Fuller faces Oct. 25 trial in slaying

Published in the Asbury Park Press 09/13/05

BY KATHLEEN HOPKINS
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

TOMS RIVER — A Superior Court judge on Monday scheduled a trial for next month for the man accused of killing 16-year-old Brittney Gregory of Brick last year.

Judge Vincent J. Grasso set Oct. 25 as the trial date for Jack Fuller, 39, of Howell, who is charged in a single-count indictment with murder.

Grasso said he had anticipated implementing a cutoff of any plea negotiations in the case on Monday, until he learned that Fuller had sent a letter to his attorney asking that he first be able to review some of the evidence the state has against him.

Grasso held off implementing the cutoff of plea negotiations until after Fuller's attorney, John Goins, can meet with his client and review the evidence, including DNA and evidence on audiotape. That means there is still a possibility Fuller could avoid trial by pleading guilty.

Grasso scheduled a conference between Goins and Fuller for 9 a.m. today.

The evidence includes the victim's blood found in Fuller's car, and an audiotape on which he tells a police informant he killed "a white girl from Brick," asked the informant if 4 feet was deep enough to bury a body, and said he had to "take out" an acquaintance who knew about the body.

Gregory, a straight-A student who had just completed her sophomore year at Brick Township Memorial High School, was reported missing by her family on July 11, 2004.

In the ensuing two weeks, hundreds of law-enforcement officers combed at least 20 heavily wooded and swampy areas around Howell, Brick and Lakewood looking for her, many of them volunteering their time.

On July 27, 2004, authorities with bloodhounds found Gregory's body in a shallow grave just under a power line off Ridge Avenue in Lakewood, about 1 1/2 miles from Fuller's house and not far from where the victim lived with her father, Joseph Dunn, in Brick.

Fuller was arrested July 18, 2004, before Gregory's body had been found. He was charged with murder in a single-count indictment in February.

One thing that has not been scheduled in the case is a hearing at which Dr. Hydow Park, Atlantic County's medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Gregory, will be asked to testify about his medical findings.

Goins has filed a motion asking Grasso to bar the prosecution from presenting any argument that Gregory may have been strangled or suffocated. He argues in the motion that any discussion of strangulation or suffocation should be barred from the trial because Park did not provide a cause of death, but instead only said that suffocation or strangulation could not be ruled out.

In response to Goins' motion, Executive Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Ronald F. DeLigny has argued in court papers that Park ruled the death a homicide but could not specify the exact cause or rule out suffocation or strangulation "based upon the decomposed nature of the victim's body that was in the ground for approximately 16 days."

At pretrial hearings on July 15, Grasso said he could not rule on Goins' motion to exclude discussion of strangulation or suffocation from the case until after hearing from Park.

Fuller remains in the Ocean County Jail, Toms River, unable to post $1 million bail. If convicted, he would face 30 years to life in prison.