Calif. Man Sentenced To 30 Years In Fatal Stabbing Of Friend's Wife In Md.
BALTIMORE (AP/WJZ) -- A California man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the killing of a friend's wife in Maryland.
Thirty-two-year-old Dellando Campbell of Lemoore, Calif., was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Baltimore. He had pleaded guilty in July to interstate domestic violence resulting in the death of a spouse.
Officials say the case was solved by DNA.
"The blood Dellando Campbell left behind at the 2009 crime scene was analyzed and entered into a national DNA database, where it waited four years for a match," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. "Thanks to a routine DNA analysis performed in California when Mr. Campbell was arrested on an unrelated charge, Maryland authorities finally learned the identity of the second killer of Serika Dunkley Holness."
Authorities say in November of 2008, Ryan Holness completed an online life insurance policy under his wife's name for $500,000. The policy would not have been issued had the insurer known that Ryan, not Serika, purchased the policy.
According to his plea agreement, Campbell agreed to help Ryan Dave Holness murder Holness' wife, 26-year-old Serika Dunkley Holness of Brooklyn, N.Y. Prosecutors say on June 4, 2009, the three drove from New York to Maryland.
Serika Holness was found fatally stabbed on the side of a rural Eastern Shore road the next day.
Prosecutors say Campbell and Ryan Holness tried to make her death look like a fatal carjacking.
After a two week trial, 33-year-old Ryan Holness, formerly of Lexington Park, Md., was convicted of domestic violence resulting in the death of a spouse and sentenced on June 9, 2011, to life in prison.
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