Timothy Upthegrove and Lori Upthegrove (Titusville Police Dept.) and the home where he killed her in 2017 (WESH screenshot)
A 59-year-old man in Florida will spend the remainder of his life behind bars for killing his wife, beating and stabbing the 51-year-old woman to death inside their home, hiding her body in the woods, and destroying evidence of his crime before later telling authorities that his wife was “in heaven.”
Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Steven Henderson on Thursday ordered Timothy A. Upthegrove to serve a sentence of life in a state correctional facility for the 2017 slaying of Lori Upthegrove, authorities announced.
Before being sentenced, a Brevard County jury deliberated for about nine hours before finding Timothy Upthegrove guilty on one count each of first-degree premeditated murder, tampering with evidence, and failure to report a death.
According to court documents reviewed by Law&Crime, Lori Upthegrove’s family and friends, on Dec. 19, 2017, reported her missing to the Titusville Police Department. The following day, authorities found her car at a Days Inn motel in the 3700 block of Cheney Highway. The car had what appeared to be blood spatter on the front, back, doors, and at least one tire. Police also recovered “a significant amount of blood evidence” inside of the vehicle.
Timothy Upthegrove was found to be staying at the motel. When officers made contact with Timothy Upthegrove, they said his hands, arms, and knees were “covered” with lacerations and abrasions. Later, they recovered women’s clothing covered in blood and bloody towels inside a dumpster on the motel’s property.
During a search of the home the two shared in the 600 block of Cleveland Street, police said they found evidence that a violent crime had taken place in the garage, which included “significant amounts of pooling and blood spatter along with evidence that someone made an attempt to clean up the blood evidence.”
“Several items were located in the garage to include an axe stained with blood evidence, a hammer stained with blood evidence, and a hair clip found on the ground in the area of where most of the blood was concentrated,” police wrote in an affidavit.
Timothy Upthegrove was brought to the police station for an interview, where he admitted that he had been inside the garage and knew that there was blood inside and confessed to throwing the bloody towels and clothing in the motel dumpster.
“Timothy (Upthegrove) stated during an interview that Lori (Upthegrove) was in heaven and that things ‘got out of control’ between them while at the residence,” police wrote in the affidavit. “This argument would have occurred near the garage.”
As investigators continued to press Timothy Upthegrove about what happened to his life, he admitted that he had killed her during the argument that took place after he came home from a night of using illegal narcotics, prosecutors said. After the murder, he put her body in his car and drove out to a wooded lot on Bobbi Lane that was owned by a relative, where he hid her body in some tall grass. He eventually directed police as to where they could recover Lori Upthegrove’s body.
In court records, investigators noted that the Upthegroves had a history of domestic violence. In one particular instance in August 2017, Timothy Upthegrove told his wife she was “going to make (him) snap!” and then bit her face, leaving a “clear bite mark with teeth impressions” that police who responded to the scene observed. That case was still pending when he was charged with murder.
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