A Florida sheriff’s deputy reported to authorities in August 1979 that his wife had shot herself to death at their residence south of Tampa.
A few months later, John Greer, the same patrol deputy, claimed to have found the body of a second woman, a store clerk who had been shot and killed.
However, Greer acknowledged killing both women in an interview with officials decades after they passed away. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office named the victims in a news release on Tuesday as 25-year-old Adele Easterly and Jackie Greer.
According to the sheriff’s office, John Greer admitted the crime to investigators in April 2023 while residing in an extended care facility in Tennessee. The statement stated that he passed away on March 2, 2024, at the age of 77.
In a statement, Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell stated, “I have always stated that we will not conceal our past, no matter how unpleasant.” We will always look for the truth, even if we don’t like what we find, as this case demonstrates.
In the midst of an internal investigation, which the release claims may have been sparked by Greer’s behavior with an unnamed lady, John Greer resigned from the sheriff’s office in October 1980. Greer had been following his wife and attempting to have sex with her, according to the woman’s husband, who alerted the sheriff’s office at the time.
On September 29, 1980, the woman passed away in what the sheriff’s office said was a probable suicide.
A little more than a year ago, on August 27, 1979, John Greer announced the loss of his wife. According to the release, he told responding deputies that he heard a “pop” and noticed smoke emanating from a closet in the couple’s Port Charlotte residence.
According to the announcement, Greer informed the deputies that he had discovered his wife’s body inside.
“Although investigators suspected something was not right about the incident, there was no evidence to prove the case was anything other than suicide,” according to the sheriff s office.
According to the release, John Greer radioed dispatch at 1:40 a.m., seventy-one days later, to report finding Easterly’s body at a farm store in the adjacent city of Punta Gorda. The medical examiner’s office found Easterly had been shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun once in the head and once in the back, the sheriff’s office said.
A friend of Easterly’s later told investigators that the clerk had dated a deputy she believed was Greer but had become fearful of him, according to the release. The friend recalled Easterly describing the deputy’s account of his wife’s death as an accidental shooting that occurred after an argument.
Decades later, after the sheriff’s cold case unit put out a release seeking information about Easterly’s death, a woman who had been in a youth program at the sheriff’s office told investigators that Greer repeatedly sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her, according to the release.
During one assault after Easterly’s death, the release says, the woman said Greer invoked the dead woman’s name: “Ask them dead b—-es like Adele Easterly what happens when they say no to me.
The detectives who questioned Greer in 2023 found the woman’s allegations credible, but the statute of limitations for potential crimes linked to the alleged assault appeared to have run out, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said in an email.
The detectives instead focused on the killings of Easterly and Jackie Greer, they said in an email provided by the spokesman.
After detectives developed probable cause for Greer’s arrest, they found him in Tennessee and questioned him at the long-term care facility.
At the time, the release says, he was bedridden and could not carry on long conversations, but he appeared to understand the questions and answered in the affirmative when he was asked directly whether he had shot his Easterly and his wife.
The detectives were unable to determine whether Jackie Greer’s shooting was intentional or an accident, according to the release.
The sheriff’s office said it will continue to investigate Greer, who worked for other law enforcement agencies after he left Charlotte County, to determine whether he is linked to other crimes.
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