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CUMBERLAND — A state prison inmate has been sentenced to 10 more years after pleading guilty in the slaying of his cellmate.
Allegany County Circuit Court records show that 57-year-old Thomas Griggs pleaded guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder in the asphyxiation of 69-year-old John Wyatt at the maximum-security Western Correctional Institution near Cumberland.
The court suspended another 15 years of a 25-year sentence.
Wyatt died in September 2014 from what were first thought to be natural causes. The state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, leading to a charges last year against Griggs.
Griggs was already serving a life sentence for a 1980 rape conviction in Garrett County.
Wyatt was serving life plus 10 years for convictions in Anne Arundel County for sex offenses, burglary, false imprisonment and a weapons violation.
