando also worked in Atlanta and was connected to Andre Pugh through his work, there was a suspicion that it could be the work of a serial killer. Various theories emerged, but the investigation eventually led somewhere else entirely. When emergency responders first arrived at the scene, Andre told them that he had not gone inside but believed that his wife had been killed. He pointed to a window screen that had been removed and broken glass, which led detectives to investigate the possibility of a break-in. However, no items had been stolen from the house, and the theory was eventually dropped.
Andre had also told police that he believed the killers had come to target him, but had hit Tiffany because he was not there. The detectives decided to check the phone and financial records of the couple. They found out that Tiffany was the sole breadwinner of the family and had often helped Andre pay his bills. From the text exchanges between the married couple, they also found out that the relationship between the two was not totally cordial. Tiffany had threatened to leave her husband. Andre had also been unfaithful to Tiffany and was messaging a lot of women while requesting his wife not to leave him at the same time.
The detectives also acquired some CCTV footage that showed a car circling the neighborhood minutes before the killing took place. A tower dump from the cell phone tower near the crime scene showed that Andre’s best friend, Adrian Harley, was in the neighborhood at the time of the crime. The car in the CCTV footage also matched the one he drove. The final piece of evidence they obtained was Andre’s cellphone records, which showed that the two men had been speaking frequently the night before the crime. On December 5, 2014, Andre was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to commit burglary and was taken into custody.
Andre Pugh is Serving His Sentence in a Georgia Prison Today
In September 2018, Andre Pugh’s trial began. It was a short trial that ended in early October 2018. Andre was found guilty of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus five years for the firearm possession charge. In March 2024, Andre appealed for a new trial, but his request was rejected. He is now being held at Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he will serve the rest of his life behind bars.
