A man who dodged authorities for five years after strangling a woman to death in New Jersey in 2014 has been sentenced to 55 years in state prison.
Timothy Wright, 42, of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, will have to serve 46 years, nine months before he is eligible for parole, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday.
Wright strangled and killed Joyce Vanderhoff on Feb. 13, 2014, authorities said. Her body was found on the side of Weymouth Road in Hamilton Township, Atlantic County the next day.
Investigators learned of Wright as a suspect in 2019 and tracked him to Chambersburg, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
Wright had lived there for three to five years, and was working as a commercial truck driver when he was taken into custody in April 2019. Chambersburg officers and Atlantic County detectives arrested Wright when he was getting out of his truck into his personal vehicle.
Wright lived in Atlantic County when he killed the 25-year-old Vanderhoff, authorities said. He was convicted of her murder in November.
Vanderhoff and Wright had a “drugs for sex relationship” and she spent the night at the house Wright shared with his girlfriend in Mays Landing the day before her body was found, PressofAtlanticCity.com reported during the trial.
A 2006 graduate of Egg Harbor Township High School, Vanderhoff worked at the Walmart in Mays Landing
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Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com