Adolphus HollingsworthAdolphus Hollingsworth, convicted earlier this year in the cold-case slaying of Victoria Carr Hollingsworth, began his two-decade prison sentence Monday.
The victim’s brother, Kennith Witherspoon, said after a Monday morning sentencing hearing before Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern that he was “very satisfied” with the punishment handed down in his sister’s murder.
“I just wish my mother and father could have been here to see it,” Witherspoon said with obvious relief as the case came to an end more than 17 years after his sister was stabbed to death.
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“I got closure. It’s been hard. Seventeen years is a long time. It’s been a hard pill to swallow.”
Witherspoon described his sister as “a nice young lady and a good mother.”
Hollingsworth was convicted of second-degree murder in her death in January. District Attorney General Neal Pinkston said after Monday’s hearing that Hollingsworth would have to serve every day of his 22-year sentence. He will get credit for having spent more than a year behind bars, leaving him about 20.5 years to serve in prison, Pinkston said.
A motion for a new trial will be heard June 1. That motion is automatic in the wake of trial and sentencing, said Pinkston.
Victoria Hollingsworth disappeared from her Duncan Avenue home early on the morning of Aug. 18, 1997. The 28-year-old’s remains were found in May 1999, wrapped in plastic and buried under tires on Billy Goat Hill in East Chattanooga.
Hollingsworth’s January trial in his wife’s death lasted only two days, with prosecutors resting their case a day and a half after opening arguments and the defense team calling no witnesses. Hollingsworth did not take the stand.
At trial, investigators testified that Hollingsworth filed a missing persons report when his wife disappeared, but he also bought a truck the day she went missing, a clue prosecutors said was incriminating. He was interviewed by Chattanooga police at that time, but wasn’t charged until January 2014.
Chattanooga police Sgt. Bill Phillips, the city’s cold-case unit supervisor, was one of the original investigators into Victoria Hollingsworth’s disappearance and death.
Resources to press forward in the case apparently weren’t available until 2010 when major-crimes detectives began digging into the case again.
When the television show “Cold Justice” approached local investigators and asked for cases the department thought would be suitable for the show, Phillips pitched the Hollingsworth case. “Cold Justice” paid for the department to retest a sample of bloodstained carpet from Vicki Hollingsworth’s car that tested positive for her blood. Hollingsworth’s attorneys questioned the TV show’s involvement at trial but to no avail.
Adolphus Hollingsworth faced a sentencing range of 15-25 years in prison when he entered the courtroom Monday morning.
Hollingsworth “got the punishment he deserved,” Pinkston said after the sentencing hearing.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or twitter.com/BenBenton or www.facebook.com/ben.benton1 or 423-757-6569.