Adrian Earl Harley stood up with Andre Pugh at the Atlanta DJ’s wedding.
Years later, prosecutors determined, Pugh again prevailed upon his best man, this time for a dark and twisted task. East Point detectives determined Pugh hired Harley to kill his wife.
A few weeks after the Nov. 23, 2014 shooting death of Tiffany Pugh, Harley and Pugh were arrested at an Atlanta strip club and charged with murder. Both convicted, they’re now serving life sentences.
“Dateline” featured the bizarre case Friday evening in an episode titled “Sound and Fury.”
“Knowing that her kids were in the house said to me there was no heart, no regard for life,” a friend of Tiffany Pugh’s says during the episode. “A monster.”
Around 6 a.m. the day of the shooting, Andre Pugh called 911 from his driveway and said he believed his wife had been killed, but he had not seen her body or entered the home, East Point police previously said.
Inside, investigators found a heartbreaking scene.
“Mommy. No mommy. Please!” an officer overheard her 2-year-old wail. Tiffany Pugh had been shot twice. She was 30.
Harley was one of the pallbearers at Tiffany Pugh’s funeral, but investigators had begun piecing together what they determined had been his role in her death.
Cellphone records showed Harley and Andre Pugh, known as DJ Awesome at Club Onyx, exchanged text messages and spoke on the phone before meeting in downtown Atlanta 30 minutes before the shooting. Phone records also placed Harley at the home when Tiffany Pugh was shot.
Andre Pugh told authorities he was driving to another strip club on Campbellton Road when he got a 5:50 a.m. call from his alarm company about a possible break-in through a dining room window at his home, an investigator later testified in court. Pugh said he asked the company to turn off the alarm so he wouldn’t wake his children, including the two the couple shared and a third who was visiting.
Once he arrived home, Pugh told detectives he saw what he thought was a body in the bedroom, but didn’t check to see if it was her.
When an East Point officer arrived at the home, he found Andre Pugh outside, waving his arms and shouting: “My kids are in there. She is not picking up the phone.”
He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2018. Harley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison four years later.
Pugh is serving at Hancock State Prison and Harley is at Smith State Prison, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Rapper Jeezy is among those interviewed for the show, which also has interviews with family members.
In January 2014, another Club Onyx DJ, DJ Nando, was shot and killed in front of his Clayton County home. William “Fernando” Barnes, 38, was shot in the head moments after returning home from work, according to police. Barnes was friends with Jeezy, who discusses the death in the “Dateline” episode.
Though investigators suspected a link between the two cases, an arrest was not made in connection with Barnes’s death.
About the Author
