On March 22, the district attorney for Sullivan County, in northeastern Tennessee, called Janell Danner Stough, telling her that there was a plea deal in…
On March 22, the district attorney for Sullivan County, in northeastern Tennessee, called Janell Danner Stough, telling her that there was a plea deal in the case involving her mother’s murder last summer.
The man who had killed her mother would plead guilty to second-degree murder and be sentenced to 35 years in prison. Since the man, Sammy Sandridge, was 68 and in poor health, it was essentially a life sentence. He would, more likely than not, die before serving the entire term.
In a way, Stough was relieved. It meant she didn’t have to endure a trial and have to hear details about how Sandridge bludgeoned her mother to death in their apartment in Kingsport, Tenn., near Bristol on the Virginia border.
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The details she knew were grisly enough.
On July 25,2018, her mother, Mary Danner, got into an argument with her live-in boyfriend about moving back to Pennsylvania. Danner had been diagnosed with inoperable kidney cancer, and as she faced the end of her life, she realized she wanted to be close to her family in York County, Penn.
She hadn’t always had a close relationship with her family, leaving home at a young age to travel. She was the kind of woman who sought adventure and didn’t stay in one place too long.
She lived in a lot of different places and settled in Kingsport about three years ago. She met Sandridge, who said he was a Vietnam vet and who had some health problems and a sketchy background, including beefs with the law, the latest being a drug charge that had landed him on probation. They moved in together.
The argument over whether to move to Pennsylvania escalated. Sandridge shoved her, according to court records. Danner threatened to report him to his probation officer. Danner cut off the argument, saying she was going to lie down on the couch for a while.
Sandridge walked to the bedroom and got one of his oxygen tanks, and when he returned to the living room, struck Danner in the head with it.
