The Last Ride of Britney Gregory

On July twenty seventh, two thousand and four, sixteen days after sixteen year old Britney Gregory vanished from her father's home in Brick Township, New Jersey, a search team followed bloodhounds into a wooded corridor off Ridge Avenue in Lakewood, and there, in a shallow grave barely two feet deep, they found her. What investigators would eventually learn was that Brittany had not been taken by a stranger in the night. She had accepted a ride from a man she believed she could trust, and that decision, made in a moment of impatience, driven by the ordinary desire of a teenage girl to see her boyfriend, would cost her everything.

Britney Gregory was born into a family that, like many families, had its complications. Her parents, Deborah Gregory and Joseph Dunn, did not live together. Her mother, Deborah, made her home in Beechwood, a small borough in Ocean County. Her father, Joseph Dunn, lived on Greenwood Loop Road in Brick Township, a modest community along the Jersey Shore about sixty miles south of New York City. Brittany had grown up between the two households, and by the time she was a teenager, she was living primarily with her father in Brick.

She had a sister named Bobby Joe Dunn, who was nineteen at the time of Britney's death. Her other siblings included Brianna Gregory, Brian Gregory, and a brother who went by the nickname Boomer William Gregory. She was the youngest among them, and by all accounts, she carried that position with grace rather than expectation. Brittany had attended elementary and middle school in Tom's River before transferring to Brick Township Memorial High School at the start of ninth grade. The move suited her.

She was the kind of student teachers remembered not because she was disruptive or difficult, but because she was genuinely engaged. She earned straight a's. She loved science, and she had already set her sights on a future career as a forensic scientist, a goal that, given everything that would follow, carry's a particular and heartbreaking weight. Her classmates at Brick Memorial described her in terms that went beyond academic achievement. John Barrett, a sixteen year old who knew her from school, would later say simply, she made everything nicer.

It was not an elaborate tribute, but it was an honest one. She had a warmth to her, a quality that made the people around her feel better for her presence. Darlene and a Massaurus whose son attended brick memorial with Britney, described her as someone who consistently put others ahead of herself. Brittany was not your typical teenager, and a Massaurus told reporters she always put other people ahead of herself. She was very kind and wonderful. Her mother, Deborah Gregory, spoke of her daughter in terms that made clear just how central Brittany was to her life.

She's the sixteen year old kid everybody wants, Deborah said, she was my prize. It was like she was plucked right out of heaven. Brittany had blue eyes and long blonde hair. In photographs taken throughout her life, the expression she wore most often was a smile, not the posed, constructed kind, but the kind that seemed to come easily naturally, as though the false setting of her face was joy. By July two thousand and four, she had just completed her sophomore year. She was sixteen years old, doing well in school, and she had a boyfriend she was eager to see.

It was a Sunday evening, it was summer. It should have been unremarkable. At approximately eight thirty in the evening on Sunday, July eleventh, two thousand and four, Britney Gregory picked up a phone and called her mother. She was calling from her father's house on Greenwood Loop Road in Brick. Joseph Dunn was not home at the time. His girlfriend had not yet returned for the evening either, leaving Britney alone in the house. She wanted a ride to her boyfriend's house, and she was asking her mother to arrange one.

Deborah Gregory told her daughter she could not immediately come herself, but that Britney's sister could give her a ride if she was willing to wait about forty five minutes. It was a small asque forty five minutes, Britney said she understood, but Brittany was sixteen and she was impatient. Forty five minutes felt like a long time when all she wanted was to be somewhere else. Around that same time, a man named Jack Fuller Junior arrived at the Greenwood Loop roadhouse looking for Joseph Dunn. Fuller was thirty eight years old.

He lived on Western Drive in the Ramtown section of Howell Township, about a mile and a half away. He and Dunn had known each other for years. Fuller's daughter, Cassandra was close friends with Britney's sister, Bobby Joe. In the world that Britney occupied, the network of fathers and friends and neighbors that constituted life in that corner of Ocean County, Fuller was a familiar face, not a stranger, someone her family knew. Fuller found that Dunn was not home. Brittany was the alone, and when the conversation turned to her needing a ride, Fuller offered to take her.

She accepted. It was the last decision Britney Gregory would ever make. When her father's girlfriend returned to the house later that night, Britney was not there. When her mother tried calling back later in the evening, there was no answer. By morning, the family knew something was wrong. Britney Gregory was reported missing. What followed was one of the most extensive missing person searches in the recent history of Ocean County, New Jersey. Brick Township police, alongside officers from throughout Ocean and Monmouth Counties began combing the area almost immediately.

Police helicopters swept over heavily wooded and swampy terrain. Bloodhounds were brought in, volunteers joined professional search teams. At the peak of the effort, hundreds of law enforcement officers were involved, many of them donating their own time beyond their regular shifts. For the community of brick Day Township, which had long prided itself on its safety. It had been cited as the second safest city in the country. The disappearance of a sixteen year old girl was deeply destabilising. Residents posted flyers bearing Britney's image throughout the area.

Her description was submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Her face appeared regularly on television news programs across the metropolitan region. On July eighteen, exactly one week after Britney was last seen, Ocean County authorities arrested Jack Fuller, Junior and charged him with murder. The arrest came before her body had been found, an unusual step that reflected the strength of the evidence investigators had already assembled. Fuller was booked into the Ocean County Jail on one million dollar bail.

He had initially denied any involvement in Britney's disappearance, but investigators had more than they were revealing. A police informant had made a secret audio tape in which Fuller was recorded asking whether burying someone four foot underground was deep enough to protect a body from animals. On the same recording, Fuller referenced Thomas Long, a longtime friend also from Howell Township, in a way that suggested Long needed to be silenced because he had last seen Britney alive and in Fuller's car.

Thomas Long was thirty nine years old. He confirmed to investigators that on the evening of July eleventh, he had been with Fuller, and that Fuller had given him a ride home to Howell before Britney moved from the back seat to the front. Long described the brief moment he had observed between them, noting that Brittany had not engaged with him at all, that she had been focused entirely on Fuller. He told investigators he was cooperating fully. On July nineteenth, Fuller appeared in court before State Superior Court Judge James Sida, wearing a red jail jumpsuit, his eyes avoiding the packed courtroom gallery filled with Britney's family members and friends.

Deborah Gregory was in that court room. She had spent the prior day driving streets around brick and Howell, searching for any trace of her daughter. On the morning of Fuller's court appearance, before his arrest, he had ridden in the back seat of her car and offered her a hug. She would later recall that embrace with visceral revulsion. He gave me a hug, and I just felt cold, she told reporters, like, you don't mean this. If I had known then, he wouldn't have made it to the courthouse. Standing on the courthouse steps, Deborah was direct.

She was just a good kid. She said, I want her back. I want her back, Just give her to me. Inside, she positioned herself at the end of a third row bench and told family members she needed to see his face. I want to look right in that man's face, she said, I want him to see me. On July twenty fifth, two weeks to the hour after Britney's disappearance, several hundred people gathered at Windward Beach Park in Brick Township for a twilight prayer. Vigil Estimates placed attendance as high as two thousand.

Classmates wore shirts bearing Britney's photograph. Her sister Brianna, read a poem written in Britney's voice, describing her passage into death. Sobs moved through the crowd as she read. Brick Township Mayor Joseph Scarpelli called it the worst tragedy the town had ever seen. Two days later, on July twenty seventh, two thousand and four, the bloodhound teams found her. Britney's body was recovered from a shallow grave beneath a power line off Ridge Avenue in Lakewood, approximately one and a half miles from Fuller's home and not far from where she had lived with her father in Brick.

She had been buried without clothing. An autopsy conducted by doctor hydeout Park confirmed blunt trauma to Britney's head. However, sixteen days of summer decomposition had progressed to the point where a definitive cause of death could not be established. Doctor Park could not rule out asphyxiation or suffocation as contributing or primary factors. The head injuries alone were not deter Jerman to be fatal. Whatever had killed Brittany had happened inside that car. Blood recovered from Jack Fuller's vehicle was subsequently confirmed through forensic analysis to belong to Britney Gregory.

Her private funeral was held on August second, two thousand and four, in Brick Township. An impromptum memorial grew near the school. Online condolences came in from strangers who had seen her photograph on the news and found themselves undone by her smile. All around the funeral home were photographs of Britney captured in moments of ordinary life, moments that now felt unbearably precious. To understand what happened to Britney Gregory, it is necessary to understand who Jack Fuller Junior was, not as a monster in the abstract, but as a specific person with a specific history that had been visible for years.

Fuller had an extensive criminal record. In May and August of two thousand, he had been sentenced to five years in prison on two separate theft cases in Ocean and Monmouth Counties. Those sentences ran un concurrently, and he was released in two thousand and two. In the two years Between that release in Britney's murder, he had been returned to custody for three months on a probation violation, had pleaded guilty to assault, and had been indicted on a drug charge. He was most recently released from prison in April two thousand and three, just fifteen months before the night he offered Brittany a ride.

Neighbors and acquaintances described Fuller to reporters as a temperamental man with a known addiction to crack cocaine. He lived with his father, His daughter Cassandra's friendship with Bobby Joe Dunn had inserted him into the peripheral orbit of the Gregory Dunn family, not close but familiar known. After his arrest, Fuller maintained his innocence for over a year. He pleaded not guilty. His defense attorney, John Goyn's filed motions to suppress evidence, to change venue, and to dismiss the indictment on the basis that no cause of death had been definitively established.

Ocean County executive assists and Prosecutor Ronald E. F. Diggy countered, each of them, maintaining the state had ample evidence and that the decomposed state of the body. The very result of Fuller's own actions was the reason cause of death could not be precisely identified. By July two thousand five, the one year anniversary of Britney's disappearance, the family was still waiting for a trial. Joseph Dunn told reporters he missed her every single day. Her brother William, offered a more conflicted reflection, one marked by regret as much as grief.

I missed this kid every day, he said. He described realizing too late how little time he had invested in his family. I was never there when I was supposed to be, he said. I feel like I have failed as a brother. On October eighteen, two thousand five, one week before his trial was scheduled to begin, in Tom's River, Jack Fuller Junior, entered a court room and stood before Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Grasso. He pleaded guilty to a single count of murder. What came next was one of the most chilling judicial confessions in Ocean County's modern history.

Responding to questions from his own attorney, John Goyns, Fuller described the events of July eleventh, two thousand and four, in methodical, emotionless detail. After dropping off Thomas Long at his home in Howell, Britney moved from the back seat to the front seat of Fuller's car. Shortly afterward, Fuller stopped the vehicle and produced a crack pipe. Britney, a sixteen year old girl who had been raised to have standards, reacted as any decent person might. She raised her hand toward the pipe, raised her voice, and demanded that he stop.

She told him she did not want him smoking crack cocaine in front of her. Fuller's response was to punch her in the head at least twice. He admitted this without hesitation in open court. When Goyins asked whether he had struck her with the intent to incapacitate her, Fuller responded, I did. Brittany began to bleed profusely from her nose and mouth. She lost consciousness. According to Fuller's own account, she began making gurgling sounds, the sound produced when blood or fluid enters the airway of an unconscious person.

Her head slumped to one side, and Jack Fuller continued to smoke his cocaine. He did not call for help. He did not attempt to revive her. He did not stop. Only after he had finished getting high did he turn to check on the girl sitting next to him. By then, she was no longer breathing. The court room was not prepared for the specificity of what Fuller revealed. Joseph Dunn stormed out of the room when Fuller acknowledged hearing the gurgling sound and doing nothing. Outside the courtroom, one of Britney's sisters collapsed and required medical attention.

Others sat weeping, quietly, absorbing words that had been held in silence for more than a year. Fuller kept his account confined to what he had to disclose. He offered no explanation for why Brittney was buried without clothing. He said nothing about the specific sequence of events between her death and the grave. The audio tape filled in some of the silence, but not enough. Executive Assistant Prosecutor Ronald eff Delgny had discussed the plea agreement with Britney's family before it was finalized.

They had agreed to proceed. They wished to proceed with this plea agreement. Delini said in court. It was a decision made, as such decisions often are in exhaustion and grief by people who needed the legal process to end so that something, anything resembling closure, might begin. On January thirteenth, two thousand and six, Jack Fuller Junior, now forty years old, returned to Superior Court in Tom's River to be sentenced before Judge Grasso. He arrived in red prison scrubs, shaved head, wrist shackles, a vein pulsed visibly at his temple.

He sat motionless and said nothing. The courtroom gallery was filled with Britney's family, her parents, her siblings, her extended relatives, all of them present to witness the formal conclusion of a legal process that had begun the morning she did not come home. Judge Grasso imposed the sentence agreed upon in the plea thirty years in prison without the possibility of parole. Executive Assistant Prosecutor Robert Gasser addressed the court. It was a horrible, senseless killing. He said, it was an intensely tragic event, particularly because of the fact that she was sixteen, a good student, and had a good life ahead of her.

It really gripped not just Ocean County, It gripped the entire metropolitan area with the horror of seeking out the body, and the lapse of sixteen days until the body was found. Under new Jersey law, at the time, Fuller had been eligible for the death penalty. The plea agreement took that option off the table. He would not seek parole. He would not be a freeman until, at the earliest he was well into his seventies if he lived that long. The case had consumed nearly two years of legal persons, mobilized hundreds of officers, and drawn national media attention.

It had produced a confession so cold that even those trained to hear such things found it difficult to fully absorb. Deborah Gregory did not make a formal statement that day. She had already said what needed to be said in court rooms on courthouse steps, in the raw and unvarnished language of a mother who had lost the child she called her prize. No sentence she knew would restore what had been taken. The murder of Britney Gregory demonstrated with devastating clarity that the greatest threat a person can face is not always the unknown.

Sometimes it is the man who already knows your father's name, the one who shows up at the door looking for someone else and stays just long enough to offer a favor. Britney Gregory had done nothing wrong. She was a sixteen year old girl who wanted to see her boyfriend and did not want to wait forty five minutes. She trusted a man who had been woven into the edges of her family for years. She got into his car, and when he behaved in a way that was beneath human decency, she said so that act, the simple, ordinary act of standing up for herself, cost her her life.

Her brother, William said losing Brittany taught him to stop taking time for granted. Her classmates said she made everything nicer. Her mother said she was a prize plucked from heaven. She had wanted to be a forensic scientist. She was sixteen years old, with straight a's and blue eyes and a future that had barely started. Jack Fuller Junior took all of it and gave nothing back.

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