THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100347
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 55 lines
A former Navy man whose wife was murdered by a neighbor in Navy housing in 1993 has dropped his lawsuit accusing the federal government of not protecting his wife.
The lawsuit, filed last August in federal court in Norfolk, sought $5 million.
Court files contain no explanation why the Navy man, Daniel Greer, or his attorney, Stanley E. Sacks, asked for the dismissal on June 27. Neither man could be reached for comment.
A U.S. attorney who defended the case, Michael A. Rhine, said no money was paid to Greer. ``It was the plaintiff's suggestion that it be dismissed,'' Rhine said. He would not elaborate.
The government asked last year that the lawsuit be dismissed. That request was pending when Greer and Sacks agreed to the dismissal.
The murder victim, Judy N. Greer, 20, was killed and dismembered in her home at the Camp Allen housing complex at the Norfolk Naval Base. Police found her head, torso and arms scattered in a lake, a swamp and ditches in Suffolk and Virginia Beach.
The killer, Mark Christopher Poe, 21, lived a few doors away on Bexhill Road with his wife and daughter. At the time of the murder, Daniel Greer was away on a Navy deployment and Poe's wife was on leave in North Carolina.
Poe was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Poe's criminal history was an important part of the case. Three months before the killing, Poe was charged with aggravated sexual battery for having consensual sex with a 13-year-old neighborhood girl. He was out of jail on bail when he killed Greer. He later was convicted of statutory rape.
The lawsuit said the government should have evicted Poe from Navy housing before the murder because of ``his well-demonstrated propensities to violence and sexual misconduct.''
The government, however, said it did not know about Poe's arrest for sexual battery.
In fact, the government said it did not even know Poe was living at Camp Allen. Poe's wife moved into Camp Allen a year before the murder, when she was getting a divorce from her former husband and before she married Poe. The government said it was never told that Poe had moved in with her.
The government also argued that landlords have no duty to protect tenants from criminal acts by third parties. The government claimed it was a landlord and therefore protected by Virginia law.
Sacks had argued that the Navy was not an ordinary landlord, that the Greers had a ``special relationship'' with the Navy, and that the government had a duty to protect them.
The case had been scheduled to be tried later this month. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Judy N. Greer, 20, was killed in 1993 in her home at the Camp Allen
housing complex at the Norfolk Naval Base.
KEYWORDS: MURDER LAWSUIT U.S. NAVY by CNB