Helena, MT: Homicide charge against minister dropped in 1990 death of wife

MARCH 12, 2010

HELENA (AP) — A judge has dismissed a deliberate-homicide charge filed last June against a former Billings minister in the shooting death of his wife during a 1990 hunting trip in southern Montana.

Retired Montana Supreme Court Justice John Warner found that Cary Greenlee of Bend, Ore., could not get a fair trial because evidence that he might use in his defense had been lost.

Warner also said in an order dated Tuesday that the state reopened its investigation "for no good reason and with no new developments," and didn't uncover strong enough evidence to justify the lengthy delay in filing charges.

Warner was assigned to preside over the case in January at the request of District Judge Blair Jones of Carbon County.

"While a case of this age is always difficult and further complicated by the recent death of a material witness, we were confident in its merits and our ability to secure a conviction at trial," said Brant Light, prosecution services bureau chief with the Montana Department of Justice.

Warner's order did leave open the possibility that charges could again be filed against Greenlee if the state found compelling evidence of his guilt in the death of 34-year-old Anita Greenlee.

In the months after Anita Greenlee's shooting near Red Lodge, investigators learned that Cary Greenlee had been having an affair with 21-year-old Teri Clausen, who he married six weeks after his wife's death.

Investigators also discovered that Greenlee had taken out a $100,000 life-insurance policy on his wife, with himself as beneficiary, and may have forged her signature on some documents.

Examiners at the state crime lab also couldn't make Anita Greenlee's gun misfire.

Anita Greenlee's father, who was on the hunting trip, wrote a letter to Carbon County officials saying his daughter's shooting was an accident.

When Carbon County officials forwarded the results of their investigation to the Montana attorney general's office in May 1994, the state determined there was not enough evidence to obtain a conviction and recommended that the case be closed.

Carbon County Attorney Robert Eddleman reopened the case in 2007. An investigator found some inconsistencies in the stories told by Greenlee and his daughter, Teka Russell. The state also found further witnesses that would testify that Cary Greenlee had been romantically involved with Clausen before Anita Greenlee's death.

Based on that further investigation, the state decided it had enough evidence to file a deliberate homicide charge against Cary Greenlee.

But Warner said the delay led to the loss of too much evidence.

The rifles were returned to Greenlee, the state crime lab employee who studied the guns suffered a brain injury and is unable to testify, a record of Greenlee talking about forging his signature on life-insurance documents has been lost and W.H. Padgett has died.

"To proceed with the prosecution at this time would deprive Greenlee of a fair trial," Warner wrote.