Murder at Morse's pond

The defense mounted its case piece by piece—and one of his themes? The doctor was too smart to be so stupid.   

Mike Murphy, defense: Dirk Greineder was a Ph.D. pharmacologist. Dirk Greineder would have had - if he wanted to kill his wife and he certainly did not want to kill his wife - any number of ways that were less likely to get him caught than this.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: But not on a public pathway on a Sunday morning?

Mike Murphy: Absolutely not, if this was a plan it was the worst plan one could imagine and to try to suggest that Dirk Greineder went out there on a beautiful Sunday morning in a public park, full of people, wearing a yellow wind breaker that’s a brighter shade of yellow than a New York City taxi cab makes no sense whatsoever.

Dennis Murphy: He couldn’t be this stupid?

Mike Murphy: Absolutely.

Dennis Murphy: This is a smart guy, ladies and gentlemen?

Mike Murphy: Absolutely. This is a man who did not kill his wife.

And Murphy thought the newspaper headlines told the real story.    

An unknown killer was lurking in the county’s parks—two elderly people had been senselessly and brutally murdered in the past year. May, he wanted the jury to know, was the unfortunate third.

But to Murphy the police never bothered looking for this killer  — the real killer—because it was easier, and faster, to nail the husband.  

Mike Murphy: There was no reason for them to exclusively focus right from the start as they did on Dirk Greineder, especially when they knew about these two other crimes so close in area, so close in time, so similar in circumstances.

Dennis Murphy: In these first moments of the investigation, did the officers treat Doctor Greineder as a grieving husband?

Mike Murphy: Never. They treated him from the get-go, from moment one, as “the” suspect, the only suspect. They didn’t look at any other possibility.

Dennis Murphy: So you’re arguing in court, this is a rush to judgment ...

Mike Murphy: Yes.

Dennis Murphy: Police had leads. This killer who was working the parks, didn’t pursue it?

Mike Murphy: Absolutely.

The police work, Murphy argued, was riddled with flaws—mega flaws.

In fact, the first officer to arrive that morning remembers a car at the gate of the park, next to Dirk’s, but he didn’t take down the license plate.

Mike Murphy: Do you remember what color it is?

Officer Fitz: No I don’t.

Murphy: Do you remember whether it was an old sedan or a new sedan?

Fitz: No I don’t.

Murphy: And I take it you didn’t take any note of a license plate or any other identifying information on that sedan?

Fitz: No I didn’t. Nope.

Murphy: You’re going to find no effort on the part of the police, zero to figure out where that sedan came from, who was driving that sedan. We know it was there moments, moments after the murder.

It was a vehicle that went unaccounted for.  Was it driven by May’s killer?

The same went for the fresh tire tracks found down the road leading to the pond that morning.   town worker up early noticed them but again authorities didn’t run down how they got there.

Murphy: Did you or other investigators working with you ever identify the driver of the vehicle who left the tire tracks that Mr. Adams saw?

Foley: No we haven’t.

Mike Murphy: Another set of tire tracks that a DPW worker saw. No idea who that was. Exclusive focus on Dirk Greineder.

The police had also made a big deal about the doctor’s clean hands. But Murphy said the doctor had simply wiped them on his clothing ...      

Murphy: There’s a difference between science and visual observations, particularly when a man’s who’s 59 years old has run more than a mile, is sweaty, on a warm day and there is blood on his pants and jacket that’s consistent with him having wiped the blood on his hands off.

But most importantly, a routine swab of the doctor’s hands would have proved once and for all if blood was actually present or not.      

But defense attorney Murphy found it amazing that even though it would become a major reason the detectives became suspicious of the doctor that morning, the police didn’t perform the test.

Murphy: You knew that there were screening tests for the presence of blood that were employed by the state police crime lab.

Foley: Yes, that’s correct.

Murphy: You never asked Dr. Greineder for consent to perform that test, is that correct?

Foley: No I never did.

Murphy: The key point about the hands is this: there’s a simple scientific test that the police could have performed if they wanted to that would have determined conclusively, given Dirk Greineder a fair shake, did he have blood on his hands or not and the police in the early moments of this investigation chose never to perform that test.

Why, Murphy was asking the jury, did the police work seem to be so airtight when it came to finding evidence that would hurt the doctor? Then inexplicably inept when it came to gathering evidence that would help him?       

Another case in point for defense attorney Murphy: the footprints.      

Murphy: They protected the scene around May Greineder’s body as they should have protected that scene, but they didn’t take the basic steps that would have given us “all” answers. That would have permitted Dirk Greineder to clear his name.

The police had meticulously accounted for every footprint at the crime scene—officers, EMTs—but they neglected to look for the doctor’s footprints around the beach house where he said he had gone with the dog when May was murdered.

Murphy: Did you cross over a footbridge toward a beach house area?

Rebierio: No, I did not.

Murphy: With Dirk Greineder they never gave him the chance of walking the police through the scene, pointing out footprints. Those are my footprints. Those are the dog’s footprints. They never gave him the chance to prove that his story was true.

The defense was gaining momentum.

But what about that damaging testimony from the dog walker who saw the doctor running away from where his van was parked?

The doctor said he ran down that path because he was chasing what might have turned out to be his wife’s killer.

And critically—while William Kear told the jury he clearly saw the doctor go down the path where the murder weapons and glove were discovered, the defense would press him on what he didn’t see.

Mike Murphy: The doctor’s whole left side of the doctor’s body is exposed to this witness Mr. Kear. and his right arm is extended so there’s no place, there’s no place for those weapons, for those gloves to be and Mr. Kear didn’t see them.

Murphy (in court): You didn’t see him with a 2-lbs. drilling hammer in his left hand did you, sir?

Kear: No.

Murphy: And this is an object that you never saw that day, is that fair to say?

Kear: That’s correct.

Murphy: At no point in any of your encounters with Dr. Greineder did you see this object in his hand or anywhere on his person, is that fair to say?

Kear: I have never seen that object before today.

Murphy: What he never saw at any point was Dirk Greineder with any weapons, with any gloves, with any of the information that ultimately the police said linked him to the crime.

Where were the weapons?

Not in his backpack --  the obvious hiding place  --  the defense pointed out  -- because there wasn’t a single trace of blood anywhere in the sack.

Murphy: In that small backpack there were 3 balls, 3 leashes and a pair of platex gloves? Is that correct?

Pino: Yes.

Murphy: And none of those items tested positive for the presence of blood? 

Pino: That’s correct.

Murphy: and there’s no blood on the inside of the backpack and there’s no blood on any of the items in there.

And as for the other blood evidence, Murphy ripped into the credentials of one of the state’s witnesses who interpreted blood spatter.

Murphy: Blood stain interpretation relies on the discipline of physics, is that correct?

Englert: That is only one that it relies upon yes.

Murphy: And it relies on the discipline of mathematics and biology? Chemistry?

Englert: Yes.

Murphy: And sir, it’s fair to say that you have no degrees in any of those subjects?

Englert: No sir, I do not.

Murphy: No background whatsoever in science, zero background in science. We viewed him as one step up from a circus fortune teller.

And a forensic scientist called by the defense said the blood stains were inconclusive. Stains on Greineder’s clothing could have been caused by being close to the killing but the stains could also have occurred when the doctor tried to pick up his injured wife.    

But what about all those the pieces of evidence the police had linked to the doctor’s home?

The doctor said May had probably dropped those Ziplocks in the path because she frequently brought them along on their walks to collect berries for her bird feeders.     

As for the gloves found in the doghouse.

Sure, they were the same type used by the killer, Murphy argued, but they weren’t the same gloves: People all over the country owned the same jersey-dot work gloves.   

Murphy: They start with the conclusion, the presumption that he did it and they work backwards and they try to show that all of these items must have come from his house. All of these items must have been purchased from him. Instead what they show, for example, is that he shops at Home Depot and, lo and behold, knifes like this are sold at Home Depot. Well, you know, if that’s evidence that someone is a murderer, there will be a lot of people who will be going to jail soon.

And the hammer, it turns out, wasn’t that rare.

Murphy: There are thousands and thousands of those hammers sold every year. And we don’t know that that hammer, or the hammer that was purchased that day at that hardware store is the hammer that was used in the murder scene. It’s just a guess on the part of the state.

But the prosecution had pointed out the same exact kind of 2-lbs. drilling hammer was bought just a few minutes after some nails were bought for the Greineder home.

The defense argued that the receipt for nails proved only that someone in the Greineder house had bought nails.

And Dirk and May’s son Colin took the stand to tell the court that he may well have bought the nails that day—not his father. 

Murphy: Do you remember whether you bought the nails in new haven or whether you bought them locally around here?

Colin: I’m pretty sure that I bought them in Wellesley.

Murphy: Do you have a specific memory of buying nails that week?

Colin: Yes.

Murphy: And do you have a specific memory of what you did with those nails?

Colin: Yes, I left them for my dad.

Murphy: And where did you leave them?

Colin: On his workbench.

And Colin discounted his father’s extra-marital sex life as a motive for murder because it wasn’t a deep, dark secret.

About a year before his mother’s death, Colin said he tripped into a trove of pornographic material while using his father’s computer one day.

Murphy: What did you do when you saw those sites?

Colin Greineder: I felt (breaks down) I felt embarrassed and I was just... sad

After that he asked his mother if she felt okay in the marriage—she assured him she did. 

Colin Greineder: And then I used the opportunity, I guess, to ask my mom if she was happy with her marriage.

Murphy: And what did she say?

Colin Greineder: Yes. She said, she said our sex life could be better. And then i got myself together to say, ‘well have you talked to dad about it? She said, ‘oh yeah, oh yeah, we’ve talked about it, she said, but i think your dad has his own way of dealing with that now.’

And as for the testimony of May’s sister, that the doctor may have lost interest in his wife?

She also said it was an uncommonly close marriage. May and Dirk were, by all accounts, inseparable.

Ilse Stark, May's sister: They never did anything individually. If a wastepaper basket was needed in the house, May had to go with Dirk to pick out the wastepaper basket. It was a relationship that I had thought was very strong.

Shortly after the murder, May’s sister even went so far as to lend the doctor money. Would she really help the doctor if she thought he was capable of brutally killing her only sister?

And now it was Dirk Greineder’s turn to tell the jury his side of the story.

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