Lora Amburgey, who is awaiting trial for the gruesome murder of a Bell County man, was arraigned on drug charges Monday morning in Bell Co. Circuit Court.
Lora Amburgey, 39, of Pineville, briefly met with Circuit Court Judge Robert Costanzo and Commonwealth Attorney Karen Greene Blondell and was arraigned on two charges of promoting contraband in the first degree, and one in second degree. She is scheduled to have a pretrial conference on Dec. 21. The trial date has not been set yet.
Amburgey and Joshua Parsons, 27, both await trial on April 6, 2010 for allegedly invading 70-year-old Paul Slusher’s home in Fourmile, robbing him and then throwing him into the Cumberland River, along with other charges.
Earlier this year, she received three drug charges after a weekend jail cell search turned up several pills.
“We put a ‘weekender’ in the cell with her, did a cell search and came up with nine Xanax and some other pills,” said Bell County Jailer Rex Miller at the time of the incident.
The “weekender” was 42-year-old Connie L. Frost, who was serving time on the weekends for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Costanzo recused himself from the murder trial citing his involvement in the search and rescue of Slusher.
Special Judge James Bowling decided to keep the high-profile murder trial in Bell County, pending one round of jury selection. He said if the selection didn’t work with 130 jurors, he would move it elsewhere.
Stephen Woodward is a Staff Writer for the Daily News. He may be contacted at swoodward@middlesborodailynews.com.
Those two are sitting in a warm jail cell 3meals a day no bills to pay while my husband has to go to work outside and keep them up.