Sweetie Pie’s at 110 E. South St. in Jackson
— Photo by JACK WEATHERLY
By JACK WEATHERLY
It might have seemed that James Timothy “Tim” Norman couldn’t possibly encounter more legal problems.
But he has.
And the latest legal entanglement could put the owner of Sweetie Pie’s soul food restaurant in prison for a number of years.
Norman, 41, has been charged by the FBI with conspiracy to commit murder for hire, using a cellphone, an interstate communications device, which makes it a federal offense, and which resulted in the shooting death in 2016 of his 18-year-old nephew, Andre’ Montgomery, in St. Louis.
Norman had taken out a $450,000 life insurance policy on Montgomery in 2014, with Norman as sole beneficiary, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri.
The complaint alleges that Norman conspired with Terica Ellis, a Memphis stripper, “and others” to murder Montgomery.
The FBI affidavit said that soon after the killing, Ellis made deposits totaling $9,000 in various accounts.
Arrested on Aug. 18, Norman was placed in the Madison County Detention Center. A bond hearing was to have been held Wednesday, Aug. 26, before Magistrate Linda Anderson in the U.S. District Court in Jackson but Anderson ordered on Monday that Norman be returned to St. Louis and turned over to the U.S. District Court for Missouri.
Tim Norman mugshot
Norman had been assigned a federal public defender in Jackson, Omodare Jupiter, a call to whom was not immediately returned.
Sweetie Pie’s Live is operating from 11 a.m. till 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday
It opened in January at 110 E. South St. adjacent to Cathead Distillery.
The first Sweetie Pie’s was founded 1996 in St. Louis by Robbie Montgomery, Norman’s mother.
She made it a point to hire former prison inmates to work there to give them another chance to turn their lives around, perhaps moved by her son’s troubles.
“I know how hard it is to make it out here if you don’t have a record,” Montgomery said in a 2011 interview in the St. Louis American newspaper. “I get letters all the time: ‘I want to move there, and can you hire me?’”
Norman and other members of the family, including Andre’ Montgomery on occasion, have either worked at Sweetie Pie’s or appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Network reality series “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” which debuted in October 2011 and ran for five years, building a strong following for the brand.
The St. Louis-based business announced in 2014 that it was going to open a restaurant on Beale Street in Memphis.
A large sign was put on the property at 349 Beale and transformation to a Sweetie Pie’s commenced.
But the restaurant never opened, according to Memphis news media.
The owners of the restaurant and the landlord became embroiled in a legal battle over rent payment and payment for improvements.
The plan was scrapped.
A Sweetie Pie’s restaurant in Houston was closed and Norman was sued in 2019 for $250,000 in back rent and other issues, a matter that he said in an interview was settled.
The elder Montgomery and Norman have had their clashes, on and off the screen. At one point she sued her son for copyright infringement for starting restaurants on his own and using the Sweetie Pie’s name.
She dropped the suit and even helped to kick off the new place in Jackson by performing along with blues artist Bobby Rush.
Norman opened Sweetie Pie’s in Jackson at 120 N. Congress St., across the street from the Governor’s Mansion, in August 2019, only to close in a few days because of noncompliance with city code, specifically the presence of a large smoker parked in front of the restaurant.
The smoker was moved and the restaurant reopened without it.
The business was evicted in December for nonpayment of $100,000 in rent and other costs. Norman was also accused of illegally using part of the Plaza Building he was not renting, in addition illegal dumping of grease and cooking oil from the kitchen.
Norman responded that he had not paid rent
was because of plumbing and heating problems. Capital Tower LLC of Beverly Hills, Calif., which owns the 12-story art deco building erected in 1929, had spent millions of dollars on improvements in recent years.
Facing eviction, Norman moved his business out of the building in Dec. 7.
Capital Tower was granted on January 28, 2020 a default judgment of $110,101.26 by federal Judge Daniel P. Jordan III of U.S. District Court for South Mississippi.
Robbie Montgomery opened the first Sweetie Pie’s in St. Louis in 1996, after her musical career – which began when she was an original member of the Ikettes, the backup singers for the Ike and Tina Turner Review – ended because of health problems.
She took her mother’s down-home recipes and created a restaurant. And a life for herself and her family.
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Sweetie Pie's owner's run-ins hardly a recipe for good life | - Mississippi Business Journal
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