A Murder in Wellesley: The Inside Story of an Ivy-League Doctor’s Double Life, His Slain Wife, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation

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a murder in wellesley 157 got to them the records hadn’t been maintained and there was no way to check for previous users.” The Portuguese connection still intrigues the detective. “Why he killed May and who Paty Peres is, are the two questions that linger in my mind,” Cunningham said. “I think we were so close to finding Paty Peres. Paty Peres could share some insight.” 15 As January turned to February, the investigators and prosecutor Rick Grundy were under increasing pressure from District Attorney Bill Keating to arrest Dr. Greineder. In no hurry to begin turning over their evidence to the doctor’s attorney through the mandated discovery process criminal charges would bring, they resisted the DA’s heavy-handed overtures , seeing no sense in rushing the grand jury investigation. “Keating was worried Dirk would kill himself or flee the country,” Marty Foley recalled. The district attorney felt there was more than enough evidence to win a conviction, but Grundy vehemently disagreed. The doctor’s stature in the community and the support of his children were not to be taken lightly, Grundy rightly believed, leading to many squabbles with his anxious boss. Grundy, who had grown up on the tough streets of Newark, New Jersey, and was prone to bouts of anger, often kept the details of his quarrels with Keating private. “The tension was building in that office with Rick and Keating,” Foley observed. “Rick wanted to complete the grand jury investigation. The grand jury was in the middle of it, and he wanted them to complete it. If we shut the grand jury investigation down, time would no longer be on our side, it would be against us.” The long, drawn-out process of trying to locate the elusive prostitute named Elizabeth was perhaps the strongest argument to hold off on an indictment. There were several false starts, but finally Foley and Jill Mc- 158 tom farmer and marty foley Dermott were able to locate her at her mother’s condominium in the South Shore community of Weymouth. Elizabeth was twenty-seven-year-old Elizabeth Porter, who, a computer check revealed, was wanted for violating probation. When Foley called her mother’s condo from the building lobby intercom, Mary Porter tried to shoo away the determined detectives, as she had successfully done the day before. After wasting a day chasing down the mother’s bogus information about her daughter’s whereabouts, Foley realized he had been tricked. “Elizabeth doesn’t live here,” the mother lied again. “I know she’s living there,” Foley said hotly into the phone, still miffed at being given the runaround the day before. “If I have to, I’ll get the condo association president involved,” he bluffed, mindful of the nosy woman who had wanted to know why the police were visiting her building. Mary Porter buzzed the detectives through the lobby door. “She let us right in,” grinned Foley. “She obviously didn’t want that woman to know why we were there.” Taking the elevator to the fifth floor, Foley and McDermott were let into the Porter condo through a door opening from the kitchen. Walking inside, the dimly lit unit reeked of cigarette smoke. Cautiously striding toward a sunken living room, Foley finally came face-to-face with the woman the detectives had spent three months intently searching for. He immediately noticed Elizabeth Porter’s striking auburn hair, but the natural beauty described by Gil Perito was far from evident. Appearing obviously ill, she looked like she hadn’t shampooed her hair in a while and was clad in a rumpled bathrobe. A shady character, apparently her boyfriend, hovered nearby. “She looked like she was living on the couch,” said McDermott. “She was sicklooking .” Perito having told them Elizabeth was a drug-user, Foley thought she might be going through the ravaging cold turkey process of cleansing herself from powerfully addictive heroin. “She looked like a junkie,” he said. “She looked strung out.” Foley went right to the reason for their visit. “We’re investigating a homicide and we think you might be able to help us,” he told the gaunt woman. “We know you used to work as an escort and you once worked for Gil Perito.” a murder in wellesley 159 “I was a prostitute,” Elizabeth admitted, “but I got diagnosed with AIDS when I was in Framingham,” she said, meaning the state prison for...