In August 1979, a Florida sheriff’s deputy told authorities that his wife fatally shot herself in their home south of Tampa.
A few months later, the same patrol officer, John Greer, said he discovered the body of another woman: a store employee who had been fatally shot.
But in an interview with authorities decades after their deaths, Greer admitted to killing both women, identified Tuesday by the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. in a press release as Jackie Greer and Adele Easterly, 25 years old.
John Greer admitted to investigators in April 2023 while living in a long-term care facility in Tennessee, the sheriff’s office said. He died on March 2, 2024, at age 77, according to the statement.
“I have always said that we will not hide from our past, no matter how dark,” Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell said in a statement. “This case shows that we will always seek the truth, even when we don’t like what we find.”
John Greer resigned from the sheriff’s office in October 1980 amid an internal investigation that the release said may have been motivated by Greer’s actions with another woman, who is not identified in the release. That woman’s husband told the sheriff’s office at the time that Greer had been following his wife and trying to have sex with her.
The woman died on September 29, 1980, in what the sheriff’s office described as a possible suicide.
John Greer reported his wife’s death just over a year earlier, on August 27, 1979. He told responding officers that he was awakened by a “pop” and saw smoke coming from a closet in the couple’s home. in Port Charlotte, according to the release.
Inside, Greer told officers he found his wife’s body, according to the release.
“Although investigators suspected something was wrong about the incident, there was no evidence to prove the case was anything other than a suicide,” the sheriff’s office said.
Seventy-one days later, at 1:40 a.m., John Greer radioed dispatch and reported discovering Easterly’s body in a farm store in the nearby town of Punta Gorda, according to the release. The medical examiner’s office found that Easterly had been shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun, once in the head and once in the back, the sheriff’s office said.
A friend of Easterly’s later told investigators that the employee had dated an officer she believed was Greer but was afraid of him, according to the statement. The friend recalled that Easterly described the officer’s account of his wife’s death as an accidental shooting that occurred after an argument.
Decades later, after the sheriff’s cold case unit released a statement seeking information about Easterly’s death, a woman who had been in a youth program at the sheriff’s office told investigators that Greer assaulted her. sexually repeatedly and threatened to kill her, according to the statement. .
During an assault after Easterly’s death, the statement said, the woman said Greer invoked the dead woman’s name: “Ask those dead bitches like Adele Easterly what happens when they tell me no.”
The statement does not say whether investigators questioned Greer in 2023 about the woman’s allegations, and a department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening. The release says detectives interviewed several former sheriff’s office employees and people associated with the youth program and obtained statements that supported part of the woman’s account.
After detectives developed probable cause for Greer’s arrest, they found him in Tennessee and questioned him at the long-term care facility.
At the time, the statement said, he was bedridden and unable to hold long conversations, but he appeared to understand the questions and responded affirmatively when asked directly if he had shot Easterly and his wife.
Detectives could not determine whether the shooting of Jackie Greer was intentional or an accident, according to the release.
The sheriff’s office said it will continue to investigate Greer, who worked for other law enforcement agencies after leaving Charlotte County, to determine if he is connected to other crimes.
