Introduction
This blog is a tracking of the murder case of Brittney Gregory by Jack Fuller Jr. for those looking for information.
I had planned to cover the facts as they unfolded, piece together as much of the press and information as I can, since many of the sources of information are
either poorly linked, or disappear to archives (some paid).
At some point I still hope to get some, interviews with some of the players in this case,as well as Brittney's family and friends. I have opted not to even try up until now as I felt there were other places their attention needed to be focused.
While I tried to remain unbiased, once Fuller admitted to killing Brittney, it became impossible for me as a father of a young girl to be COMPLETELY "fair and balanced".
But despite that, all information that I uncover will be found here.
Please feel free to comment, but remain civil. (especially towards each other).
Thursday, July 22, 2004
A menace's rise to murder charge (historical)
(orginally posted in the Star Ledger July 22, 2004)
Accused of killing Brick girl, chronic crook was neighborhood scourge
BY MARY ANN SPOTO AND TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff
Jack Fuller Jr.'s neighbors were glad to hear he's locked up once again. They only wish the charge weren't the murder of Brittney Gregory.
Fuller, 38, the habitual criminal accused of killing the 16-year-old Brick Township girl, has menaced the neighborhood around his Howell home for most of his adult life. He has broken into cars, homes and garden sheds, used and sold drugs, threatened a man with a baseball bat, scuffled with police and lied to them about his identity after a drunken-driving arrest, according to court records and interviews.
He has been arrested more than a dozen times in the past 10 years alone. He has done time in a state prison on charges of theft and parole violations. Many of his offenses went unreported because people were afraid of him, neighbors said.
"When Jack Fuller is in jail, everybody around here wants to throw a party -- they feel safe," said one neighbor, a 24-year-old delicatessen worker who asked that her name be withheld. "When we hear he's out, everybody knows to lock everything up."
If Ocean County prosecutors have their way, Fuller won't be out of jail for a long, long time. They have charged him with Brittney's murder, and he remains in the Ocean County Jail on $1 million bail.
Brittney, a junior at Brick Township Memorial High School, went missing 11 days ago from her family's home on Greenwood Loop Road in Brick. Her family searched for her for more than a week, posting her picture on bulletin boards and utility poles around Brick, Howell and Lakewood.
Fuller was arrested Sunday and charged with murder, though Brittney's remains have not been recovered. Authorities have not said why they believe she is dead or why they suspect Fuller.
Fuller was known to Brittney's family. His daughter was a friend of Brittney's sister. One of Fuller's friends reportedly told police he saw Brittney in Fuller's car the night she disappeared.
The search for Brittney's body continued for a fourth day yesterday as police officers used search dogs and helicopters to scour the woods near the border of Ocean and Monmouth counties, woods Fuller was known to frequent. He often used a tent in those woods to stash stolen goods and to hide from the police, neighbors said.
"It was pretty scary to know somebody was camping back there," said Iliana Montero, who bought a house across Western Drive from Fuller's house six years ago.
Because of warnings about Fuller from the person who sold her the home, she had a burglar alarm installed after she moved in, she said.
"We were told he did try to break in here before we bought the house," she said.
Fuller cut a peculiar figure in the neighborhood. The man with the shaved head and the barbed-wire tattoo around his biceps was never known to work an honest job, yet always seemed to be nattily dressed , often in an expensive jogging suit and slip-on sneakers, usually with his baseball cap turned sideways or backwards, said Ron Thompson, who lived around the corner from Fuller on Sunset Drive for the past two years.
Sometimes Fuller would walk around the neighborhood, other times he would ride a bike, Thompson said.
Thompson said people in the neighborhood assumed Fuller made his money by selling drugs.
"I'm new here, and I knew about him as soon as I moved in," Thompson said.
There is plenty in the court records to support the neighbors' beliefs about Fuller's involvement with drugs.
In fact, he is due to go on trial, along with two co-defendants, in Monmouth County on Monday on charges he was found to be in possession of cocaine when he was stopped by police in Asbury Park last October.
He was charged as far back as 1986 with trying to sell marijuana in Howell Township. He was charged with possession of heroin in Point Pleasant in 1994, and Howell police charged him with using and being under the influence of heroin after an overdose last year, according to court records.
An Ocean County judge ordered Fuller into drug rehab in 1994 after he was arrested on a parole violation, but Fuller did not stick with the program, court records show. A probation report in his file indicates his attendance was spotty and that he had failed drug tests. He was eventually kicked out of the program.
In a letter to the court from prison in 2000, he promised to try to stay clean. "My commitment is to become a productive and positive figure in my community and to help others do the same, and of course to stay off drugs," he wrote to Superior Court Judge Edward Turnbach.
Aside from the drug offenses, most of the crimes on Fuller's rap sheet are nonviolent property offenses. Fuller and a friend named Tom were charged with breaking into a neighbor's car last year and stealing wedding and engagement rings and a credit card, according to court records and the alleged victim. They ran up $800 in charges on the card and sold the rings at an Asbury Park pawnshop, according to court papers.
The alleged victim, who asked that her name not be published, said the two men were caught only because Fuller's friend used his real name for the pawn shop transaction.
Fuller was not convicted of the offense, the woman said. She took two days off work to testify against him, she said, but his trial was postponed both times. She told the judge she couldn't afford to take a third day off. The judge ordered Fuller to pay her for the time she had missed and to return the stolen property, and the charges were dismissed, she said.
He also appeared in court last year on charges he removed the hinges from the doors on a garden shed and stole a neighbor's moped. That charge, too, was eventually dismissed, court records show.
"He's been a problem forever," said a neighbor who claims he has had some power tools stolen by Fuller. "He's the scourge of the neighborhood."
Not all of Fuller's offenses were nonviolent. He was indicted on a charge of assaulting the police officer who had arrested him on the marijuana charges in 1986. He also was sentenced to two years' probation in 1992 for threatening to harm a woman he had robbed, court records show.
And he appeared in Howell Municipal Court last year on charges he used a baseball bat to smash a taillight out of a pickup truck and threatened to use a gun to kill the driver, court records show. The alleged victim in that case appears to have been a co-defendant in the 1986 marijuana case, according to court records.
Neighbors said Fuller was immediately suspected whenever something was stolen.
But even with his long criminal record and propensity for trouble, they were shocked to learn when he was implicated in Brittney's murder.
Thompson, the neighbor who lives around the corner, said he didn't even consider that possibility when he saw the police cars outside Fuller's house last weekend. "I thought it might be drugs," he said. "We would never figure it would be something like murder."
Staff writer Brian Donohue contributed to this report.
