Welcome back to the path when Chili for part two of our series on the
murder of Stanley Grezick, Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on
what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this case took place
in the town of Rome, New York in nineteen seventy six. Our victim
was Stanley Greesi, who was fifty nine years old and was living with his
fifty four year old wife. Esther. Seemed like an ordinary law abiding citizen
who had a number of children and grandchildren and siblings. But then one night
at home, invasion took place at his residence. And we only really have
Esther's account, but apparently two mass men broke into the house and tied her
up, and because she was deaf and had her hearing a knocked out,
she was unable to figure out here a lot of what was going on in
the place. But she said that she was bound for about an hour until
he played dead, and by the time she was able to break herself free,
she discovered that Stanley was murdered. Originally, the investigators in the Medical
Examiner were inclined to believe that Stanley was stabbed to death, but while performing
a search of the home, Stanley's son discovered a shell casing, and once
he gave it to a detective, the shell casing was never seen again,
and the Greasick family agreed to have Stanley zoomed, and sure enough, it
revealed that he was not actually stabbed to death, but was actually shot through
the heart. So for some reason, the police investigation was heavily botched.
The investigation remained quiet for over a decade, but by the end of the
nineteen eighties or a new set of detectives on the case and a number of
witnesses came forward who started giving interesting accounts which alleged that a local bar owner
may have hired two men from out of town to perform a professional hit on
Stanley and home invasion, and that's why he wound up getting murdered. There
was speculation that the two men had ransacked the house and were searching for something,
but they couldn't really tell if they found it or if Stanley even had
what they were looking for, And it seemed like the key to the case
was Stanley's deceased brother, Peter Grizik, who died a few months before Stanley
was killed. Peter had held the liquor license at a local bar, and
prior to his death, he had had a closed to our conversation with Stanley
in which he apparently said something so bad that Stanley was left completely shaken and
would not speak with Peter again until he passed away. But he never told
his other family members what exactly it was. Peter said, they feature the
case on Unsawd Mysteries in nineteen ninety. They had a pretty good idea who
the perpetrator and the hit men were, but just did not have the evidence
to make an arrest, and we're hoping that someone might come forward with a
new information. But this never came to fruition, and this case officially remains
unsolved over forty six years later. So now we're going to discuss the original
investigation into this murder, which was quite troublesome. Let's start with a discrepancy
involving the exact cause of Stanley's death. The original autopsy report stated that he
was stabbed to death until his son Martin, discovered a shell casing on the
dining room floor. This compelled the family to have Stanley's body exhumed, and
they discovered a twenty five caliber bullet in his chest. Now, if police
were attempting a cover up, then I can understand why they would push forward
the narrative that Stanley was stabbed, because if no one knows about the bullet
in his body, then there's less chance of it being matched up to the
murder weapon. But if that's the case, why was the shell casing ever
left behind in the greasicomb? To begin with? Martin was able to find
it by simply moving the dining room table and notice that it was resting on
top of the rug. He said, it wasn't concealed at all, and
clearly visible if you looked hard enough. Remember, the police kept the Greasy
family out of the home the previous night while they performed an extensive search,
so it's hard to imagine them missing that shellcasing. That's the one thing which
makes me wonder if the investigators were just sloppy rather than outright complicit in the
crime. If they had knowledge of this murder beforehand, you'd think that one
of the very first things that they do is try to recover the shellcasing,
especially since it was in close proximity to where Stanley's body was found. It
sounds like the police search was more focused on figuring out if anything was stolen,
So I guess the innocent explanation is that they weren't looking for any shells
because they didn't know Stanley was shot at that point. Well esther had seen
one of the intruders briefly placing a pistol on the floor. I don't think
she actually heard a gunshot because her hearing aid had been knocked out. So
the police may have gone into the house under the impression that a gunshot wound
was not the cause of death. It's very possible they could have gone in
saying that they thought it was a stab wound. But I mean, when
you look at a body and there's an opening in the flesh and you say,
okay, clearly something penetrated his body, which likely led to his death.
I think the autopsy has to be far more detailed. Right you you
trace the entry wound to find out what happened. There's no exit wound,
is there? Is there not? If there's not, then what could be
in that crevice or the wound that's there. They didn't do that because when
they do a second autopsy, they actually find the bullet, and again they
might be sloppy, But how do you walk into your dad's home, look
down on the floor and say, oh, my gosh, there is actually
a shell casing sitting right here, right near where he was killed, and
they didn't find it. It seems like they was rushed, that it was
lazy, And I don't think if they were, like if the person doing
the investigation at the scene was involved, that they'd want to miss anything.
They might want to hide it and not just overlook it, so that I
don't think was planned. It just looks like they didn't care, and that
would be something that I would have a hard time shaking if I was one
of the family members. Okay, And like, this really kind of pisses
me off because what would make you assume that a knife was used. You
have one of the surviving victims of this crime and she's saying I saw a
gun. They know that she's deaf and that she wouldn't have heard or likely
wouldn't have heard a gunshot, so the fact that she didn't hear it is
really meaningless. You don't have her saying that she saw one of the perpetrators
brandishing a knife, So why would you then assume that the wound to Stanley
is done by a knife, a weapon that Esther never saw to begin with.
She saw a gun. I'm presuming that on the surface, knife wounds
are not going to look like bullet holes. So it seems like that's kind
of an odd mistake to make, especially if you're a professional medical examine or
it's your job to figure out these things, and that's separate from the police
department. Right, he should have been doing an independent autopsy. We'll see
if that's the case, Like, who knows that that was really the case,
but that is his job or her job is to say what happened here?
How you miss a lodged bullet in someone's body makes it seem like you,
too, are very lazy and incompetent as well. I could see a
scenario where they didn't give the medical examiner all of the information about the crime
scene, if they were trying to potentially have them come to the conclusion that
Stanley was murdered some other way than a gunshot. I could more likely see
a scenario that they did provide it, and yeah, this autopsy was done
and it should be independent, like you said, Ash, but how many
of these cases have we seen where conclusions have been changed by medical examiners because
of pressure by police. So I think it is possible that this medical examiner
was told, okay, like you know, we're trying to make it look
like it wasn't a gunshot wound, Because even if they weren't given any information,
you'd think at that point, like Robin just said, a gunshot wound
is going to look incredibly different than like a stab wound, and there will
be different blood patterns left at the scene. So any good medical examiner,
I mean, unless this person was akin to Fami Malik, they should have
been able to see this. Still, if missing the shell casing was simply
an honest mistake, it seems pretty sloppy that the police could overlook that,
since it sounds like it was pretty easy to find. It's also hard to
know whether the mistakes in the original autopsy report were intentional. They concluded that
Stanley was stabbed to death, but did they really mistake a gunshot wound for
a stab wound and completely miss a bullet inside his chest while performing the autopsy.
You'd think that if they wanted to cover up the fact that Stanley was
shot, they would have removed the bullets before he was buried. I guess
the most suspicious detail is that when Martin turned the shell casing over to a
detective, he was told to keep quiet about it for the time being.
It's still a big mystery what actually happened in the shell casing. When the
investigation was reopened over a decade later, the new detectives apparently discovered that crucial
evidence have been lost, but it's unclear if one of these pieces of evidence
was the shell casing. Yeah, the red flag was when Patsy Peck was
reinterviewed about her encounter with the two men in her bookstore on the day before
the murder. She claims she shared this information with investigators back in nineteen seventy
six, but there was no record of her statements in the original file.
It's interesting how Amy Scott's original statements about these two suspects were still in the
file, but Patsy Pecks were not. This may have had something to do
with the fact that Patsy seemed to know these guys personally, but we'll get
back to that in a moment. This is hard because I've had families talk
to me before where they say, listen, the police told us not to
say anything. They know you know something, or they're trying to hide something.
And I've talked to lawnfers and families and said, you know, sometimes
information that you're given or that you have can actually be a liability. We
talked about this in episode one. Or it can be something that causes greater
distress for the family knowing something that can't really be followed through with, or
they're trying to preserve information that only the killer would know. So there are
definitely reasons why investigators would speak to a family member and say, listen,
don't talk about this, right, it's a very important fact that you know
it. Now, try not to talk about it, which is also a
burden on somebody emotionally. Right, But then you start looking at all these
other things, and it doesn't seem that benign right, that the cause of
death was wrong. They didn't get the shell casing that when they get the
shell casing from the sun that they're putting in their pocket. They don't list
information from Patsy Peck in the case file. But she told them significant information
more than Amy told them. Right, she was giving them the visual looks,
She was telling them information because she's acquainted with them. Did the detective
simply have a decided mindset that I don't care that this woman isn't reliable.
I don't think it's important, so they chose to leave it out to me.
You put everything in a case file. I don't care how benign it
seems. I don't care how silly it seems, how misleading it seems.
If it's not written down in nineteen seventy six when I reopened that case in
nineteen eighty nine, or eighty six, when these other guys did, I
don't have that information to contemplate, given new technology and new facts. So
I'm very angry at these original detectives for their lacks of daisical attitude and for
choosing what needs to be involved in this case and what doesn't. Patsy Peck's
story sounds like it's something that needed to be recorded and written down, whether
it made sense at the time or not. Yeah, we talked about this
in the last episode, the possibility that some of the police detectives at that
time may have been involved in the illegal gambling that was taken place at this
bar. And they see Patsy's Peck naming these two people who are associated with
the owner of this bar. They may be thinking themselves, well, if
they dig into these guys, they're going to find out this other illegal activity
we're involved when So that's why we have to suppress it from the case file,
and that's why it was buried for over a decade. Yeah, and
I think what you said, ash, like each thing kind of in isolation
could be benign, but it's the totality of evidence. When we look at
the medical examiner overlooking a bullet inside of Stanley, we see Martin giving the
detective a bullet or the shell casing, and the detective says to him,
like, let's keep this hush hush. And then we have Patsy Peck's testimony
being discarded even though we know that it lines up with Amy's. So it
should have been something that was incredibly important and should have been pursued. So
it looks like, Okay, are you trying to bury the identity of these
people because somehow they could be tied to officers or like we suggested in part
one, to dig any deeper into this murder and the potential people that are
involved, it could lead back to officers in the department So for now,
let's talk about the drug dealer who came forward in March nineteen eighty nine and
reignited the investigation. We have no idea who this guy is, as he
was interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries in silhouette and concealed his identity. But I'd be
really curious to know what compelled him to suddenly come forward after twelve years.
If he was facing legal trouble at this time and trying to cut a deal
of some sort by sharing information about an unsolved cold case, that would be
one thing. But if he came forward of his own volition, that would
lend credence to the idea that he was telling the truth. According to the
informant, while he was tending bar, he was approached about participating in a
burglary and was even driven to Stanley Greswick's house. So obviously, when Stanley
turned up dead in a home invasion a few days later, he had to
have known there was a connection, but he stayed silent about it. I
guess that's not hard to understand since the informant was a criminal, and it
sounds like the person who approached him was a powerful individual, so he probably
felt like his life would be at risk if he talked. I have to
wonder if the informant knew this guy had the police in his back pocket at
the time, and the only reason he felt comfortable coming forward a decade later
is because there were new detectives working at the Rome PD by this point and
he felt like he could trust them. I can understand there being credibility issues
with this informant, given that he's an admitted drug dealer, but there did
seem to be a corroboration to this story when another witness saw two men getting
paid off at this same bar after the Greasick murder took place. It's never
been explicitly stated if the man who approached the informant about the burglary and the
man who paid off these two suspects for the same person, but I get
the impression that they are, and I find it very likely that after the
informant turned down the offer to participate in the burglary, the other two guys
were hired instead by the sound that they The two men used to live in
Rome, but it'd since moved away, so they returned there to commit the
crime and then left again shortly thereafter. You know, it's easy to say,
like this informant new information, and he didn't come forward, how dare
him? But Jules, you've nailed several explanations for why he wouldn't immediately come
forward. I think the fact that after over a decade he does is incredibly
important to look at. So many things could have happened that is a decade,
right, these people had moved away, maybe the main man who had
hired people also moved away. It's possible that he died, or that people
involved had passed away. It's possible that relationships had changed, like he didn't
feel loyalty to these people anymore, that he found religion, that he was
in a relationship where honesty was important for him, right, a recovery program
or something like that. So there's a million reasons that he could have come
forward a decade later. Had he come forward right away, it's possible Stanley
wouldn't have done or possible they would have solved the case. But he did
come forward, and so as much as it's frustrating it took him so long,
he really is the reason that this case picked up the steam, that
the new investigators got this passion to say we're going to get it covered on
and solved mysteries. We're going to try to see if there's enough to indict
and convict this man and link him to these other people. And yet they
just fell slightly short. But there's got to be a lot of I guess,
appreciation that this guy did have a change of heart because he was in
criminal activity, he did have a lot to risk, and he did turn
down the job. So there had to be so much fear and a significant
compelling reason for him to need to come forward and tell the police that,
well, there's a culture of silence within these criminal organizations. You don't want
to be a snitch. And I think you're probably right ash that the criminal
landscape changes considerably within a decade, so people are either dead or in jail,
different people are in power, and so if those specific cops were involved
as well, then they're likely not on that case, or maybe they've retired
or they've left for a variety of reasons. So you can see how he
may find this to be the right time to come forward if there was some
guilt involving it. Because just because you're a drug dealer doesn't mean that you're
okay with murder, oh exactly like During his Unsolved Mysteries interview, he says
that when he was approached about this job, that no one said anything about
killing anybody, but he said that, hey, I'm a criminal, I'm
a drug dealer. I do illegal things, but I have my limits,
and I crossed the line over breaking into people's homes and committing burglaries. So
that's why he turned down the job to begin with, even though he would
have made a lot of money and had his debt white cleaned. So you
have to think that as the years went on and he found out that someone
was murdered inside that home during the burglary, that his conscience eventually got the
better of him and that's why he decided to come forward. So now let's
discuss the other two witnesses, Amy Scott and Patsy Peck. I think it's
a given that Amy Scott did see the two men who invaded the greas At
home and murdered Stanley, But I do wonder about Amy's account about being tailed
by them a few days after the crime took place. Not that I think
she's making the story up, but perhaps it was just a coincidence that they
happened to be driving in the same area, and she became paranoid that they
were following her. The only thing I questioned is whether these two men could
have even known who Amy was. But she did say that she shouted at
them when they sped out of the neighborhood that night and nearly sideswiped her dogs.
If those guys actually heard Amy yelling, they might have become concerned that
she had seen them leaving the murder scene, which is why they decided to
tailor a few days later, but backed off when she stopped at the police
station. Now, Patsy Peck's eyewitness account is a bit more confusing because she
claimed that she saw these two men in her bookstore the day before the murder,
But the implication seems to be that she actually knew their identities because they
were acquainted with her husband. It sounds like this was the first time she'd
seen them in quite some time, since they lived in Rome for a while.
But if Patsy and her husband knew who these guys were, they they
not provide their names to the police. Yea's all mystery segment doesn't exactly make
that clear. However, I would not be surprised if Patsy did provide their
names during her initial interview in nineteen seventy six, but if the police were
complicit in the cover up, that would explain why her statement was missing from
the file when they reopened the case over twelve years later. That's what's very
interesting to me is that Amy's story is important because she did see these people
around the home at the time of the murder. But Patsy's is really powerful,
and she says, I know these people, I'm connected to them.
It does seem Robin like it's possible that they said, oh my god,
she does know too much. Let's just not include that or pursue anything that
she told us. It's also possible who knows. I mean, there's times
when people in criminal enterprises have these just bizarre names like mad Dog and you
know, Butch and these kinds of things, and so it's possible she gave
them names she knew, like he goes by this, or you know,
my husband calls him this, and you know, you wouldn't know who that
person's real name was, and the people in that criminal enterprise, it would
know their real identity is. Are those people are surely not going to be
talking to the police, So either they covered it up or Patsy gave names
that were not legal names and they couldn't link them to real people. Oh
come on, Rome is a small town. I know in Vancouver at least,
and I think in most major cities, if somebody's involved in a criminal
enterprise, even though they have street names, the police are typically aware of
those street names if those individuals have been incarcerated before. So in a town
like Rome where the population was what like forty three thousand people or something,
yes, it is, Yeah, so I would think that they would be
aware. So I just I have a hard time believing that the police wouldn't
have been able to get these names, because it seems very clear that the
identities were given. I mean, if these people lived in the town,
the husband of Amy Scott knew them, she would know them too, because
it's a pretty small town. So it's like being like, oh, they're
my husband's sort of acquaintances or friends, you're going to know them too.
You'd at least know their first names and things like that. They would know
who mad Dog was, they would know who that dog was. Yeah,
I like those nicknames we have to call the mad Dog and Butch for the
rest of this episode thousand percent a thousand percent, and if we ever played
this on film, I want to be mad Dog for sure. It's also
implied that the witness who saw these two men get paid off in the bar
also knew who they were, as he apparently approached the guy who paid them
and confirmed their identities. Now, even if law enforcement knew the two men's
names, I can understand why they did not disclose this on the show.
People clearly knew the identity of the individual who paid them off, but his
name was never disclosed either, because you can't go publicly naming people as murder
suspects on national television unless you have very strong evidence. But the confusing part
is that the Unsolved Mystery segment showed composite sketches, very creepy composite sketches,
I might add, of the two suspects who were believed to be responsible for
the attack on the Greasy home. If law enforcement actually knew the identities of
these two suspects, why were they releasing composite sketches. Maybe the composite sketch
was something that they wanted people to say, Oh my gosh, I know
this. This is mad Dog and Butch, I know them, And so
they would call in and they would provide more and more evidence. Remember in
the eighties, they said, we had enough to probably go get an indictment
and start to charge him with murder, but we definitely didn't think we had
enough for a slam dunk beyond a reasonable doubt case against this man. So
maybe by releasing these composite sketches, people could say, oh, my god,
that's so and so he told me in a bar three years ago that
he had killed this old man in his house. Maybe they were looking for
someone to provide those extra pieces of evidence or circumstantial bits that would move that
barometer up towards like, oh wait, now I think we do have enough
to go after this person. And who gave them enough information for these composite
sketches? Was it Amy? Was it Patsy? Was it both women?
And they used that description to draw these composite sketches, That's what I'm guessing,
Yeah, because Esther wouldn't have gotten to look at their faces because they
were wearing masks at the time. Though that, like I said, that
is kind of weird that a Patsy knew their identities that she still provided a
detailed enough description to create composite sketches if they knew who they really were.
But like you said, this might have just been a way to like jog
people's memories or something like that, because at that point thirteen fourteen years had
passed and these men had probably aged, so they figured, well, maybe
I'll remember this person who looked like that back in nineteen seventy six, which
is why we're releasing these sketches. Anyway. Shortly after the Unsolved Mystery segment
aired, the authorities announced that they received a number of tips which pointed them
towards a prime suspect. The implication seems to be that the suspect was the
individual who high the two men to break into the Greasi home, but investigators
never specified if they actually knew the identities of those two perpetrators. The only
name that law enforcement is ever released to the public was Charles Brazinski, who
was a former employee at the bar and considered to be a material witness in
the case. I guess they felt comfortable releasing Brazinski's name and photograph because he
was technically a wanted fugitive after he jumped bail in an unrelated drug case.
But it doesn't look like the Amber found Brazinski, and it's unclear what his
exact connection was to the Greasik murder. Quite frankly, it would not surprise
me if Brazinski was already dead by the time the unsaw Mystery segment aired.
It's very possible. And remember the poster who was on that one UNSAWD Mysteries
form who was said like, oh, you know, I had an uncle
with that name. He looked pretty similar to this person. But we haven't
been in contact with him. We haven't been associated with him in a long
time. He quote left the family, So you know, it sounds like
he was an important piece of the puzzle for information. But if they knew
who the main suspect was, if they had an idea of who these two
men had actually did the killing world and they didn't release their names, well,
Charles Bursinski, I want to give him a code name too. But
if they released his name, then it is pretty probable that he was not
one of the people directly involved in the commission of this crime. Because they
had these other people, they probably knew who they were, and they said,
Charles, if we can find you, it's going to give us that
missing link they were looking for. It sounds to me like the authorities had
a pretty decent, circumstantial case against their prime suspect back in nineteen ninety.
You had one witness who claimed this man had approached him about breaking into the
grease at home, as well as the witness who saw him paying off two
men who were seeing outside the grease at home by another witness on the night
of the murder. But it seems like law enforcement just didn't feel confident this
evidence was strong enough to secure a conviction if they brought the case to trial.
They may have feared there would have been credibility issues with the witnesses connected
this suspect to the crime, especially since one of them was an admitted drug
dealer. Overall, the investigation just seemed to lack that one crucial piece of
evidence needed to close the case. Personally, I think one issue which may
have prevented the authorities from prosecuting this case was the lack of apparent motive.
There's definitely strong evidence that someone orchestrated a break in at the Greasi home,
which ultimately led to Stanley's murder, But the hardest thing to figure out is
why, exactly why did this happen. People describe Stanley as someone you would
never expect to be involved in something like this. He and his wife are
home at night, He's drawing a bath for her and their grand babies sleeping
upstairs, so it's this kind of quintessential evening with grandma and grandpa, and
then all of a sudden, Stanley's murdered. Why what happened? Why did
Esther get to live? But then we start to learn that Peter might have
a tie to something a little bit in the illegal realm. It's possible his
bar was operating illegal gambling and drugs there. But we also don't know what
Stanley knew. If he knew something big about Peter, he probably would not
have told Esther. If something of value or something of important information was in
the home because of Peter, Ester probably wouldn't have known. So that motive
becomes elusive because Stanley was likely hiding a secret for Peter. If Peter truly
is a link to this murder, well, by all accounts, Stanley Griesick
was a very honest individual who never would have involved himself in criminal activity,
but his honesty may have been the very reason he was targeted. And like
we just said, the key to this case is definitely Stanley's deceased brother,
Peter. We know he had the liquor license to a bar which some very
shady things took place, such as gambling and drug dealing, and this establishment
why would up having its license revoked and shutting down years later? Since all
the evidence seems to point to the crime being planned in this very same bar,
there has to be a connection. All these events could be to the
private, closed or conversation that Stanley had with Peter while he was gravely ill.
Whatever Peter told Stanley, it must have been pretty bad if it could
cause to otherwise very close brothers, because he's contact with each other while one
of them was on his deathbed. One of Stanley's daughters was interviewed during the
Unsolved Mystery segment and she said that her father might have been willing to look
the other way if he knew his brother was involved in gambling, but would
draw the line if it involved drugs. There really isn't much information out there
about Peter, and even though he held the bar's liquor license, it's unclear
how much involvement he might have had with any of the illegal activity which took
place there. Stanley never did share what his brother told him, but before
his death he did tell his daughter quote, I don't know what I'll ever
see you again, which seems to imply that he feared his life was in
danger. So with Stanley murdered because he knew some incriminating information about the activities
at the bar and was considering going to the authorities about it, well,
this is where the motive behind the crime gets a bit murky. First Off,
if Peter shared something incriminating with Stanley, how would the killers have even
known about it. This was a private conversation which took place behind closed doors,
and I get the impression that the only other people who knew this conversation
even happened were members of the Greasy family before he passed away. Did Peter
somehow let Stanley's killers know that he had talked, or did Stanley trust the
wrong people and share this information, because remember, he's not coming home and
telling his wife, and he's not telling his son and daughter what's going on.
But his behavior is different. He's withdrawn well, his brother's also dying
or decease at this point, so that could also have influenced his kind of
reclusiveness or or behavior change. But what if he was at let's say,
a bar and it's guy's night and they are smoking a cigar and talking and
he says, guys, I gotta fill you in on this. What do
we know about Peter and this right this topic, and they're like talking to
him about it? Oh my god? What did he say? And what
if they're actually involved on the other side or they Peter. So I think
it's possible that Peter told somebody, or Stanley told somebody. Maybe Peter even
said, hey, I confided in my brother, and now he won't talk
to me, do you know what I mean? And he's distressed about that.
Or maybe Stanley innocently said something that triggered someone saying he knows more than
he's saying. We're in trouble, and therefore they had to start planning to
hear rid of Stanley as well. Who inherits Peter's liquor license when he dies.
That's a good question. I haven't heard anything about that. I don't
think it was Stanley, and I don't think Stanley would have been interested in
that, so I'm presuming it was passed along to someone else who worked at
the bar. That's what I would think as well. I would think whoever
assumed ownership of the bar would then have to reapply for a liquor license under
their name. This reminds us of another unsolved mysteries case which we once covered
on a bonus Patreon Minnisota of the path Point Chili, the nineteen eighty two
murder of Perm and Gilbert. One of the theories put forward in that crime
was the Perm was murdered because his brother was involved in criminal activity and it
testified as a witness in an organized crime case. Some people wondered if Perman
might have been murdered by people connected to that case who wanted to lure his
brother out of hiding to attend Perman's funeral. Well, the key difference here
is that Peter Griesick had already been dead four months before Stanley was murdered,
and their conversation also took place four months before Peter passed away. So if
Peter shared some incriminating information about the bar, I just don't know why the
perpetrators would decide to come after Stanley after all that time had passed, or
why they'd even have a reason to believe that Stanley was a threat to them.
The big unanswered question in this case is what exactly the two intruders were
looking for when they ransacked the Grisick residence. The only thing discovered to be
missing from the home were two beers from the refrigerator, so there are two
possible options here. A, the intruders did find what they were looking for,
but since Esther and the rest of the Greasy family were not aware of
its existence, they didn't notice it was missing, or be the intruders were
looking for something which did not exist in the first place. Even if the
two intruders came into the house with the intention of killing Stanley, it's unclear
if they wanted to kill Esther. They did choke her into unconsciousness, and
Esther said that she pretty much played dead the entire time the intruders were there.
But I think that if they wanted to kill Esther, they would have
just fired a bullet into her rather than going to the trouble of handcuffing her
and tying her up. It was not mentioned on the unsolved mystery segment that
the greasy six year old grandson was spending the night with them and sleeping upstairs
throughout the entire ordeal. I'm not sure if the intruders even knew the boy
was in the house, but they left him unharmed and didn't feel too concerned
about restraining him. I think it's very possible that either scenario took place.
I mean, the thing with Esther that really disturbed me, as they did
make sure she was incapacitated to the point of unconsciousness. That is incredibly violent
and scary, but it did exactly what they needed to do. They removed
the threat of Esther. They then handcuff they tie her arms to her feet,
and they're able to make sure she isn't going anywhere. I don't know
if they knew she was deaf or not, but she also loses her ability
to hear once her hearing aids come out. I do think, like Jewels
said in episode one, killing a child, when you've been hired to retrieve
information and get rid of a threat, that's a whole another level, right,
That is a whole another level. I came for Stanley and the information
he had. I came for Stanley and the money he had. Now,
if Esther had been a threat or tried to attack, I think they would
have killed her. I don't think they're above killing her. Had the grandson
seen their face, had the grandchild seen them or charged them, or tried
to get a gun out of their hand, I could also see them killing
him. But because they were no longer a threat, because their faces were
covered purposefully, they didn't have to kill Esther and the child. I think
in the hour that they were going around the house, they had to have
seen the child sleeping in a bed and they were thinking, Okay, that
room's kind of off limits. There's a doubt that's where the information is,
and that child sound asleep. It's not a risk to us, and they
moved on, thank God. So it's possible that Stanley was the only person
killed because the perpetrators believed he knew something. But there's an alternate explanation.
According to the informant who came forward in nineteen eighty nine, what he was
approached about participating the job, he was referred to as a quote unquote burglary.
However, the actual break in does not fit the profile of a burglary
because even though the place was torn apart, not being valuable was taken.
But what if they were looking for something valuable which wasn't actually there. The
informant was apparently told there was a large amount of money in the house,
but unless Stanley had a secret stash that his family didn't know about, that
certainly wasn't true. So I can see a scenario where the person who orcs
traded this job were only assumed that there was money out for the taking,
so the intruders tore apart the house looking for cash which did not exist.
If Peter was involved in something illegal, such as gambling or drugs, he
may have been skimming money from whoever he worked for, or they were simply
under the mistaken impression that he was skimming money. After Peter died, they
assumed he passed this money on to his brother, who was keeping it hidden
inside his house. When the intruders ransacked the place and discovered there was no
money, they may have believed Stanley was holding out on them, which eventually
led to them firing a bullet into him. A parallel could be made between
this scenario and the nineteen fifty nine murders of the Clutter family, which,
as you probably know, was the subject of the iconic true crime novel In
Cold Blood. In that case, the two perpetrators, Perry Smith and Dick
Hycock, broke into the Clutter home because they were under the mistaken impression that
there was a safe containing around ten thousand dollars in cash. When they discovered
that this was untrue and that no such safe existed, they responded by murdering
the entire family. So awful, so awful. It does have that kind
of feel there to the In Cold Blood murders. But thank god, they
only say that. My god, the fact that they killed Stanley is pitiful.
But they only killed Stanley, which seemed to have been their target.
I could see rage coming over them when they confront Stanley and they say,
show us where this information is, show us where the money is, show
us where the drugs are. And he says, I don't know what you're
talking about, which maybe he didn't. We don't know what Peter told him.
Or maybe Stanley doesn't have it, maybe he got rid of it,
or maybe he never had it in the first place. So if Stanley doesn't
give them what they want. I can see them completely just flying into a
rage and killing him. But I think they were going to kill him no
matter what. I think that was part of the plan. We're going to
go in there. We're going to eliminate the threat of Stanley, assuming he
knows something, and whether he did or not, I think they succeeded in
what they set out to do. Did they get what they came for?
I don't know they actually come for money or information, but I do definitely
think that part of the motive was to kill Stanley. And we mentioned at
our last episode of Potential Theory that this big secret that Peter told Stanley before
he died may have been something connected to him owing a lot of money,
and that he pretty much revealed to Stanley that my debt is going to be
passed along to you after I'm gone. So they could have broke it in
like looking for all this money that they felt Peter owed them, but Stanley
just didn't have this money and there was nothing they could do, so they
killed them in a fit of rage. I guess the main issue with figuring
out how these events transpired is that Esther's hearing aid was knocked out, so
she never heard a gunshot As a result, no one knows the exact time
Stanley was killed, and whether he was shot before or after the two men
finished round sacking the house. I don't know. It seems to me that
if they were looking for something I couldn't find it, they might have attempted
to make Stanley talk by threatening the life of his wife or his grandson.
But I do not believe this ever occurred. Ester was not disturbed at all
during the entire time she was lying in the kitchen, so part of me
wonders if the intruders actually did find what they were looking for. I have
my doubts that Stanley could have been stashing drugs or gambling money inside his house.
But what if his brother's confession had caused him to unclever a key piece
of evidence about illegal activity at the bar, which he was planning to turn
over to the police. When the intruders found the evidence, they killed Stanley,
but did not feel the need to kill esther because she didn't know anything
about it. They subsequently left with the evidence and destroyed it before they were
paid off by the person who hired them and skipped down. To me,
that has to be what happened. They needed information from Stanley or they wanted
something that Stanley had and then they needed to get rid of him. And
so no matter what the outcome was, if they got it or not,
they succeeded in killing Stanley. I definitely think information that he was going to
give to the police is more probable than money or drugs in the house,
because Stanley didn't seem to be involved in either, right, He didn't seem
to be involved in the gambling or the illegal drug trade his brother was.
And remember his daughter even said, my dad would stop at the drug part,
like he would not be okay if Peter was doing something with illegal drugs.
So Stanley sure is heck not going to be storing like pounds of cocaine
in his house somewhere. I do not think that Esther had any knowledge of
any of this. I believe Stanley protected her either out of fear or just
not wanting to concern her, not to worry her, but Stanley knew something
was dangerous circulating around him. He told his daughter, I don't know when
I'll see you again. That forever is going to haunt me about this case.
Because he was killed shortly after that. So what Peter told him is
critical to know in this case. What Stanley was hiding is critical to know
in this case. But well, I don't think that we're ever going to
know those details because his own wife and children didn't know it either. I
think it's totally possible that we can't go off what Esther is saying because she
was strangled to the point where she passed out and her hearing aid was knocked
out and then she played dead, but she was unable to see her here
because she was playing dead. So it is very possible that these intruders did
go to Stanley and threatened that if he didn't give up the location of whatever
this was would be it information or something along those lines, that they would
then harm the groundson who was sleeping upstairs, or harm Esther, because unfortunately,
because of Esther being death, we can't really go off her as being
an ear witness, and because she was playing dead, she wasn't really an
eyewitness passed a certain point either. And we also have the eyewitness who said
that he saw the two men being paid off shortly after the murder took place.
And I have to think that if they didn't actually find what they were
looking for and ransacking the house, that maybe the person who hired them would
have been reluctant to give them all this money and maybe have said, no,
you did not complete the job I assigned you, so stick around until
you do. But the fact that he handed them an envelope of money and
these two men left town makes me think that they accomplished what they were planning
to do when they went into the Greasi residence. So either they got the
information that they were looking for whatever they were looking for, or just their
primary objective was to kill Stanley and they just ransacked the place to try to
cover up what their actual motive was. Yeah, that's true. Maybe they
weren't actually looking for someone, they just decided to ransack the place as a
cover because killing Stanley was their primary objective. Overall, this is just a
frustrating case because I get the impression that law enforcement reached the point where they
knew exactly what happened and who was involved, but there was just one key
piece of the puzzle missing, which prevented them from making any arrests and bringing
the investigation to a close. A number of people in Rome may have known
who was behind the murder, but either out of fear or complicity, they
kept quiet about what happened, and by the time the investigation was rejuvenated and
there was a bario's attempt to find justice, too much time had passed,
had a lot of key pieces of evidence, and potential witnesses were no longer
around. Whatever the case, you have to feel immense sympathy for Stanley Gresik,
who lived his entire life on the straight and narrow and was likely killed
because of something his brother was involved in. The whole situation was also a
terrible tragedy for his wife, Esther, who survived the ordeal, but the
trauma of losing her husband completely devastated her and the words of her family,
Estra essentially died that night as well, and merely existed for the next nineteen
months before she passed away sadly. After all this time, I'm not sure
this case could ever truly be solved, and in all likelihood the people responsible
are probably dead by now, even though their identities have never been revealed publicly.
It seems like a lot of people know who orchestrated this crime and who
the two killers were. But the big mystery in this case is not so
much the who but the why. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the
full truth about how this crime came to be and why Stanley was targeted.
I don't know if anyone can still be prosecuted at this point. But should
you happen to have any information about the unsolved murder of Stanley Gresick, please
contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case. To
me, the thing that stands out is that Stanley's murder may not be solved,
but we have to look back at what happened to this poor family.
Right they walked into the scene of the crime the day after his murder and
they said, Wow, they didn't even investigate enough to find this shell casing
that's on the floor where my father was killed. Wow, they didn't even
look at this case and medically explore his body enough to find a lodged bullet
in his body. Right the fault They put the wrong cause of death here.
And then you have poor Esther who is experiencing all this alongside her children,
not knowing any answers as to what happened to Stanley, and she's literally
breaking down and show down over the next year and a half before her own
death. Esther could not have been elderly. Esther was dying from the trauma
and the tragedy of what happened to Stanley. It is so common to see
families physically affected, not just emotionally like we talked about a lot, but
physically affected heart disease, right, eating disorders, body shutting down. It's
so common, and that seems in my heart what took Esther and those kids
lost both their parents in two years. It just breaks my heart. This
is one of the saddest cases for what like as a family, You know
that they'd be sitting there saying, for what was worth taking my daddy's life,
no matter what his brother was doing, Why my dad? It's so
sad And to think what about that six year old grandson that was upstairs,
What type of trauma would it have been for him to then discover what had
happened to his grandmother and that his grandfather had been murdered. And yeah,
you've got Patricia the dag and Martin the son, who clearly were very involved
and wanting to know what happened to Stanley and what is now in the aftermath
taking down their mother Esther because like you said, this grief accumulates, the
body keeps score. It's not one of those things where it's just like,
oh, Okay, he's died now and I'm going to live my best life.
She lived her whole life with this man. This was her partner.
You're supposed to enjoy your golden years together. You're not supposed to have your
husband taken down in such a violent way. You cannot prepare yourself for that.
And it is just so sad, and it just seems like it just
keeps like adding up for them. You've got a situation where the police clearly
are not investigating the death of your father, the murder of your father,
and you're wondering why you're giving them information such as a bullet casing, like
a shell casing that's found there, and they're saying that this was a stabbing,
even though your mother saw a pearl handled gun at the scene. You
would think that that would be the type of injury that you would look for,
was the type of weapon that was seen by the other victim of the
crime. So none of this just seems to add up. And then having
to exhume Stanley's body, having to disturb the body of your loved one,
Like, I just can't imagine what type of impact that house on a family.
But at least they have the validation in knowing that they were correct,
that they had the shell casing that they handed over and said, hey,
you better check for this, and the police just didn't do their job.
And the question is did they just drop the ball or was their corruption personally
because of the way that detective acted when Martin handed over the shell casing and
said, like, keep it hush, hush, don't tell anybody, and
Patsy Peck's testimony, which was obviously revealed the identity of these potential perpetrators that
that wasn't included in the case file, and then you know the medical examiners
saying that it was a stab. Just all of these things, the totality
of evidence leads me to believe that, like, as we've said throughout,
there's a possibility that the police were involved in some way with the gambling and
the illicit substances that were being sold out of this bar, and that they
just didn't want it pointing back at them. Yeah, this is another case
I've been haunted by since I watched it. Unsolved Mysteries over thirty years ago,
and like I said, I'm always terrified by the idea of like decent,
law abiding individuals getting killed in what looks like a professional hit, but
no one can understand the motive for the crime. I mean, it's possible
that Stanley knew why these guys were targeting him, maybe he knew it had
something to do with his deceased brother Peter, but not of his other family
members know. Like if Stanley was involved in something or new incriminating information,
he didn't share it with anyone, So his wife and his children are left
completely perpet plexed, like why would somebody break into our house and murder this
very decent man. I always cyte this as like a crime that took place
just a decade too early, because if the crime had occurred while the detectives
working on the case in nineteen eighty nine were in power, if they had
been working for the Rome PD back in nineteen seventy six, they may have
actually solved this one, because they seemed pretty gunk and enthusiastic about like trying
to find the perpetrators and probably would have solved this case if they just had
that final piece of the puzzle that one final piece of evidence that would have
allowed them to make an arrest. But unfortunately, it sounds like the Rome
PD was just a different place back in nineteen seventy six, that there may
have been rampant corruption, or they may have been incompetent, or they had
complicity in some of these illegal activities that were going on within the town,
so that's why they wanted to sweep this under the rug. We mentioned that
the bar that was supposedly the centerpiece of this crime, it closed in nineteen
eighty two, so Rome was just a completely different place in nineteen eighty nine.
In nineteen ninety when this case was reopened, but unfortunately it was just
too little, too late. So yeah, I definitely believe the theory that
someone paid these two men to go to Stanley's house and murder him, and
that the police do know their identities but just lack the evidence to make it
arrest. But the big question is why why did they target this man after
all these years. I don't alf we'll ever know the full truth about why
they did this or what happened, but at least by dating podcasts about stories
like this, cold cases that are several decades old, we're keeping the memories
of victims like Stanley Greezing alive and letting the loved ones know that they haven't
been forgotten. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about
the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around
for three years now, and we offer the standard bonus features like early ad
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tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about
cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're
exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
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then boot up the original UNSAWD Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play
it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia
and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case.
So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more
smartass remarks about Jewel Kaylor than, be sure to join Tier three. So
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from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy