30 YEARS FOR MURDER OF CBOT TRADER IN 1979
Jacquelyn Greco won’t spend quite as long behind bars for her husband’s murder 37 years ago as she spent walking free in the wake of it. But she could be there for the rest of her life.
A Cook County judge sentenced the 69- yearold Greco to 30 years in prison Thursday for her part in the murder of her then- 34- year- old husband, Carl Gaimari, a commodities trader at the Chicago Board of Trade. Gaimari was killed in their Inverness home April 30, 1979. Greco has been locked up since her arrest in 2013.
Greco was found guilty Oct. 31 after a weeklong trial that saw her daughter and sister testify against her. She was facing up to 40 years in prison.
In the end, jurors took about two hours to convict Greco of coordinating her husband’s murder. The actual gunman has never been caught.
Her hair now silver, Greco tearfully pleaded with Judge Marc Martin for leniency during a lengthy sentencing hearing at the Rolling Meadows courthouse.
“I loved my husband. My husband loved me. We fell apart, but we came back together,” Greco said in her first public statement since her arrest. “I did not want to take my children’s father away.”
But that’s exactly what she did. The family was ultimately shattered by Gaimari’s murder. The couple’s oldest daughter, Becky Wykel, became an addict before turning her life around and helping investigators arrest her mother. Family members testified that the couple’s three other children also had significant problems after their father’s death, all while their mother bounced from one relationship to another.
Prosecutors said Gaimari was murdered for his money. Gaimari’s former business associate also testified that Greco barged into her dead husband’s office the day after his murder demanding money for expenses and access to his accounts.
Prosecutors also discovered that years after Gaimari’s death, Greco had his remains exhumed from a mausoleum and buried in a grave instead. The move netted her $ 4,250.
Prosecutors determined Gaimari was worth about $ 620,000 at the time of his death, not including the home. — Jake Griffin, with Barbara
Vitello contributing