Wife Guilty of Helping to Plan Husband's 1979 Murder: Jury

A former Inverness woman was found guilty Monday for helping to plot her then-husband's 1979 muder so she could marry her boyfriend, a Chicago cop, according to the Chicago Tribune.

It took a jury around two hours to reach its verdict against Jacquelyn Greco, 69, after lawyers on both sides delivered closing arguments Monday in the weeklong trial, the report stated. Greco's sentencing is set for Dec. 19, and she faces 20 to 40 years in jail but might only serve half of her sentence thanks to good behavior, the report added.

Prosecutors accused Greco of arranging the murder of Carl Gaimari, who was killed with his own handguns by two intruders after returning home on April 30, 1979. At the time, Greco and three of the couple's four children were tied up and locked in a closet of the Inverness home on Turkey Trail Road.

"We always knew she did it," Gaimari's niece, Jane Keenan, told the Tribune after the verdict. "It's really sad how it affected the family all these years. Today is a good day for our family."

Greco kept her reaction to the jury's decision to herself until returning to her courthouse holding cell, the Tribune reports. That's where she broke down, according to her public defenders, the report added.

RELATED: Woman Charged in Decades Old Inverness Murder

Along with inheriting $500,000 after his death, authorities claim Greco helped orchestrate the killing of Gaimari — a commodities broker Greco married in 1963 — because of an affair she was having with at the time with a now-retired Chicago police officer, who moved in with Greco before the two finally married four months later. The couple divorced in 1990, and the officer has not been charged in the murder.

Greco was arrested in March of 2013 in Crystal Falls, Michigan, where she was living, after police recorded her admitting to her sister a month earlier that she had staged the home invasion as part of a plan to knock off Gaimari. She was charged then of first degree murder.

Cook County public defenders say they plan to appeal the verdict, the Tribune reports. According to Greco's lawyers, the taped conversation doesn't prove their client's guilt, and the gunmen in the murder haven't been caught, the report added.

More via the Chicago Tribune

photo via Patch archive

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