Family and friends of Thomas and Angela Strussion waited four long years, but with a recent arrest in their double homicide case it seems some answers about how and why the couple lost their lives may finally be revealed.

The Belmont County community was stunned on Sept. 21, 2021, when the owner of two local Salsa Joe’s restaurants and his wife were found dead inside their home on Trails End Drive, Belmont. Many initially believed they were victims of a fire reported there before their bodies were found. Days later, though, then-sheriff David Lucas announced the deaths were being investigated as a double homicide.

The case took some early twists and turns, as investigators uncovered information that led to the arrests of a Bellaire man and woman who were charged with extorting Thomas Strussion. They had been blackmailing him, and he paid them $25,000 to conceal that he had an affair with the woman, Miana Maylyn Smith.

She and co-defendant Anthony Michael Dibacco both pleaded guilty to extortion, and each was sentenced to three years in prison. By February 2022, both had been eliminated as suspects in the Strussions’ deaths.

Then in July 2023, Andrew Isaac Griffin, Thomas Strussion’s former business partner at the Salsa Joe’s Elm Grove location, went missing in Oklahoma. He was apprehended in Texas in October of that year on unrelated charges.

Last month, authorities announced that Griffin had been arrested in Hilo, Hawaii, in the double homicide case. On Friday, he was returned to Belmont County to face charges of aggravated murder, aggravated arson and aggravated burglary.

Of course, Griffin remains innocent until proven guilty.

But we commend investigators, including Lucas, current Sheriff James Zusack, Chief Detective Ryan Allar and Detective Sgt. Jordan Bluling, for their persistence and determination to solve the case.