A suspect in a 2021 double homicide in southeast Ohio appeared Thursday in Hilo Circuit Court after having been arrested Tuesday by the Hawaii Police Department on an extradition warrant.
Andrew Isaac Griffin, 32, whose current home of record is Whitesboro, Okla., is charged with two counts of aggravated murder for the Sept. 21, 2021, deaths of Thomas and Angela Strussion, whose bodies, along with those of their three dogs, were found in their Belmont, Ohio, home, which had been set ablaze in the early morning.
Chief Detective Ryan Allar of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department told the Tribune-Herald that the couple, ages 51 and 49, had been shot to death prior to the structure fire.
Thursday’s initial court appearance was brief.
Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Lester asked Hilo Circuit Judge Henry Nakamoto to order that Griffin be held without bail pending an extradition hearing.
“He’s been indicted in Ohio for a double homicide,” Lester told the judge.
Deputy Public Defender Megan Fellows said the defense believes “that Mr. Griffin is still entitled to bail.”
“We’re asking for bail in the amount of $50,000,” Fellows said.
Nakamoto ordered that Griffin be held without bail “because of the allegations involved,” and set an extradition hearing for 10:30 a.m. Feb. 28.
According to a police log, Griffin was arrested at 1:12 p.m. Tuesday. According to HPD Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins of the East Hawaii Criminal Investigation Division, Griffin was “staying with relatives somewhere in Puna” and was apprehended without incident.
Neither Amon-Wilkins nor Allar was able to say how long Griffin had been in Hawaii.
Allar, who came to Hawaii with Belmont County Sheriff’s Detective Jordan Blumling to accompany Griffin back to Ohio when ordered, said the indictment was returned and an extradition arrest warrant issued for Griffin within the past week, after an almost 3-1/2 year investigation.
No motive for the murders was identified, but Griffin was reportedly a business partner of the slain couple in an eatery they owned, the Elm Grove location of Salsa Joe’s Tex-Mex Smokehouse barbecue restaurant across the Ohio River in Wheeling, W.Va.
According to reports in the Wheeling News-Register, less than a week after the Strussions were murdered, 31-year-old Anthony Michael Dibacco and 25-year-old Miana Maylyn Smith, both of Bellaire, Ohio, were arrested and charged with extortion after homicide detectives discovered a plot to extort Thomas Strussion.
According to the West Virginia newspaper, the pair had threatened to reveal that Strussion had an affair with Smith, and Strussion paid them $25,000 to conceal that information.
Both eventually pleaded guilty and each was sentenced to three years in prison, but both were reportedly eliminated as suspects in the murder.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.
