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Jennifer Mee becomes the “hiccup girl”

In 2007, 15-year-old Jennifer Mee developed a case of uncontrollable, long-lasting hiccups. She claimed to be hiccuping as many as 50 times a minute.

Her hiccups made her famous. She made appearances on national television programs like NBC’s Today Show and other morning shows as they aimed to help her get rid of her problem.

After five weeks, Dr. Bob Linde treated her, and the hiccups went away.

She received some media attention in June 2007 after she ran away from home, but for the most part, her 15 minutes of fame were up.

2010 Murder of Shannon Griffin

In 2010, she decided she wanted to find men online and lure them to meet her so she could rob them.

She involved her boyfriend at the time, Lamont Newton, and another man, Laron Raiford, in the plot.

After she connected with 22-year-old Shannon Griffin online, she invited him to meet her at a vacant home on October 23, 2010. Reports indicate she told him she would sell him marijuana.

When Griffin arrived, 19-year-old Mee led him to the backyard, where Raiford and Newton were waiting to rob him.
The two men forced Griffin to empty his pockets. After they got the $50 he had on him, one of them shot and killed him with a .38 caliber handgun.

The three geniuses were arrested hours later with Griffin’s wallet, work ID, and other items that linked them to the murder.

Laron Raiford was offered a 40-year prison sentence, but he turned it down. He wanted to continue negotiating, but his defense team never came to an agreement with the prosecution, and he went to trial.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lamont Newton received the same sentence after he was convicted of the same charge.

Mee offered to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for a 15-year sentence. Prosecutors considered the offer, but they turned it down.

Mee went to trial in 2013 and jurors heard a jail phone call in which she told her mother, “I didn’t kill nobody…I set everything up. It all went wrong, Mom.”

She was hoping for a conviction on a lesser charge because she wasn’t the shooter. Things didn’t go as she hoped they would, and she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.