Welcome back to the Path within Julia, I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. November sixth, nineteen
seventy six, Rome, New York, fifty nine year old Stanley Grisick and
his wife Esther are attacked in their home by two masked intruders who tie Esther
up, ransacked the place, and murder Stanley. Even though the original autopsy
report claims that Stanley was stabbed to death, his son finds a shelfycing inside
the house, and an exhumation of Stanley's body reveals that he was shot.
Over a decade later, a new investigation uncovers evidence that the two perpetrators were
hired to break into Stanley's house and that his death may have been connected to
illegal activities involving his deceased brother, But no one has ever brought to justice
for the crime. After that, the path went chilly. So today we'll
be profiling a very odd case which was featured on UNSAWD Mysteries, the nineteen
seventy six murder of Stanley Griesick. I actually consider this to be one of
the more underrated segments from unsawd mysteries, as the case has never really gotten
a lot of discussion, but it's definitely a very strange story. It involves
the death of a man named Stanley Griesick, who was murdered by two mass
men during a home invasion. They spent a great deal of time ransackting the
place, but no one knows what they were looking for or if they actually
managed to find it. This is a pretty convoluted case involving allegations of a
police cover up and illegal activity at a local bar, and the biggest mystery
is the motive for why this crime took place. By all accounts, Stanley
was a very honest, law abiding individual who seemed like the last person you'd
expect to be caught up in something like this, But it's possible he was
targeted because as recently deceased brother had been involved in something shady. So we're
going to explore this entire story and try and figure out the most logical explanation
for what might have happened here. This is really interesting from the get go
because you have Stanley and his wife who were home when this home invasion happens,
and Stanley's the one who's killed. It's shocking to me that if they
really were out for revenge, if they were out to find something, or
if they had been hired hands, that they would actually allow his wife to
live or to not verify that she was deceased. So that alone is a
very interesting fact to me. And poor Stanley. I mean, Stanley's this
guy who everyone says, look, you would never imagine him being in any
kind of criminal activity, but then you know that his brother is. I'm
looking forward to hearing more about what his brother could have been involved in.
We are in New York, so I'm wondering, is it possibly anything organized
crime related? It might like Roma is a small town, but I definitely
sounds like there was a lot of shady stuff and organized crime taking place there
back in the nineteen seventies. One thing I do find interesting, though,
is a lot of times we see home invasions where basically the objective is to
find something, but the intent is also to murder the occupants of the home.
I think a lot of times, if it is done in the evening,
they won't necessarily wear masks, especially before there was CCTV everywhere and people
had, you know, the ring doorbells, and whatnot, because if you're
planning to murder people, then oftentimes you don't need to worry about being masked
because people can see you because they're no longer They're going to cease to exist
after they've encountered you and you've ransacked their home or however the scenario plays out.
But the fact that both intruders were a masked makes me think that may
be the intent was to only murder Stanley does an incredible point. Yeah,
they wouldn't have to wear a mask if they went in knowing our objective is
Twofold killed the two occupants and get something or look to retrieve something or secret
vengel in this family. So it does very much point to Stanley being a
target. It's just it's crazy to me that Esther would be left because that
does put them at extreme risk, even if they were masked to say,
hey, I saw this about them. I can describe their height, I
know their weight, you know those kinds of things as well. Our story
begins in nineteen seventy six in Rome, New York, a town located in
Oneida County, which had a population of around forty three thousand at the time.
Our central figure is fifty nine year old Stanley Grizick, who lives with
his fifty four year old wife, Esther. The couple have been married for
thirty three years and have three children. Stanley has five siblings, and two
of his brothers, Peter and Bernard, help him run a family owned gas
station in liquor store, which are located right next to Stanley's residence. Sadly,
the Gresick suffered a tragedy earlier this year when Peter passed away on July
second after a lengthy illness, but another tragedy would soon hit the family in
a very unexpected way. On the evening of November sixth, Stanley and Esther
were at home with their six year old grandson, who was staying with them
and sleeping upstairs. Sometime after eleven pm, Stanley was running a bath for
his wife and Esther was going through her nightly ritual of checking all the house's
windows and doors to make sure that they were locked. While Esther was in
the kitchen, two men wearing ski masks suddenly burst in through the back door.
One of the men was described as being tall, while the other was
short and stocky, and the short man grabbed Esther by the throat. It
wasn't long before Stanley came running downstairs and entered the dining room, where he
immediately got into a struggle with a taller man. The other intruder remained in
the kitchen and started choking Esther until she went unconscious and fell to the floor.
Esther would soon regain consciousness and essentially started playing dead and kept holding her
breath. She proceeded to lie face down without making a movement while her assailant
handcuffed her behind her back and tied her arms to her feet. While this
was going on, Esther caught a glimpse of the man placing a pearl handled
gun down on the floor in close proximity to her face. After Estra was
tied up, he picked up his gun and left the kitchen. Esther was
deaf and required the use of a hearing aid, but it had been knocked
out of her ear when the intruder choked her. As a result, she
could not hear what the two men were doing inside the house, but she
knew they were still there because she could feel the vibrations from their movements.
Esther remained motionless for nearly an hour until the handcuffs were removed from her wrists,
though her arms and feet remained tied together. When she could no longer
feel moved it inside the house and was certain the intruders were gone, Estra
finally started to wiggle around until she managed to get her arms untied from her
feet. She then got up and left the kitchen, but was soon horrified
to find Stanley lying dead on the dining room floor. He had been down
with chords taken from the blinds before he was killed. What a blessing that
their six year old grandson was sound asleep upstairs and that he didn't wake up
from all of the ruckats that was going around downstairs. It could have completely
startled these two intruders, causing them to kill either Esther or the little one
as well. So that's one of the only blessings in this scenario. Poor
Esther is deaf, she's caught off guard, her hearing aid falls out,
and she lies there playing dead. I cannot fathom how much trauma would be
going through your head saying I have to I have to stay still, but
what's happening with my grandson, what's happening with my husband? And she can't
even hear things so she's basically lying there saying I'm bound. I can't do
anything anyway, so I'm going to try to save my life. Now,
did someone come buy and take the handcuffs off of her wrist and hour later?
Yes, because that's kind of a weird detail because when you hear about
the intruder choking her into unconsciousness, she kind of wonder did they intend to
kill her? But they just didn't do a thrown off job. But because
they bothered to handcuff her and bound her, that does seem to indicate that
they were planning to leave her alive, and that after they were done,
they decided to take the handcuffs away because they knew it could possibly be traced
back to them. But yeah, it seems like they were willing to kill
Stanley, but esther they didn't really care much if she lived or died.
That's fascinating when you said the handcuffs were remove them by the police and then
it's like, no, she was trying to get up and go see what
had happened in her house. So these intruders, like you said, it's
almost as if they said she needs to be incapacitated for a few minutes.
But then an hour later, an hour into this home invasion, we're going
to go in and remove these handcuffs and almost like a I don't know,
like a caring's not the right word, but almost in a thoughtful way of
like, Okay, this will give her a chance to get untied in time
when we leave. I feel like if this was a targeted hit, and
these individuals were either involved or they were paid by some other individuals to do
this job, then I think that it wasn't necessarily like care or anything outside
the fact that you were paid to do a certain job. Maybe that would
be retrieve information and kill Stanley, and that's what you're paid for. You're
not paid to kill a woman. I don't think even hit men in situations
like that are going to annihilate an entire family unless that is your objective and
you're paid to do so. I think minimizing the casualties in a hit would
be the desired objective and less instructive otherwise, and exactly, and I'm sure
they were also reluctant to kill a child as well, because for all we
know, because they were searching so thoroughly throughout the house, maybe they did
see the grandson sleeping in the bedroom, but pretty much how the attitude,
I'm not going to harm him and just let him sleep and hopefully he doesn't
wake up. I was thinking the same thing, Rob, And there's no
way in an an hour of touring this house that they would not have gone
by that bedroom and peaked, getting on, Oh my god, there's a
little one in there. Just keep going right, leave it alone, be
quiet over here, and just continued on whatever their mission was at the time.
And I mean, even on the flip side, we could look at
it from another perspective. They could have had the idea that they were going
to kill both Esther and Stanley, but then they saw the grandchild and thought,
oh my gosh, here's this innocent kid. We'd better leave the lady
alive. Esther also discovered that the entire house had been completely roundsacked by the
two intruders who tore the place apart. Thankfully, her grandson was left unharmed
upstairs and had slept through the entire incident. Esther attempted to use the phone,
but discovered that the lines had been cut, so she left the house
and ran to the home of Stanley's brother, Bernard, who subsequently contacted the
police. After Stanley's body was taken away, the Rome Police Department barred the
Greasick family from entering the house until they could perform a thorough search. They
eventually determined that no robbery had taken place and the only items missing were two
bottles of beer from the refrigerator. The round sacking seemed to indicate that the
two intruders had been searching for something, but no one could figure out what
they were looking for or if they actually found it. The following day,
Stanley's son, Martin Grizig, went searching through the house and came across a
spent shell casing on the floor underneath the dining room table. Needless to say,
this took him by complete surprise, as police had already performed an extensive
search of the house following the murder, and the shell casing was lying right
on top of the rug in plane sight, so it wasn't easy to miss.
Regardless, Martin picked it up with a pencil, put it inside a
plastic bag, and contacted the police. When a detective arrived at the house,
he took the shell casing from Martin and put it in his pocket.
But asked him not to mention it to anyone else for the time being.
Yikes, Well, here we have a lot of things going on. First
of all, they searched this house looking for something missing, right, I'm
sure Esther could give them an inventory of a valuable things in their home.
And they say, look, nothing was missing except for two bottles of beer
from the refrigerator, which to me is so disturbing. For someone who took
your husband's life and ruined your home, completely violated your safe space, they
had time to sit and drink a beer from your refrigerator. It's very callous,
it's very cold, and it's so nonchalant in such a heightened moment,
very disturbing to me. And also here comes Martin Stanley's son saying, Okay,
they wouldn't let me in the house. Now, now that they've done
their search, I'm going to go in and just kind of see what happened.
A lot of families need that, right, They want to see where
these things happen and what could have gone wrong. And when he goes in,
he doesn't just see the scene where his father was killed. He sees
a shell case, and that's very obvious to him. Signaling in his mind
mind they didn't do a thorough or detailed search of this house whatsoever or this
crime scene, which means the chance that my dad's going to get justice is
far lessened. Here comes a detective who comes to see this evidence that Martin's
collected, and he puts it in his pocket, saying, don't mention it
to anyone for the time being. One of two things is going on.
He's hiding the fact that his team didn't follow protocol and messed up, and
he doesn't want this shell casey to come back and professionally hurt him. Or
it could also be that he doesn't want information shared with the family or anyone
else, because even when a family knows information and is trying to help,
the more details they know, sometimes they unknowingly buyas the investigation or provide information
that only a killer would know. And it's possible that maybe he didn't want
the caliber of the shell or something like that coming out. But as a
survivor, when a detective puts evidence in his pocket and says, don't say
anything, it would feel far more sinister to me than that. Yeah,
it's always a major red flag to me, and the police performer search of
a crime scene and don't find something, and then the family does their own
search and find something almost instantly. Are you guys for another example of this,
Are you guys familiar with the Ashley Freeman Laura Bible case. Yes,
m that's another one where two teenage girls were abducted from a trailer fire,
and like the police showed up at the scene, did an extensive search and
assumed that they had been kidnapped by one of the girl's fathers. But then
the parents go back to the crime scene the following day and they literally find
the father's body within five minutes, which had somehow been missed by the entire
police force. So this was a major So this was a major red flag
that the investigation was not going to be a good one. And I think
the same feeling was with Stanley's case, because it sounds like that slug wouldn't
have been very easy to miss and should have been found by the police.
Something about the intruders, like obviously their sexual assault was not the motive for
this crime, but just reminded me of the Joseph DeAngelo. Remember, before
he became a Golden State killer, he was the East a are you a
rapist? And he would go into the homes of these women, and wouldn't
he put like plates on their back so that they couldn't move while he was
making himself at home in their space doing god knows what, eating from the
fridge or drinking from the fridge, and they had to just lie there still
and not make any noise while this man had violated them once and then is
violating them again by continuing to remain in their space. Yeah, it's the
same type of thing, because we don't know if they took the beers and
drank them afterwards. But the idea that they could have been hanging around the
house for a long period of time drinking the beers while they're ransacking it is
pretty creepy. But because Esther didn't see anything, we have no idea if
that's what they actually did. And what's so hard for Esther too, is
as a deaf woman, right, she's feeling vibrations around the house, and
likely when a gun was fired, she could feel that as well, but
may not know been able to link what it was. But she's sitting there
with these law enforcement agents where a lot of people could have ear witness testimony
to say and tell them, oh, I heard them do this. They
win here, I heard them do this. Then they told him this right.
Esther can't do any of that. She's so helpless in this moment.
She's a grieving widow. Think God, her grand baby's okay. But she's
sitting there going okay. I was held hostage. I was forced to play
debt and bound, and then I woke up and saw that my husband was
killed. It's just so sad because she easily. You know, if she
had been able to hear, she might have been able to hear something they
said to him, or a motivation they said to each other, but she
didn't have that ability. Well. The discovery of the shell casing would cause
a major discrepancy, as all the newspaper articles about the crime stated that Stanley
was stabbed to death, and the original autopsy reportless did his cause of death
as a single stab wound to the art. Since her hearing it had been
knocked out, Esther could not say she heard a gunshot that night, but
she was adamant at her attack, or had placed a god on the floor,
a cider, and the Gresick family believed that the shell casing on the
dining room floor was conclusive evidence that Stanley had been shot. Stanley and Esther
did not keep any guns in the house, so there was really no other
explanation for the presence of the shell casing unless one of the intruders had fired
off a shot. As a result, the Gresick family had Stanley's body exoomed
less than a month after his death. A second autopsy discovered a twenty five
caliber bullet in Stanley's chest and there was no sign of a stab wound.
Oh and in case you don't find his suspicious enough, Martin plaimed that he
never found out what happened to the shell casing after he gave it to the
detective from the Rome PD. Was it doctor Mallick who performed with this first
Yes, Bobby, of course, yes, yes, yes. So what
is insane to me as a grieving family. You were waiting for that autopsy
report to tell you the details you didn't know, to fill in those gaps,
and they say, oh, he was stabbed to death, a single
stab wound to the heart, and your son is sitting there saying that's not
true. He was shot right like he had to have been shot. I
found a shell casing. But here's a doctor telling you know he was stabbed
and it's a single wound to the heart. And then you have his body
egzom which is also emotionally taxing, and they say, sure enough, they
find a bullet in his chest. How did you miss that the first time
you did an autopsy on him? And not only did they find the bullet,
there is not a single stab wound. So you have told me his
cause of death in a completely inaccurate manner. You also have not informed us
of where the evidence my son found was. And so the Rome Police Department
is looking incredibly bad at this moment. Again, malicious or not, you
have failed this family, and so has the doctor performing the autopsy on him.
Oh definitely, But at least they didn't say that Stanley smoked twenty marijuana
cigarettes before he died, So I guess I'll give them that. Yeah,
he just laid on the tracks and smoked, you know, fifteen pounds of
marow Wanna and fell asleep. It's just crazy that they would assume that it
was a stab wound because how big. Actually, you're probably the most knowledgeable
about guns are the three of us. You definitely are like a twenty five
caliber bullet. Is that a big bullet or a small bullet you'd be surprised.
I don't. I don't know the answer to that. I just go
shoot targets for fun, Okay, So what I do know. What I
do know is that a stab wound and a gunshot one would likely look different,
right, But it does depend on how close the weapon was fired.
That doesn't matter what the caliber is, right Like, the closer it is
in some ways, depending on the type of bullet, it would be a
cleaner wound, or if it's super close, they could cause more damage to
just depending on what type of round is fired into them and what weapon they're
using. But stab wound, like, I don't see how this clear stab
wound that pierced his heart could have been what they ruled when he was shot
to me that that wound would not look similar in any way. Wouldn't you
go in there too and investigate? Especially when esther there was such specificity with
regards to the gun that she said that she saw it had a pearl handle,
right, Like, It's not just like, oh, I think that
I saw a black thing that could have been a gun. She was very
specific and then the sun finding the shell casing. At that point you'd think
you'd go, well, maybe my conclusion that I reached was incorrect, Maybe
I should use some further investigation and then look at the wound. But clearly
that didn't happen here. No, It's like if the family had not taken
the initiative to exhume Stanley's body, then they still would have maintained that he
died of a stab wound, and the investigation never would have gone anywhere.
So I don't know if this was an intentional cover up to protect the perpetrators
or if it was just incompetence and the rome pede did not want to admit
they made a mistake. And don't you both think that if I guess,
it depends where the perpetrator shot Stanley the type of blood spatter that there would
be versus a blood trail if there was a knife, right, because if
it was a stabbing, I think you'd see a blood trail with larger droplets.
Exactly. It's never been made clear if they found any blood spatter around
the spot where Stanley's body was found, but for all we know, maybe
they did and they cleaned it up or something before the rest of the family
went back in there because they wanted to maintain the narrative that he was stabbed.
I just don't see where that would benefit them unless there's some kind of
ability for the you know, the police to be like, oh, we
know who did this, and it's our colleague and we're going to protect him.
Why would they do any of that. It seems to me lazy that
they said like, oh, this is what we found. You know,
we didn't really see much. They didn't duck. They did everything in a
couple hours and then let the family go back in the next morning. So
it's bizarre to me that no one heard of the bullet. No one did
an investigation, like Jewel said, deeper into his physical body to say,
hey, I'm just gonna check there was a bullet still in his body.
That is a big thing to overlook, especially when you have a wound and
you can follow it to the bullet. Blows my mind. I would be
so devastated as a family. I had to get him exhumed to get information
and then tried to help solve his case. Right, you had to beg
for that first and get that, which again is emotionally exhausting and devastating for
her family. And then you find out, well, everybody's been wrong from
the start, and no one knows about that bullet, just like the detective
had told the son not to do. Needless to say, these new revelations
made the Greasy suspect that a cover up was taking place, and the investigation
hit a complete standstill. Sadly, Esther passed away in July nineteen seventy eight,
and her family believed she was never the same after the trauma of her
husband's murder and essentially died of a broken heart. The case would pretty much
be forgotten for over a decade until it was revived in an unexpected way.
In March nineteen eighty nine. A drug dealer came forward and told the Rome
Police Department that he had information about someone who was likely involved in Stanley's murder.
So, according to the informant, a few days before the crime took
place, he was working as a bartender when he was approached by another man
associated with the bar at the time. The informant owed money to this man,
but was told his debt would be white clean if he participated in a
burglary he'd organized. The man soon drove the informant to a house which turned
out to be Stanley Grisi's residence, and told him there was a large amount
of money hidden in there for the taking. Well. The informant declined to
participate in the burglary, but of course a breaking would take place at the
house just a few days later, which resulted in Stanley's death. This puts
the informant in an incredibly awkward situation, because you know, he really was
approached about, Hey, you can kind of wipe your dad's clean if you'll
help me with this robbery. Well, this is a drug dealer. I
don't think a burglary would be that big of a issue to him, right,
And he's thinking, yeah, I could, I couldn't. But then
he goes and he sees his resident and he says, nah, it's not
worth the risk to me, and then he reads I'm sure our hears.
Okay, this burglary happened anyway, and there's a death involved. Now what
does he do? He goes forward and says like, oh, I was
you know hired, I was going to be hired for this murder plot and
oops, I said no, I didn't tell anybody. I didn't stop it
from happening, right, I knew information that this house was going to be
targeted, so and he's involved in drugs, so likely he has a record
as well. It doesn't put him in a situation to easily be able to
go to the police. And then he's sitting there for years thinking, Okay,
I know this information. It's wearing on me. And he finally comes
forward before you share what happened with that informant, because it is pretty powerful
that he does come forward, even though it's years later. I want to
go back to the fact that Esther passed away. What was it two years
after her husband died? Oh yeah, just under two years, just under
two years. I have no doubt it is related to that trauma. I
mean, there's a a book I believe it's called The Body Holds the Tale
and I mentioned it several times. But where our bodies physically change when there's
emotional and physical trauma to our minds and our bodies. And so you have
Esther, who was not elderly. Stanley was fifty nine years old, so
Esther's probably around that age as well, and she only lives another year and
a half because her body was breaking down. She was held hostage, she
was present when her husband was killed, she found his body, She knows
that her grandson could have also died. Her home was invaded, right,
So it's I have no doubt the power that that trauma did have on her.
And it is pitiful because she passed away without knowing who hurt her husband,
and I believe before the body was exhumed. Wasn't Didn't she pass away
before the body was exhumed as well? The exam the body just a month
after Stanley originally died. Yeah, okay, okay, so at least she
knew some information before she passed away. Still, it's such a sad story.
So go back to the informant and tell me what happened to this man
who comes forward, albeit over a decade later, he does come forward,
which is very very powerful. Yeah, Like, even though he waited a
long time, the informant pretty much jump started the investigation. So even if
he wasn't entirely telling the truth, it at least allowed the case to go
active again and go back into the spotlight. So by the time the informant
shared this story, there was a new team of detectives working the case.
So the investigation was reopened. The detective soon got in touch with Amy Scott,
who had been a neighbor of the Greasix in nineteen seventy six, and
shared her own interesting story. According to Amy, shortly after eleven pm on
the night of the murder, her dog became restless, so she took him
outside the house and happened to see a man walking down an alley towards the
greas At home. Approximately forty five minutes later, Amy walked out onto the
porch to call her dog back in when she noticed this same man exiting in
the alley and climbing into a white Lincoln Continental driven by a second man.
The vehicle sped away very quickly and nearly Sideswiped's dog in the process, which
prompted her to shout at them. A few days later, Amy went to
a drive through window at a bank when she noticed the same white Lincoln Continental
in her rear view mirror with the same two men inside. When Amy drove
away, the Lincoln remained behind her for several blocks, and she got genuinely
frightened that she was being followed. She quickly drove to the police station and
met up with a policeman on the front steps. After she explained what was
happening, Amy and the policeman climbed into his car and drove around the area
to search for the men and the Lincoln. By by this point they were
gone. It's interesting to me that even back in the seventies they didn't have
enough information to kind of look at who had this kind of car. Did
they not look into it or did they not have the technology to look into
it, because if they're still hanging around Rome a couple of days after this
murder, they're probably from around there. Well, as we're going to talk
about, this becomes a recurring theme where we're going to get a whole bunch
of witnesses coming forward saying I went to the police with such and such information
back in nineteen seventy six, and nothing was done with it. So I
had no idea if they even attempted to look and try to identify this white
Lincoln Continental. And like I said, the only reason this investigation has been
jump started in nineteen eighty nine is that because a new team of detectives are
now working on the case, and they seem a lot more ambitious and willing
to try to reopen the case and get it solved. When she was reinterviewed,
Amy directed the new investigators towards a woman named Patsy Peck who had yet
another interesting story. So Patsy owned a bookstore in Rome, and the day
before Stanley was murdered, she claimed that two men entered her establishment who matched
the description of the individuals that Amy had seen. One was tall with dark
hair, while the other was shortened stocky with sandy hair, and they drove
a white Lincoln Continental. According to Patsy, the two men chatted with her
husband as they were apparently acquainted with him, who had not seen him since
they left town a while back. Patsy claimed that after Stanley was murdered,
she went to the police in shared this information with the original investigators, But
even though Amy Scott's initial police interview from nineteen seventy six was still in the
case file, there was no record of Patsy's statement. It is wild.
You do you have these two women who said, look, we gave information
about physical descriptions their car, right, who these guys were, how tall
they were, what their body was like, And there's really no information in
the case file of what occurred and what's frustrated is like there is a new
team of detectives in the eighties who are working in this case and probably had
a very different energy about them. Right. It sounds like the investigators in
nineteen seventy six walked onto the scene, made an assumption of what happened.
Maybe they knew the brother and knew that this family was quote involved in illegal
things and just assumed Stanley was part of it, so they didn't care,
or they just didn't care at all. In general, that they were lazy,
that they were in experience with homicide investigations and they said, look,
he's dead, it's really not a big deal. The case is one of
the cases that doesn't have to be immediately worked because you don't have a living
victim, right, So often they'll work sexual assaults and robberies and things like
that first. When they have a homicide as well that goes on for several
weeks, right, they'll stop pursuing that. So I think, in my
gut, I feel like they were lazy and an experience with this since Rome's
a small town. But there is a piece of me that says, what
was it about Stanley's death that made them not care. Okay, Robin,
quick question for you, because this is kind of eating away at me.
So Patsy's husband was acquainted with these two men, aka, she knew their
identities, their names, right, I think so Like it's never been clarified,
but I have to assume that if she recognized them, that she gave
their names to the authorities. That looks so sketchy that her statement isn't even
taken, and that these suspects were clearly not pursued. That's what strikes me
is that we have two witnesses who have never met Amy Scott and Patsy Peck,
giving very similar stories about these two men who look similar, who both
drive a white Lincoln Continental. So it sounds like it should be fairly easy
to find these guys. Yet jogging by the case file, no action was
ever taken. It's very bizarre because when I worked for one of the cold
case units that I was working with, I remember going through some of the
case files. The new detectives obviously were not involved in this, but as
they were taking on these cases, I would go through and helped him look
at the facts and look at what was president in the case file, what
was missing and I would often like lean over and be like, hey,
do you know if anyone interviewed this lady who said that, you know,
she heard the victims scream? Do you know if anyone interviewed this guy who
says he saw car leaving? And oftentimes the detectives are sitting there reading the
case file, they're like, I don't think so, I don't think that
happened. And so you know, when a new team of detectives gets the
case, they're able to look back and they see the shortcomings. Right.
It is very bizarre when you look at these cold cases that you go,
guys, there was information here that needed to be pursued at that time if
we were going to make an arrest in this case, and it wasn't.
Well it turned out there was. He had another eyewitness sighting of these two
men in Rome. Another witness told police that he remembered seeing them enter a
local bar shortly after Stanley's murder, which happened to be the same bar where
the aforementioned informant had been approached about participating in a burglary days beforehand. The
witness saw the two men meet with another man near the back of the bar
who handed them an envelope containing a large sum of money before they left.
Well, the witness recognized at least one of the two men and approached the
individual who handed them the money. This guy said that the money was payment
for a job that they had recently done for him, and these two men
now had to leave town. So the implication seemed to be that the two
men who broke into Stanley's home and murdered him had been paid off to do
it. But the big answered question was why would anyone target Stanley? Well,
it turned out that the liquor license for the bar where this transaction took
place had been held by Stanley's brother, Peter Griesick. Oh, okay,
hold that one put put a pin in it. As you said to say,
Jeels right would have been in am for a second. But okay,
So this informant that comes forward, it's not just that he says he knows
the guy who offered to break in the house. He says he actually saw
that the job had been done and that a man was being paid for it,
and the two men needed to leave town. Surely he had given the
name to the investigators in the eighties. Surely he could say these were the
two guys who broke into that at home and murdered him. It seems like
it's not possible that he would have told this story and say like, oh,
but I don't know who these guys are. I worked with him,
I saw them exchange money. I rode in the car with him to this
house. But I have no idea who this is. He knew them,
so where did that information go? And, like you said, who would
want to target Stanley? But it turns out that the liquor license for this
bar is held by Stanley's brother, Peter. And I'll tell you my grandfather
ran a bar when he was younger and my mom was a little girl,
and I remember when he was diagnosed with cancer, he shut it down immediately,
and my mom and her mom were saying, like, why what if
we ran the business, because it's a great business, and he said,
I will be damned if my girls are involved in the liquor business. It
is dangerous and unsafe and it's not what I want my family involved in.
So I don't know what all that was about, but it seems like when
you have these kinds of bars that they do open themselves up to a different
kind of breed of people to frequent the bar, to maybe work at the
bar, to maybe have liquor illegally, those kinds of things. So it's
interesting to hear what we know about Peter. As you might recall, Peter
passed away only four months before Stanley was killed. In the months prior to
his own death, Peter was gravely ill, so he summoned Stanley to his
home for a private conversation in his bedroom behind closed doors. Well, no
one else knows what exactly they talked about, but it seems to have a
serious effect on the two brothers relationship, even though they had always been close.
Stanley never spoke to Peter again before he died. After Peter's passing,
Stanley would still not reveal anything of other conversation, but his family noticed that
his behavior seemed to change and he became more distant. During a visit with
his daughter Patricia, Stanley surprised her by saying, I don't know when I'll
ever see you again. This turned out to be the last time Patricia saw
her father alive, as he was murdered shortly thereafter. Anyway, the bar
Peter was involved with eventually closed down after its slicker license was revoked in nineteen
eighty two. A number of illegal activities were discovered to be taking place at
that bar, including on site gambling and the sale of controlled substances. Now,
I'll have to give Peter a little bit of credit. It's likely that
he was involved in these things and knew that these things were occurring at his
bar. But it was in nineteen seventy six that the murder happened, right,
And this is nineteen eighty two that the bar shut down exactly, So
we still don't know if the reason that the bar shutdown had anything to do
with what Peter was involved with. Yeah, that's a long time. Six
years, you know, seven years, that's a really long time to say
like, oh this is all because of Peter, or Peter knew all of
this that was going on. He likely did. I'll put that out there,
But that is a significant amount of time to pass for our business to
change substantially. It's it's crazy that we know Stanley and Peter talked right before
his death, and they didn't talk after that, and Stanley is significantly changed
in his behavior, in his emotional connection to his family, and then that
comment to his daughter, I got chills when you said this, I don't
know when I'll ever see you again. And that's the last time this girl
hears her father's voice, sees him those kinds of things because he's murdered,
like he knew something. He knew something negative, something that Peter had gotten
involved in, or or something that was being threatened against Peter, because he
knew there was some kind of darkness hanging around him. Maybe not that he
was going to be killed. But you don't say I don't know when I'll
ever see you again to your child unless something big is going on, Like
that had to be huge. Can you imagine what he would have had to
have said, like I've done something so horrible or I owe so much money,
I'm going to die and they're going to come for you because they want
their money, or something along those lines. What would it be that would
be so horrific that would basically have Stanley walk away from Peter at the end
of his life, a brother who he was very close to. And then
when he says that to his daughter Patricia, like you said, Ash,
it gave me chills too. He basically predicted his own murder. Yeah,
it doesn't make me wonder because we found out that the bar eventually closed due
to on site gambling. But I don't think that would be something egregious enough
that Peter would confess that, oh, I run a bar where it was
gambling, and Stanley would break off all contact with him before he passed away.
It had to be something a lot more severe. So you have to
sense that maybe who knows, maybe Peter was involved in a murder or something
like that, which is what you can expect Stanley's reaction to be so harsh,
or maybe the debt would pass to him when he died, right,
And that was the thing that they said, Hey, you know what,
the debt will pass to your brother when you die. And so I would
be pretty pissed off if that was my sibling being like, hey, I'm
going to die here in a few weeks, I owe a million bucks and
just some pretty nasty people, but it's now your responsibility. That would make
me be like, okay, Like maybe I never want to talk to you
again. That's also true. I also think what's sad here is that Stanley,
whatever Peter told him and whatever quote might have been being looked for during
this robbery, it's possible that Esther didn't know what was there and she didn't
know to tell them to look for specific things, because if Stanley had hidden
significant amounts of money, if he had hidden a weapon, if he had
hidden drugs, if he had done something to hide an item or items in
his home, and Esther's telling the police these are our things of value,
my jewelry, our television, right his I don't know collection of this.
She wouldn't know to tell them about this information or this stuff that these robbers
were looking for. So Dad puts a huge kink in it as well.
Maybe they did retrieve what they went for, and it just so happened that
Esther didn't know to say look for this. Esther and Stanley were basically born
at the turn of the century, right, so at that time, I
think the typical gender roles are going to be more pronounced. This is nineteen
seventy six. I think that it is entirely possible, like you said,
Ash, that she may not have known what he could have potentially had in
the home, right, Like he could have kept it from her either because
it was something he just didn't feel like it was safe to share with her.
He didn't want her to judge him, or it could have been something
related to his brother or just something that was like, this is completely separate
from my wife. There's no need to disclose it to her. I don't
want her to worry type of a thing. And it's not every it doesn't
have to be something this big either, Like my husband does that to me,
Like I'll eventually find out something that had happened you do at work or
something, and he's I said, why didn't you tell me? Or with
our kids, or like, why didn't you tell me? He's like,
because your anxiety is really bad, or like you were really struggling last week,
why would I dump that on you? Or why would I give you
that to worry about? Right? Because it wasn't going to help for you
to know, And so I didn't want to hurt you either. So I
mean, maybe Stanley was something significant. I was really protecting her And people
would go, oh, my goodness, how could he not tell her?
Well, I think a lot of spouses do that just to protect us from
even just the minute things that happened in life. So by the time the
investigation into Stanley's murder was reopened years later, crucial evidence had disappeared without explanation,
but the authorities were able to get the case featured an episode of Unsolved
Mysteries which aired in October nineteen ninety. At the end of the segment,
a photograph was displayed of a man named Charles Brazinski, who happened to be
a former employee at the aforementioned bar. Brazinski had been a wanted fugitive since
nineteen seventy seven, as he jumped bail while awaiting trial on unrelated drug charges
and was believed to be living in Phoenix. He had been interviewed by police
shortly after Stanley's murder and was now considered to be a material witness in the
case. I have no idea if Brazinski was ever found, but I did
find an interesting threat at the Unsolved Mysteries message board at these sitcoms online for
him, which I'm always referring to. In two thousand and five, a
poster under the handle NYG Fan and Jay claimed that he had an uncle named
Charles Brazinski, who bore a striking resemblance to the man in the photo that
was displayed during the Unsawd Mystery segment. According to NYG Fan and Jay.
His uncle had left the family to go off on his own, but none
of them had hurt from him in over thirty years, so it seems like
the of Charles Brazinski is an unsolved mystery in its own right. Anyway,
the Unsolved Mystery segment wound up generating three hundred tips from viewers, and in
January of nineteen ninety one, the authorities announced that they now had a prime
suspect whom they believe hired the two men to kill Stanley. The suspect was
not mentioned by name, but they said he was living in the Syracuse,
Utica area at this point, and it was theorized that he had Stanley murdered
because he knew too much about illegal activities which were taking place at his deceased
brother's bar. However, while investigators thought they might have had enough evidence to
get an indictment against this man, they did not believe they had enough evidence
to secure a conviction. Unfortunately, the investigation pretty much hit another standstill,
and the identities of the suspect and the two men he allegedly hired had never
been revealed publicly. The cases officially still unsolved, and the full truth about
the circumstances behind Stanley Griswick's murder remained murky, So I guess you could say
the path went Chiley. Okay, So let me get this right. Charles
is someone that they say we need to talk to. They do not necessarily
name him as the prime suspect. They just say, look, he worked
at this bar, he likely knew what was going on. So we have
the person that's the main suspect, and then the police think that that person
hired two people from the bar to go carry out this robbery and murder.
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, we've gone over these scenarios about this guy
paying off these two men at the bar, and it seems likely that the
authorities know who these three men are and believe that this was a payoff for
Stanley's murder, but they just did not have the evidence to arrest or indict
any of these men. And we're just waiting for new information to come in.
So there's definitely a lot that they probably have not revealed publicly. But
the fact that they have not mentioned these guys names but were willing to name
Charles Prazinski makes me think that he was not one of the two men or
the guy making the payoff, and that he was just someone that they thought
might have crucial information that would help them with the investigation. It's possible that
the informant who came forward said, like, I think they were hitting up
Charles two to go, like I you know, I said no, And
I'm pretty sure they asked Charles and he said no what I mean? But
maybe that could get them too. Well, who was asking you? And
who did you go on the car with? And who else was asked?
Do you know what I mean? So it's possible he's one of those links
in the chain and he's kind of this lynch pin they need to find in
order to get that information. But they have this guy's name. They're pretty
sure that they could charge this main suspect with at least the plan to carry
out the murder. But again, there was such little evidence and it wasn't
collected or preserved properly. The people that came forward and had information, they
were not taken seriously and their complaints were not documented the way they should have
been. And so it's really hard when you say we have an ability to
get an indictment, meaning we have a preponderance of the evidence right, fifty
point one percent chance that we probably have the right guy, but there's no
way we could come to a ninety nine point nine nine verdict right that he's
guilty. They have to step back and say, like, until somebody comes
forward, typically in a cold case, right, unless someone comes forward,
or unless that showcasing was found and it can be matched to a gun owned
by one of these men, which they probably didn't use their own guns,
then we wouldn't have any information. So this is so sad and it has
to be one of those cases the detective just kind of bang their head against
the wall and say, like, I know who did this? How do
I prove it? I need someone to bring forward information. Yeah, it
just seemed like they were so close. When they aired this on Unsolved Mysteries,
they probably felt, well, we've had so many new witnesses and informants
come forward in recent years. I bet that when this is broadcast on national
television, we're going to get additional witnesses who are going to give us that
one piece of evidence that's going to allow us to make an arrest and close
this case. But sadly, it never came to fruition. Do you guys
think that the police were involved in that gambling and illegal betting, like I
mean, and the illegal substance, like they looked the other way and got
a percentage of it, because that was not unheard of in the sixties and
seventies, that bars would be like kind of have law enforcement officers that were
dedicated to them, and in off duty times they'd make sure other police officers
weren't coming by there, and they'd get a chunk of whatever money was coming
and being funneled through that bar. Looks like it's possible when you've got a
detective putting a shellcasing in their pocket and then leaving out the testimony of a
witness who seems to provide the identities to them, I think you could be
honest something. Oh definitely, Like I'm thinking that even if the police weren't
directly complicit in Stanley's murder, they're probably thinking, well, if we launch
an investigation, it's going to uncover a lot of other illegal things we're doing,
like our involvement with gambling activities at this bar. So that's why we'd
prefer to keep it hush hush. Well, needless to say, I'm always
perturbed by cases in which ordinary law abiding citizens who seem to have no dark
secrets in their life are suddenly murdered in what appears to be a professional hit.
Yeahvidence clearly suggest that at least three people were involved in Stanley Griesi's murder,
and that he was killed after someone paid off two and jewels to break
into his house. It seems like the authorities have a pretty good idea who
the perpetrators were, but the big mystery here is what the motive could have
been. I get the sense that a lot of people in Rome probably knew
who he was responsible, but the investigation remained in limbo for over a decade
until the right witnesses were willing to talk. I have a feeling that the
original investigators were content to let the Kays die. But by the time the
informant came forward in nineteen eighty nine, there were new detectives at the Rome
Police Department and they were motivated to jump start the investigation again and put it
into the national spotlight. As far as suspects go, we have the two
men who broke into the greas at home and the mastermind behind the plan who
hired them to do it. This mastermind has never been publicly named, but
the impression seems to be that he was heavily involved in criminal activity, and
it would not surprise me if he had members of the Rome PD in his
pocket back in nineteen seventy six who helped him orchestrate a cover up. But
the circumstances of how everything played out are just so odd that a honest we
can't decide if the case's original investigators were corrupt or just outriding competent. I'm
starting to lean towards corrupt, and I don't like going there because a lot
of times you just have inexperienced small town cops that don't know what they're doing.
But here, I'm starting to feel like if there really was this underground
gambling an illegal drug trade there, that the law enforcement agents were taking a
big sum of money from the pot that came in every night. So there
was a case of like, what was it eight officers in New York at
one point, that we're doing a cocaine the seven six, Yeah, tary
the cocaine ring, right, and that they were running and making I mean
like six times that they made at the law enforcement office selling cocaine and covering
up cocaine deals that people were making, and so I think it's very possible
that these officers needed it to be open shut. He got stabbed like they
even had it where it wasn't the right cause of death. And then they
say, oh, give me that evidence. Don't say anything, you know,
hush hush, because again, we don't want them digging into who Stanley
was in finding out Peter worked at this bar and finding out this guy at
the bar was hired but never fell through followed through with the murder. So
very possible that we are leaning more towards those original officers being corrupt. But
my god, what heroes are these new detectives who get assigned to this case
in the eighties and say what happened? Like something didn't go right, they
dropped the ball, and we are going to fight for this family and fight
for perpetrators to be apprehended because they're dangerous people. And it sounds like these
new detectives really did fight hard to say, look, we are close,
we have information, we just need a little more, and we're praying that
that unsolved Mysteries case would bring that about. And sadly, it doesn't sound
like it did. It feels like they did all the work that their predecessors
should have done. And I'm sure when they were looking at the case file
they were just shaking their heads because of all of these clear hole where they
should have gone and pursued the leads, but they just didn't. And then
I just I can't get over. I mean, I understand that in nineteen
seventy six, evidence collection wasn't what it is today, but I still think
it is extremely bizarre to take a shell casing from a family member and put
it in your pocket, even if it's just that that's really strange. But
then to say to them like keep it hush, hush, that makes me
think that, yeah, you're trying to cover this up for some reason.
And then in the aftermath the shell casing goes missing. So it does seem
to be a potential where I'm leaning, like sixty forty towards some type of
corruption. So I think this would be a good end. So I think
this would be a good time to bring an end to Part one. But
join us next week as we present part two of our series about the murder
of Stanley Gresick. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
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