JusticeWillBeServed
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2014
- Messages
- 7,647
- Reaction score
- 2,346
In 2013, Jacquelyn Greco was charged with planning her husband's murder back in 1979. She wanted to leave her husband but also wanted to retain his assets so she allegedly staged a home invasion to make it appear that it was a random homicide. Her children and others contend that Carl had many gambling debts around the time of his murder and other avenues of investigation should be explored before charging Jacquelyn Greco with the crime.
Inverness cold case: Wife accused of plotting husband's 1979 slaying - May 2013
Former Inverness woman to stand trial this year in husband's 1979 killing - May 2015
Murder suspect Jacquelyn Greco: Husband 'worth nothing to me dead' - November 2015
Inverness cold case: Wife accused of plotting husband's 1979 slaying - May 2013
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.
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."
Former Inverness woman to stand trial this year in husband's 1979 killing - May 2015
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.
Murder suspect Jacquelyn Greco: Husband 'worth nothing to me dead' - November 2015
"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.
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.
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.