Naman Shrestha
Whether it is NBC’s ‘Dateline: Sound and Fury’ or ‘The Real Murders of Atlanta: Deadly Turn,’ the murder case of Tiffany Pugh, wife of Andre Pugh AKA DJ Awesome, is covered in detail with the help of interviews with her loved ones and the experts involved in the case. Apart from the victim, the two perpetrators — Andre and Adrian — were also the focal length of the episodes. While there was enough information provided for her, hardly anything was mentioned about Adrian, raising questions in the minds of the viewers.
Adrian Harley Was a Close Friend to Andre Pugh
Born in 1980, Adrian Earl Harley was the best friend of Andre Pugh, a popular DJ at Club Onyx. The bond between the two men was so tight that on the day of Andre’s wedding to Tiffany, Adrian stood up with him as the best man. Years later, the Pughs’ marriage started deteriorating as Andre began cheating on her with multiple women. When Tiffany found out and had enough of his infidelity, she planned to initiate divorce proceedings. Then, Andre tried his best to convince her to stay. But when everything he tried failed, he resorted to something sinister. Andre reportedly turned to his most reliable friend, Adrian, and asked him to do the dirty work for him — kill Tiffany.
Leading to the night of the murder, Adrian and Andre reportedly interacted through text messages and calls quite a lot with each other. The conspiring duo even met each other in downtown Atlanta about half an hour prior to killing Tiffany. After the meeting, Adrian got into his black car, which had a broken light on the driver’s side, and drove to the Pugh residence in the early hours of November 23, 2014, and circled the neighborhood. Around 3:30 am, he broke into the house and shot Tiffany to death.
Soon, the police got involved, and an extensive investigation began after finding Tiffany’s lifeless body in the guest bedroom. On top of her body was her child, crying for her to wake up. On the day of Tiffany’s funeral, Adrian was one of the pallbearers. When the investigators delved deeper into the case, they placed him near the scene of the crime on the same date and around the same time with the help of his GPS and phone data. Moreover, the surveillance footage from one of the nearby residences captured Adrian’s black car in the neighborhood, making the police even more suspicious of him.
On December 1, 2014, the authorities knocked on Adrian’s door and questioned him about the night of the murder. Upon asking for his cell phone, he became non-cooperative. In light of all these incriminating pieces of evidence against him, he was arrested, alongside Andre Pugh, at Club Onyx a few days later, on December 5. Adrian was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and burglary.
Adrian Harley Remains Incarcerated at a Georgia Prison
When Andre was interrogated after his arrest, he pinned all the blame on Adrian, claiming that Tiffany owed him money, and that’s why he murdered her. After pleading not guilty, the judge granted bail to him and his best friend. Finally, in 2018, about six years after the death of Tiffany, Adrian stood on trial for the charges against him. Soon, on October 18, 2022, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At present, Adrian Harley is serving his life sentence behind bars at the Smith State Prison at 9676 US-301 in Glennville, Georgia.
