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Former Billings minister charged with killing wife

BILLINGS (AP)

A former Billings minister was arrested Friday on a charge that he killed his wife during a hunting trip near Red Lodge in 1990. An agent for the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation and a Carbon County sheriff's deputy arrested Cary Alan Greenlee in Bend, Ore. A criminal complaint filed in Carbon County District Court on Thursday alleges he murdered his wife, 34-year-old Anita Greenlee, on Oct. 23, 1990. Assistant Attorney General Brant Light, who filed the deliberate homicide charge, could not be reached for comment. Kevin O'Brien, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, said extradition proceedings would be held to return Greenlee to Montana. Suspicion quickly fell on the then- 3 7 -year -old Greenlee when he announced within weeks of the shooting his intention to marry a 21-year-old woman. It was also revealed that Greenlee had purchased several life insurance policies for his wife naming him as beneficiary, including a $100,000 policy that took effect days before her death. After an investigation that lasted more than three years, former Carbon County Attorney Tony Kendall said a review by the AG's office found insufficient evidence to bring charges. There is little information in Thursday's criminal complaint to indicate what new evidence prosecutors might have in the case. But it does say that Greenlee's daughter, Teka Russell, was interviewed by a Carbon County sheriff's detective in November and gave a conflicting account of the shooting. Russell and Anita Greenlee's father, W.H. Padgett, were on the hunting trip. The family told investigators after The shooting that the four had split up, and Anita Greenlee was mortally wounded when a rifle she was handling accidentally discharged. The daughter was the first to find Anita Greenlee. According to charging documents, Cary Greenlee acknowledged three days after his wife's funeral that he was having an affair with 21-year-old Teri Clausen. Greenlee and Clausen married about six weeks after the shooting. At the time of his wife's death, Greenlee was a minister at a Billings church and had previously been a minister in Miles City and in Texas

 

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