GUILTY IL - Carl Gaimari, 34, murdered, Inverness, 30 April 1979

Just before 2 p.m. on April 30, 1979, the doorbell sounded at a sprawling Inverness ranch home. A 5-year-old girl opened the door to find two men with nylon stockings pulled over their faces.

The men tied up the girl, two of her siblings and the children's mother and locked them in a closet as they waited for their target: a hot-tempered, high-rolling commodities trader named Carl Gaimari. When he came home, the men took him to the basement, sat him on a couch and shot him to death with his own guns.

For 34 years, the case remained a mystery. But on Wednesday, Cook County authorities announced they had charged a suspect in the killing: Jacquelyn Greco, Gaimari's wife, the woman who had been locked in the closet with her children that fatal afternoon.

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Prosecutors said that about a year before the killing, Greco told an acquaintance she wanted to "get rid" of her husband and asked if the acquaintance knew of any drug that would make it seem as if a person had suffered a heart attack. When told she should seek a divorce instead, Greco replied that she wouldn't get any of Gaimari's money that way, prosecutors said.

Then, in the spring of 1979, Greco allegedly told someone else that she had found a way out.

"The defendant told Witness B that the plan was to stage a home invasion during which Carl would be killed," said a court document filed by prosecutors. "The defendant told Witness B that she and her children would be tied up and put in a closet during the home invasion. A few items of value would be taken to make the crime look real."

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Jacquelyn Greco is charged with five counts of murder in the shooting death of her husband, Carl Gaimari, during what authorities said was a staged home invasion meant to get rid of Gaimari.

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"He was worth nothing to me dead," Greco said, according to court records of the 2013 interview obtained by the Tribune. "Why take my children's father away where he can't see them grow up? … Why would I do that?"

Over three hours, the investigators poked holes in Greco's story until she finally admitted that parts of it weren't true. But to the very moment she was placed under arrest, soon to be charged with first-degree murder, she insisted she hadn't wanted her husband to die.

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Greco's husband, commodities trader Carl Gaimari, was no choir boy. He had a furious temper that provoked a feud with a neighbor, and authorities allegedly were scrutinizing his transactions for possible violations. He had a girlfriend on the side, according to prosecutors, and had paid a retainer to a divorce attorney.

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Greco's attorneys have sought to have her statements to police excluded from the trial, saying she was under the influence of prescribed pain medication at the time. But Greco allegedly signed a waiver acknowledging that she understood her Miranda rights, and Judge Bridget Hughes denied the request. The trial is expected to begin next year.

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A Cook County judge refused to dismiss murder charges Tuesday in a decades-old slaying and instead set a trial date for a former Inverness woman who prosecutors say conspired to kill her husband.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Oct. 21 in the first-degree murder case against Jacquelyn Greco, whose husband, Carl Gaimari, was found shot to death during a home invasion 37 years ago.

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During Tuesday's pretrial hearing, assistant public defenders Caroline Glennon and Pete Benesh, who represent Jacquelyn Greco, argued that the case against her should be dismissed because of the length of time that has elapsed since the killing. They asserted that no new evidence has come to light other than the Greco's statements and that some of the older evidence has been lost or destroyed.

Assistant State's Attorney Ethan Holland countered that it wasn't until 2013 that authorities had documented evidence of the murder plot, leading to Greco's arrest. He noted there is no time limit on bringing charges in a murder case.

Cook County Judge Marc Martin ruled in favor of the prosecution, saying the defense had not shown that the case against Greco was flawed enough to dismiss it. He also denied the motion for a change of venue, saying there had not been enough publicity about the case to warrant relocating the trial to another county.

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A psychologist will not be allowed to testify about Jacquelyn Greco's character when the former Inverness woman goes on trial for murdering her husband.

Cook County Judge Marc Martin ruled Friday that Dr. Charles Heller's diagnosis that Greco, 69, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, codependency and borderline personality might have been admissible had Greco asserted insanity or self-defense. But, as Martin pointed out, her attorneys have argued neither.

"Codependency is not a pertinent character trait ... nor is it an element of any recognizable defense raised in this case," said Martin, who described Heller's testimony as an attempt to "explain post-offense conduct."

Greco, who had no criminal background, is being held without bail in Cook County jail. She next appears in court on Oct. 24.

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Jacquelyn Greco, now 69, is scheduled to go to trial this week in Cook County's Rolling Meadows branch court in the 1979 killing of her husband, Carl Gaimari, 34. Jury selection began Monday morning and, with the jury seated by midafternoon, opening statements were due to begin Tuesday morning.

According to authorities and court records, the former Jacquelyn Gaimari raised suspicions early on because she had been having an affair with a Chicago police officer who moved into the Inverness home days after Carl Gaimari's death and married Jacquelyn within a few months.

In pretrial hearings, Assistant State's Attorney Maria McCarthy told Judge Marc Martin that Greco believed her husband was worth $1 million but was seeking a divorce because of his wife's infidelity.

"She wanted to kill her husband rather than go through a divorce," McCarthy said. "In a divorce, she would not get all the money."

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Two months before Carl Gaimari was killed in his Inverness home by masked intruders in 1979, his wife, Jacquelyn, told her sister that she had figured out a way to get rid of him, authorities contend.

On the first day of Jacquelyn Greco's murder trial in Cook County on Tuesday — almost 40 years later — prosecutors said Gaimari died just as his wife told her sister he would: by two men who entered their home, tied up Jacquelyn and the couple's children and then, when Gaimari returned from his lucrative job as a Chicago commodities trader, shot him multiple times in the chest.

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The oldest of the four children Jacquelyn had with Carl Gaimari, Becky Wykel, took the stand Wednesday and recalled coming home from school that day and finding her mother and siblings tied up. She described how she untied them, how her mother and sister screamed when they then found her father shot to death, and how Sam Greco showed up at the scene a short time later.

Wykel also testified about how her relationship with her mother has remained strained since then and how they didn't talk at all for a time.

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Investigators had retired. Witnesses had passed away. And the evidence Detective William Stutzman and his partner received from Barrington police came in "pretty poor condition," said Stutzman, a prosecution witness against Gaimari's widow, Jacquelyn Greco, who is on trial on charges she murdered her husband.

The evidence, which had been stored in the basement of the Barrington police department, was damaged by floods in 1986 and 1990, Stutzman said. What survived came to investigators in two large garbage bags, Stutzman said.

Forensic scientists at the Illinois State Police crime lab were unable to obtain a DNA profile from cigarettes recovered from the Gaimari home, prosecutors said. The crime lab report indicated some bullets recovered could have been fired from one of two handguns Gaimari owned, both of which were near his body. Other bullets were unidentifiable, according to the report.

Stutzman's testimony Thursday suggested interviews he and his partner conducted yielded better results. As part of their investigation, the detectives reinterviewed witnesses, including Greco's sister Elsie Fry, who testified earlier this week for the prosecution. In 1981, Fry reported to police that Greco told her "we found out a way to kill Carl." Fry claimed Greco made the statement two months before Gaimari's murder.

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In an about-face, Jacquelyn Greco's defense attorneys said Friday that they would call no witnesses on her behalf.

With that surprising announcement, the defense rested, and the case will likely go to the jury Monday — 37 years after Greco's husband, Carl Gaimari, was shot to death with his own guns by intruders in his Inverness home while she and three of their children were locked in a closet.

At Jacquelyn Greco's trial Friday morning in Cook County's Rolling Meadows branch court, the prosecution rested its case after four days of testimony, and Greco's public defenders signaled they would begin calling witnesses. But following a brief discussion with their client, the defense lawyers suddenly announced that they would not call witnesses, including Greco herself.

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It didn't take long for Jacquelyn Greco to raise suspicions among investigators and family members after her husband, Carl Gaimari, was shot to death in their Inverness home in 1979, a crime so shocking that it made the front page of the Tribune at the time.

The first thing Greco said to her sister when she arrived on the scene, according to testimony, was, "I didn't do it." Within days, Greco had moved her boyfriend, a Chicago police officer, into the large suburban home where the crime occurred while she and three of her four children were tied up in a closet. Within a few months, she remarried.

Still, it took almost four decades before Greco would be held accountable for the crime. That day finally came Monday, when a jury determined Greco knew of the plot to kill her husband and to stage it to look like a home invasion and burglary. After about two hours of deliberations, jurors found Greco guilty of first-degree murder.

"I never thought this day would come," Gaimari's niece, Jane Keenan, said after the verdict was announced. "We always knew she did it. It's really sad how it affected the family all these years. Today is a good day for our family."

She faces 20 to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced Dec. 19, but could serve 50 percent of her sentence with good behavior behind bars. Still, at age 69, Greco could spend the rest of her life behind bars.

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During closing arguments earlier Monday, fellow prosecutor Maria McCarthy had said the fact that Jacquelyn Greco was tied up during the murder shouldn't obscure her involvement.

"We don't know who the other people are in this case," said McCarthy, referring to the gunmen, who have never been charged or identified. That's not necessary, she said, to prove Greco is culpable.

"It's as though her finger was on the trigger for every shot," McCarthy said.

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"We're overwhelmed. We never thought this day would come," said Michael Gaimari, whose family -- including his 99-year-old mother Helen -- always believed Greco had something to do with Carl's death.

Gaimari and his brother John were headed to Helen Gaimari's nursing home to deliver the news.

"All we wanted was justice for Carl, for his children and for our family," said John Gaimari.

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A Cook County judge listened to a tearful plea from a former Inverness housewife convicted in the 1979 murder of her husband and granted a small portion of the mercy she requested Thursday.

"I'm pleading with you for leniency," Jacquelyn Greco told Judge Marc Martin, weeping in front of a Rolling Meadows courtroom filled with witnesses and family members. "I loved my husband. My husband loved me"

After listening to Greco admit she participated in a plan to kill her husband, 34-year-old Carl Gaimari — though she said she thought the plan had been called off — Martin sentenced her to 30 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum 40 years under sentencing laws in effect in 1979.

"The defendant's admission is significant and the court takes it as a begrudging statement of remorse," Martin said. "If the defendant had not made it, the sentence would be higher."

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After the lengthy hearing, Gaimari's sister, Leemarie Bonk, said she wanted the maximum sentence.

"We were all devastated by this," said Bonk. "The nightmare would have been over sooner if this trial had happened when Carl was killed."

One of Gaimari's children, Becky Wykel, who found her father's body in the basement of their sprawling ranch home on April 30, 1979, testified that the murder damaged her for life.

"It was the worst day of my life," Wykel testified. "Life went on as normal but it was never normal for me."

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This week's sentencing of a woman who plotted to have her husband killed nearly four decades ago in the basement of their spacious Inverness home did not bring an end to the murder case.

The hunt continues for the two men who carried out the shooting death of Carl Gaimari during a staged home invasion in 1979. But authorities say they may be closing in...

The lead prosecutor, Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Ethan Holland, said the trial has raised awareness of the case.

"Since the trial, we have received promising leads, which we will be pursuing," Holland said.

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