COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man who admitted burying his wife’s body and misleading authorities for more than a year about her location was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder.
A jury found Joseph Elledge guilty in the killing of 28-year-old Mengqi Ji, whom he married after she moved to the U.S. from China to study at the University of Missouri.
Elledge reported Ji missing in October 2019, prompting months of extensive searches. Her remains were found in a park near Columbia, Missouri, in March.
Elledge was charged with first-degree murder, but Circuit Judge J. Hasbrouck Jacobs told jurors they could consider charges of second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and first-degree or second-degree involuntary manslaughter. Elledge was acquitted of the first-degree murder charge, KOMU-TV reported.
First-degree murder requires the state to prove that Elledge killed Ji intentionally after deliberating about it, and Elledge’s intent was central to arguments throughout the trial.
During closing arguments Thursday, Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Knight told the jury that Elledge was a “stone cold killer” who was guilty of first-degree murder because he intentionally killed his wife.
Elledge’s attorney, Scott Rosenblum, argued that his client was awkward and made “unbelievably dumb” decisions after she died. But he said Elledge never intended to kill his wife and should never have been charged with murder.
During his trial, Elledge said Ji’s death was accidental. He said she fell and hit her head Oct. 8, 2019, after he pushed her during an argument and he found her dead in bed the next morning. He said he panicked, put her body in the trunk of her car and did not report what happened while he tried to decide what to do.
He did not tell anyone, including Ji’s mother, about her disappearance.
On Oct. 10, with the couple’s young daughter in the car, Elledge drove to Rock Bridge State Park about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Columbia, where they lived. There, he dug a grave and buried Ji at a site a half-mile from where he proposed to her. He then returned home and reported her missing.
Prosecutors used social media posts, audio tapes and a journal Elledge kept to document the couple’s volatile relationship. The evidence showed them frequently yelling at each other and arguing, with Elledge often criticizing his wife for her appearance and for how she treated him.
Elledge said that in the days before her death, he discovered Ji had been exchanging sexually suggestive messages with a man from China via social media. He also testified that the couple’s relationship suffered because of tension caused by her parents, who moved from China to live with them after their daughter was born Oct. 3, 2018.
The couple met in 2015 at Nanova, a company that makes dental products, where Ji was Elledge’s supervisor. They began dating the following year and eventually traveled to China, where he asked Ji’s parents for permission to marry her. The couple married in 2017.
Ji earned a master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Missouri in December 2014. Elledge was a student at the university when his wife died.