On the 18th day of February this year, Andrew Griffin was wearing a ballcap, a white, long-sleeve fishing shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops while walking with his little brother, Zach, in an aisle of a Home Depot in Hilo, Hawaii when he made eye contact with Belmont County Chief Detective Ryan Allar.
At that moment, Griffin’s freedom ended.
Allar, Detective Sergeant Jordan Blumling, and officers with the Hilo Police Department were present when the Oklahoma native was apprehended on two counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of restaurant owners Angela and Thomas Strussion of Belmont, Ohio. The wife and husband were discovered deceased by firefighters on September 21, 2021, and Griffin, a former Salsa Joe’s Smokehouse partner with the Strussions, was indicted by a grand jury.
A month later, Griffin was extradited to the Belmont County Jail, and that’s where he’s remained while waiting for his capital murder trial to begin on March 2, 2026.
Since his arrest, LEDE has offered articles on the details of the apprehension, the expense of the three-and-half-year investigation, the work of detectives Allar and Blumling, the death penalty implications, pretrial hearings, the act of murder and the technology now used during homicide investigations, and about the realities of county jail life.
That’s what we know now – the What? (double murder), Where? (Trails End Road) and When? (Sept. 21, 2021)– with a little more than two months until the trial begins, and it’s the biggest questions – Why? (motive) and the How? (cause of death), and especially the Who-dun-it? – that remain unanswered.
