The Murder of Brittney Gregory

Before admitting to murder, defendant's account of Brick teen's death sears her family
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff

A week before he was to go on trial for the murder of a Brick honors student, a Howell man admitted yesterday that he killed the girl by beating her and leaving her to die in his car while he got high.
Ending the mystery of what happened the night 16-year-old Brittney Gregory disappeared in July 2004, Jack Fuller told a judge in Toms River that he beat the teen unconscious, then continued smoking cocaine while she lay bleeding and motionless on the seat next to him in his car.
While Fuller calmly revealed details he had kept secret for more than a year, members of Gregory's family were overcome with emotion. Her father, Joseph Dunn, stormed out of the courtroom when Fuller said he heard Brittney making a gurgling sound, but did nothing to help her. Later, one of Gregory's sisters collapsed outside the courtroom, requiring medical attention.
A family friend who answered the door at Dunn's house in Brick last evening said "it's a tragedy for everybody concerned.
"There's never any closure for anything like this. We'll just try to regroup," said the woman, who declined to give her name.
In pleading guilty to the single murder count, Fuller, 39, an ex-convict, faces 30 years in prison with no parole. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 13.
Ocean County Executive Assistant Prosecutor Ronald DeLigny said he consulted with Gregory's family before reaching a plea agreement.
Fuller laid out the facts of the murder through a series of questions posed by his attorney, John Goins, before Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso. In court, Fuller wore the red jumpsuit of the Ocean County Jail, where he has been held since his arrest.
An acquaintance of Gregory's father, Fuller said he went to Dunn's house with a friend, Tommy Long, on the night of July 11, 2004. Dunn wasn't home, but Gregory was. Fuller said he agreed to give her a ride and, with the teen in the car, dropped Long off at his house in Howell.
After Gregory got into the front seat, Fuller drove off, but soon stopped the car and took out a pipe to smoke cocaine, he said. At that point, Gregory grabbed at the pipe and yelled and screamed at him not to smoke in front of her, he said.
"After that, did you purposely punch Miss Gregory in the head and face area at least two times with violent blows with the purpose to incapacitate Miss Gregory?" Goins asked.
"Yes, I did," Fuller replied.
From those punches, Fuller said, Gregory began bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth. Soon, it appeared she fell into a "deep unconscious state," with her head back between the seat and passenger door, Fuller said.
She began to choke and make gurgling noises, Fuller said, but he went back to smoking cocaine without tending to her. It was only after he finished getting high that he checked her, he said. She appeared lifeless and was not breathing, he said.
"Mr. Fuller, at the time of the event, you knew or were aware that your actions and conduct made it practically certain that the serious bodily injury you inflicted would result in her death?" Goins asked.
"Correct," he responded.
"Mr. Fuller, how do you plead to the charge of murder?" Goins asked as nearly the final question.
"Guilty," he said.
The questioning did not cover any details of what occurred after the beating, such as how Gregory came to be buried and why she was unclothed when she was found 16 days after her disappearance.
Investigators found Gregory's body July 27, 2004, after a massive search that attracted national attention. Her body was found in a shallow grave in Lakewood, just two miles from Fuller's house.
A straight-A student at Brick Memorial High School who dreamed of becoming a forensic scientist, Gregory would have entered her junior year at the school that fall. She knew Fuller's daughter because Fuller's daughter dated Gregory's brother.
From the beginning, investigators had difficulties with the case.
Fuller has a long history of drug- and theft-related convictions, and was released from prison in 2003. He was arrested shortly after Gregory's murder, but insisted he did not kill her and would not shed any light on the location of her body. When her body was finally found, it was so badly decomposed that the county medical examiner could not assign a definitive cause of death.
Investigators had secretly recorded a conversation between Fuller and an informant in which Fuller asks how deep to bury a body so it cannot be detected and says he "killed a white girl from Brick."
While she was missing, Gregory's family said she might have accepted a ride from Fuller because she was desperate to go to her boyfriend's house in Brick after the couple had had a tiff earlier that day.

source: The Star Ledger