Secret Life, Secret Evil

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GREINEDER TWO

"Does Dr. Greineder deserve as horrible a label that one can possibly have:
a murderer of one's own wife, a murderer of the mother of his children?"
-- defense lawyer, Martin Murphy

Life Without the Possibility

June, 2010


It was difficult during the Greineder 2009 appellate case for the convicted killer's children to convince anyone that -- due to technicalities -- Dr. Dirk Greineder should win a re-trial. That didn't stop them from trying. All three of the once respected doctor's children took part in a full court press that finally failed.

Since the morning of Oct. 31, 1999 when Mabel Greineder was murdered in broad daylight, Dirk Greineder has passionately denied being the person who slashed her throat. He has always stuck by the same story, and despite the utter nonsense of his obvious lies, Greineder's children have stuck by him.

Dr. Greineder's offspring are not dummies. They are, in fact, highly educated adults. While having a degree is not the same thing as having intelligence, the Greineder children certainly know -- like everybody knows -- what is reasonable and rational, and what is ridiculous.

Ten years after being judged guilty of Murder in the First Degree -- and two appeals later, this whole case still comes down to 10 minutes.

10 Minutes Later

"I couldn't imagine living without her."
-- Dirk Greineder, about his victim, Mabel Greineder


Greineder explains that while the couple was strolling together through the park with their dog, Mabel hurt her back -- and that's when he walked away from her. He left his injured wife sitting on a boulder and continued walking his dog. Returning 10 minutes later, he says he was shocked to find Mabel's bloody corpse.

"When I couldn't feel her respiration -- I just couldn't imagine. It
just can't happen. What am I gonna do with her? I tried to pick
her up. There was nothing I could do. Not with that wound."
-- Dirk Greineder

In 2001, it was difficult for people to believe that world renowned, Dr. Greineder had convinced his wife to accompany him on a morning stroll just so he could beat her with a hammer, drag her into the bushes, slit her throat and call 9-1-1 to report a mugging.

That just didn't seem possible.

First of all, the evil, violent plot was contrary to the well-established character of the famously fastidious, family-loving physician. But more basic than that, it was impossible to believe this brilliant medical mind, evil or not, would come up with such an incredibly stupid plan.

Surely Greineder considered the possibility of joggers, dog-walkers and other potential park witnesses. And even if the bashing and slashing went completely unobserved -- the plan doesn't create an alibi, so it only succeeds in reducing the investigation to one person. Police would zero in on Greineder -- demanding answers from the last person to see the victim alive and first to see her dead.

Surely the doctor knew his vague suggestions of a mysterious, homicidal maniac on the loose would simply prompt more questions. After all -- while perhaps not of such great world renown as Dirk -- Mabel "May" Greineder was loved by many and was a much-respected person in her own right. Determined detectives, frantic neighbors, and distraught relatives would never rest until May's killer was located.


"There is an obligation to my mother... and to this family and the community to find out who did this, and there is an obligation to seek out the truth, and that obligation has been violated. That person is still out there somewhere while an innocent man is in jail, for potentially up to a year."
-- Kirsten Greineder Engel


When authorities first charged Dirk Greineder, the pre-meditated murder allegations were especially difficult for his over-achieving children to believe. Kirsten Greineder Engel, Colin Greineder and Britt Greineder Cavalletto immediately and very publicly protested their dad's innocence. The tight-knit, tightly-wound trio repeatedly defended their father in the press. They also proclaimed a devotion to their mother and claimed they were doing "everything they can to help the police catch the murderer."

When Dirk Greineder's double-life was revealed in the courtroom, and his lies about a happy home gave way to the truth of his dark and desperately concealed secrets, few questioned that the famous physician had the capacity for criminal behavior.

Once Greineder's fiction about a mystery mugger fell apart, no one had reason to doubt that this learned man had, in fact, devised the dim-witted and demented murder plot exactly as prosecutors alleged.

For Kirsten, Colin and Britt, sitting through the State's daily parade of devastating witnesses must have been a mind-bending and heart-breaking experience.

"What happened between you and Mom today? Did something happen?"
-- Britt Greineder Cavalletto

Plenty of the people in the park that Halloween morning witnessed Dirk Greineder busily carrying out various parts of his plan. One man testified to seeing Greineder "sprinting" away from the area where Mrs. Greineder had just been butchered. Dirk wasn't running or calling to look for help, he was quietly sprinting across the park and down an opposite path.

Police witnesses told jurors about the extensive assortment of items found hidden throughout the park -- including a hammer, plastic bags and bloody surgical gloves -- all traced directly back to the defendant.

Medical Examiner, Dr. Stanton Kessler, testified that Mabel Greineder suffered blows to the back of the head, stab wounds to the head and other injuries, including a 5-inch knife wound to the throat that sliced her jugular vein.

Forensic experts testified that DNA from both Mr. and Mrs. Greineder was found on work gloves and a knife used in the killing.

Nobody testified to seeing Dirk Greineder's phantom boogie-man running through the park.

DA Grundy: "Now in light that you tried to pick up your wife three times,
tell me why you don't see any blood on your hands?"

Greineder: "I don't know."

DA Grundy: "It's because you had gloves on, isn't it?"

Greineder: "I did not."


Dr. Greineder supplied the prosecution's most damning evidence. At several points during cross-examination, Greineder became confused about which lies he had been forced to admit to, and which lies he had been forced to defend.

It is impossible for any person to have believed Dirk Greineder's testimony -- even his dutiful children -- since he himself expressed doubts about what he was saying.

10 Years Later

"My father has an explanation that will be revealed at a later point in time."
-- Colin Greineder


A decade after this monster was found guilty of luring his wife to a park and violently murdering her, it is difficult to understand why Greineder's adult children would still cling to his evil. One can only conclude that they are psychologically damaged and incapable of accepting life without the possibility that someone other than Dirk is the vicious killer who bludgeoned and stabbed Mabel Greineder to death.





"My wife was the most wonderful person I've ever met. She made me a better person.
She helped my family become what we became. I was a better doctor because of her,
and I was a much better father because of her."
-- Dr. Greineder

"Mabel Greineder was an extremely special person who had a
sense of humor, a wit, and such a profound sense of right and wrong."
-- Ilsa Stark, Mabel Greineder's sister

Reality Denied

May, 2006


Dr. Dirk Greineder's ridiculous "Banana Appeal" has been denied. On the 5th of May, 2006, Judge Paul Chernoff ruled that juror's experiments during deliberations were not junk science.

The Norfolk County Superior Court judge wrote off the absurd argument saying, "The use of the banana to observe whether the glove was capable of making a pattern similar to the dots on the eyeglasses or the streak on the jacket was an experiment within the lines of the evidence offered at trial. . ."

Chernoff further judged it to be merely a SIDE ACTIVITY: "In light of the fact that the jury did not discuss the banana experiment in later deliberations and given the nature and weight of all the other evidence tying the defendant to the gloves and the crime generally, it is clear the banana experiment did not influence the jury's deliberations or impact their verdict. . ."

Along with complaints about jury misconduct, Greineder's appeal argues that jurors were exposed to irrelevant testimony about his secret obsession with prostitutes; that DNA testing was improperly conducted; and that the wealthy, world-renown physician had been deprived of effective legal counsel. Like the smoking banana, these other silly excuses to deny reality will fall flat.

Greineder lost his bid on a second trial for the same reason he lost the first time: he's guilty of beating his wife, Mabel, with a sledgehammer and slashing her throat. It's shocking that Mrs. Greineder's husband and children are still continuing on with this bizarre nonsense so many years after her horrible murder. Shocking and shameful.

"This is really hopeful -- not because I am trying to
point fingers at people who tried to do the right thing.
I know for a fact that my father is innocent."
-- Britt Greineder



The Lies That Bind

March, 2006


Five years ago, Massachusetts prosecutors presented an astounding array of damning evidence against Dr. Dirk Greineder. But if anyone still had doubts that he had beaten his wife with a hammer and slashed her throat in a park near their home, they were convinced once the demented doctor took the stand.

In a devastating series of mistakes, misstatements, "Freudian" slips and flat-out lies, Greineder all but confessed to the brutal killing of Mabel Greineder.

Now, in what can only be seen as outrageous insult following unforgivable injury, Greineder is back in the news demanding a new trial because he says jurors acted improperly in deliberations. His specific charge? He claims they used a banana to do a demonstration with gloves placed into evidence. Obviously the banana was not placed into evidence -- so Greineder and his lawyers want the guilty verdict overturned.

"We can make a lot of jokes about bananas but the reality is that the jury was performing their own junk science," defense attorney James Sultan said after a March 3rd hearing in Norfolk Superior Court. "It affected the outcome of the trial."

District Attorneys strongly opposed the motion for a new trial.

Britt Greineder told reporters she thinks her father will be vindicated.

"I'm really hopeful for the first time in a long time that we might actually find who killed my mother," Britt said. "We might actually bring my dad home."

Britt didn't seem so hopeful about her dad's happy home when she ran into the Wellesley police station on the Halloween morning of the murder demanding her father tell her: "What happened? Did something happen between you and mom?" Or when she was later heard asking him: "Why are these fucking things always happening to our family? Why do these psychotic, unexplained things happen to our family?"

Certainly one reason horrible and bizarre things keep happening is because Dirk Greineder refuses to take responsibility for his crimes, thus Britt -- and apparently the other Greineder children -- refuse to move beyond their father's psychotic lies.

If by some cruel stroke of fate Dr. Greineder is actually granted a second trial, the only thing a rational person could be hopeful for is that he wouldn't again force his son Colin to testify under oath and lie about that receipt from Diehl's Hardware.


"I remember the banana. What I saw was someone taking the glove and pushing it on the outer skin of a banana," one juror recalls. . . the impression was compared to stains on a jacket worn by Dirk Greineder.
-- ABC 5 News, Boston


Convicted Wellesley Wife-Killer Seeks New Trial
CBS 4 Boston

Mabel
"May" Greineder

Murdered in Broad Daylight

"My grandmother used to say,
'When a person dies, a library burns.'
With the loss of my sister,
the Smithsonian is gone."
-- Ilse Stark (Chegwin), Mabel's sister

No Blood on his Hands

Britt, Colin and Kirsten Greineder

Kirsten, 29, is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. Colin, 25, is attending medical school at Yale University. Britt, 28, is the manager of a downtown Boston business.

"We are utterly convinced that we know him. We know him. We are the three people in the world that know him best. We know him and we love him."
-- Britt Greineder

"There is an obligation to my mother... and to this family and the community to find out who did this, and there is an obligation to seek out the truth, and that obligation has been violated. That person is still out there somewhere while an innocent man is in jail, for potentially up to a year."
-- Kirsten Greineder



"My father has an explanation that will be revealed at a later point in time."
-- Colin Greineder

"Could the pressures of maintaining a double identity have caused an esteemed Boston doctor to bludgeon his wife of 31 years to death?"
-- CourtTV article






Dirk Greineder was born in Germany on October 19, 1940 and was raised in Lebanon. He came to the US in 1958 and would earn his undergraduate degree from Yale, a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and become an associate professor at Harvard.

Mabel Greineder was born in Colombia in 1941. She earned a zoology degree from Hunter College and went on to teach nursing.

The Greineder's address: 56 Cleveland Road

Sunday in the Park

Two eyewitnesses put Greineder in three locations around the murder scene.

William Kear saw Greineder emerge from the dirt path where his wife's body was found and then walk down a nearby paved path where the knife, hammer and right-hand glove used in the killing were found the afternoon of the murder.

Jogger Rick Magman, who encountered Greineder after he told Kear his wife had been attacked, was with Greineder when he made an emergency call to police from his minivan parked outside the access road to the pond.

The left-hand work glove was found in a storm drain the day after the killing, about 40 feet from where Greineder had parked his vehicle.

"I'm a doctor! Why can't I help my family?"

Transcript of Greineder's 911 call

Dispatcher: Wellesley Police. This call's recorded.
Greineder: Help. I'm at the pond. I need some, someone attacked my wife, trying to get [inaudible].
DISPATCHER: Sir, where are you?
GREINEDER: I'm at, at the pond, at Morses Pond. Walking ...
DISPATCHER: At Morses Pond?
GREINEDER: Walking the dog, someone attacked, I left her cause she hurt her back.
DISPATCHER: OK. You just need to relax cause I can't understand what you're saying.
GREINEDER: Please, please, send a car.
DISPATCHER: OK, You're at Morses Pond.
GREINEDER: Pond, yeah.
DISPATCHER: Whereabouts at Morses Pond? Whereabouts at Morses Pond?
GREINEDER: I'm, I'm outside my, my car's outside by the gate.
DISPATCHER: OK. Hold on one second, OK?
GREINEDER: Please send someone.
DISPATCHER: Wellesley Control to fourteen zero five.
GREINEDER: Oh my God.
DISPATCHER: What, what happened?
GREINEDER: I, I, I, we were walking the dog.

VOICE: Fourteen zero five.

GREINEDER: She hurt her back.
DISPATCHER: Is she injured?
GREINEDER: I think she's dead I'm not sure. I'm a doctor. I went back, I ...
DISPATCHER: Can you start over to Morses Pond ...
GREINEDER: She looks terrible.
DISPATCHER: ... for an unknown medical at this time.
GREINEDER: The dog heard something. She went back.
DISPATCHER: OK, Just relax. Is this your, is this your, is this your daughter?
GREINEDER: My, my wife.
DISPATCHER: You're right at the entrance to Morses Pond?
GREINEDER: I'm right at the main entrance where, where it's blocked.
DISPATCHER: Negative fourteen zero five. It's right at the main entrance at Morses Pond.
GREINEDER: And, and you got to have someone unlock the door so the cars can get in.
DISPATCHER: OK, what's your name?
GREINEDER: Dirk, Dirk, Greineder, G-R, E-I, N-E-D-E-R.
DISPATCHER: OK. Listen. Listen to me.
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: You need to relax. I have people on the way. But I can't understand you. So, you need to, just relax.
GREINEDER: All right.
DISPATCHER: OK?
GREINEDER: Yeah, I just ran over here.
DISPATCHER: OK. What's your name?
GREINEDER: Dirk.
DISPATCHER: Dirk?
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: And this is your wife?
GREINEDER: Yeah, yes, yes.
DISPATCHER: And you were walking your dog and what happened?
GREINEDER: She twisted her back. She's got a bad back.
DISPATCHER: She twisted her back?
GREINEDER: I left her.
DISPATCHER: OK, is she conscious and breathing?
GREINEDER: I, I don't think so. I don't think so.
DISPATCHER: OK.
GREINEDER: I went back for her.
DISPATCHER: He doesn't think she's conscious.
GREINEDER: The dog ... someone attacked her. It's definitely an attack.
DISPATCHER: OK. Just hold, are you with her right now?
GREINEDER: No, no, I'm way out. I had to go out to call you.
DISPATCHER: How, how old is she?
GREINEDER: Oh God, Please send someone. I don't know.
DISPATCHER: They're on their way. How old is she?
GREINEDER: Fifty-eight. We live, we lived in Wellesley for 25 years, 30 years. I don't even know.
DISPATCHER: OK.
GREINEDER: Please.
DISPATCHER: Hold on one second, OK sir? Wellesley Control to fourteen zero five.

VOICE: Zero five.

GREINEDER: I found her and I'm ...
DISPATCHER: Be advised that's a 58-year ...
GREINEDER: I tried to see if there was anything to do.
DISPATCHER: ... old woman ...
GREINEDER: There's nothing I can do.
DISPATCHER: Fell, possibly ...
GREINEDER: Please.
DISPATCHER: ... twisted her back. Unknown if she's conscious and breathing at this time. Sir?
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: Are you on a pay phone?
GREINEDER: No, I'm on, I'm on my cell phone in the car.
DISPATCHER: OK. Can you take your cell phone and go to her.
GREINEDER: No, it's in the car. I don't have my portable.
DISPATCHER: You can't ...
GREINEDER: Just send someone. I, someone inside with her, there was someone else walking his dog, and I, he went in there. There's a runner here.
DISPATCHER: Do you see the ambulance? We have them on the way.
GREINEDER: No, I don't see anything yet.
DISPATCHER: OK. What I'll ...
GREINEDER: Do they have a key to this gate? Because they can't get in unless they have the gate.
DISPATCHER: Yeah. Call the fire department back. Tell them they need the key to the gate lock. OK, sir, what ...
GREINEDER: DPW has the key, I think that they're always in there.
DISPATCHER: Sir?
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna hang up the phone with you. I want you to keep an eye out for the ambulance.
GREINEDER: OK. OK.
DISPATCHER: And the police officer.
GREINEDER: All right, all right.
DISPATCHER: When you see them, get them.
GREINEDER: I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting.
DISPATCHER: OK.
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: Go back to your wife.
GREINEDER: Yeah.
DISPATCHER: See if she's OK.
GREINEDER: All right.




"I said 'No, I can't do that, I've gotta go back to my wife.' But somehow, I got the impression that I was supposed to stay there. And so when I finished the call I was really torn. I -- remember standing there, and sort of going and coming and deciding I was gonna go, but terrified that if I went they would never find us."

-- Dr. Greineder on direct exam



Police officers testified that although Greineder told them he had felt his wife's neck to try to find a pulse, he had no blood on his hands.

"I was trying to keep her airway straight. All I could think of at the time was scoop and run, scoop and run, which is what we used to say in the emergency room. And I couldn't scoop her out of there."

-- Dr. Greineder, who had worked in an emergency room for 10 years

"We're here to remember May Greineder."
-- District Attorney, William R. Keating

jurors view the crime scene

A jury drawn from the affluent suburbs of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, were asked to decide whether Dr. Dirk Greineder -- known as a highly accomplished physician, devoted husband and father of three -- killed his 58-year-old wife, Mabel.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Greineder's penalty would be life in prison.








"On the surface, he was demanding, no-nonsense, soft-spoken -- but he was a man of secrets, deeply and closely held secrets."
-- lead prosecutor, Richard Grundy

"This is not a case about whether Dirk Greineder is guilty of infidelity. This is not a case of whether Dirk Greineder committed adultery. All of this has nothing to do with the murder of May Greineder. It has everything to do with the prosecution's desperate search to find a motive to explain why Dirk Greineder killed her."
-- defense attorney, Martin Murphy





Defense attorney, Martin Murphy maintained that a mystery attacker killed Greineder's wife after he left her to walk their German shepherd down to the pond's beach.

Judge Paul Chernoff allowed Murphy limited questioning of state police detectives about two unsolved murders in the 12 months preceding May Greineder's murder. The implication was that a serial killer had been targeting elderly victims in Norfolk County.

A Man of Secrets

Greineder would eventually take the stand in his own defense and admit to living a double life. He said his secret obsession resulted from his wife's loss of interest in sex. Using a credit card in the name of Thomas G. Young, a Yale University classmate he had not spoken to in 30 years, Greineder lived out his sexual fantasies. It began in 1997 with hundreds of calls to phone sex lines and ended in repeated sessions with hookers and encounters with strangers he met on the Internet.

"A photo of the family patriarch, Dirk K. Greineder's father, a doctor dressed in a Nazi uniform, hangs in the family's Wellesley home, relatives confirmed."
-- from a Boston Globe article

Before Mabel could marry Greineder she had to learn to speak German and had to learn to cook German cuisine

Greineder refused to let his children play with American dolls and insisted they play with wooden dolls from Germany.

Ilse Stark said life with Dr. Greineder was very regimented and there was a constant focus on the father and on his German culture.




GRUNDY: Did you have German literature around the home?
KIRSTEN: Yes.
GRUNDY: What type of literature?
KIRSTEN: Predominantly childhood literature.
GRUNDY: Did you have some decidedly not child-like literature in the living room?
KIRSTEN: The living room...? If you -- I don't I guess you're not asking -- I am aware of having some novels also in the house but specifically what they were I don't know.
GRUNDY: Are you familiar with a book by the name of Mein Kampf?
KIRSTEN: Mein Kampf?
GRUNDY: Yes.
KIRSTEN: Yes.
GRUNDY: Do you keep a German version of that in the living room?
KIRSTEN: uh... There may be...
GRUNDY: And whose book was that?
KIRSTEN: That -- would have been my dad's



While cross-examining Greineder's daughter, Kirsten, prosecutor Grundy asked her about the family's German heritage, including whether the family had a first-edition copy of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" on its bookshelves.

Judge Paul Chernoff told the jury to ignore the testimony ruling it irrelevant. Grundy would later say he was trying to give the jury a full picture of Greineder, based on many conversations he had with family members and others.

"I knew there was another layer, at least, to how that household was run."
-- DA Grundy










Just as in Robert Louis Stevenson's classic crime story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, prosecutors say Greineder's secret identity caused him to practice murder as well as medicine.





The doctor had a second, secret identity. He arranged hotel trysts with prostitutes, sent nude pictures of himself over the Internet and prescribed himself Viagra. During the weekend prior to the murder, Greineder stayed in a New Jersey hotel with a prostitute -- and he called the same woman for sex the day after he murdered his wife.

"Greineder led a life dedicated to prostitutes and pornography that was unknown to all those closest to him."
-- DA Rick Grundy





"Loved your pics! Looks like you are into some bondage and domination too. I have some interest/experience with this though I have given up all of my toys. Maybe you still have some! But mostly, I liked the images and I am sure that I will love to play with you."
-- from a Greineder email

Elizabeth Porter, a prostitute who says Greineder paid her for sex on two occasions, testified during grand jury proceedings that the doctor rented a room in the Westin Hotel in Boston and bought champagne, roses and “a lot of expensive stuff.” He then paid her $450 for 90 minutes in which they had sex and Greineder watched her take a shower.

Using the alias Thomas Young allowed Greineder to remain anonymous during these encounters, but the doctor also seems to have attached special significance to the name. In his days at Yale, he had a classmate named Thomas Young, who lived a far different lifestyle than the bookish Greineder.

The real Mr. Young

"This was an elaborate plan gone awry."
-- DA Grundy

GRUNDY'S CLOSING

"Ladies and gentlemen, when this defendant ran across that circle with his dog, he did not scream, and he did not yell, and was not looking for help -- going down that pathway. And I suggest to you that those actions are completely inappropriate for a person looking to help his wife, but completely consistent with a person who has just killed her."

"I wish I could tell you exactly how a person gets to that point. I can't."

"I suggest to you ladies and gentlemen that this defendant on October 31st, 1999, killed his wife. It was the ultimate act of control. He took her [out of it]. I ask you to do one thing, return a verdict that speaks that truth. A verdict of guilty."

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