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VIEW the Court DocumentsJohn Daley Reporting
This afternoon, police released the search warrant that allowed them into the home of the man who confessed to killing five-year old Destiny Norton. The warrant reveals that Craig Gregerson had been planning this crime.
The court papers provide more chilling information about this case and raise a key question: was Craig Roger Gregerson stalking Destiny Norton and was this crime premeditated?
According to the search warrant, on Saturday, July 22, Gregerson agreed to voluntarily submit to a polygraph exam on Monday, July 24th at Salt Lake's FBI office. That day, at 1:30 pm, an FBI agent came to Gregerson's door. While waiting, he noticed a white Tyvek suit, the kind of protective clothing commonly used for industrial jobs, hanging on the wall.
Gregerson then went to the FBI office and was given a polygraph test by another FBI agent.
According to the search warrant, during a post polygraph interview Craig Roger Gregerson made told Agent Steve Fillerup he had been planning to abduct Destiny Norton for some time and even made written plans to do so.
The day of the murder, the search warrant describes Gregerson observing his dog barking out and him seeing Destiny out there. Then he opened the gate, lured her inside and suffocated her when she began to scream.
About two minutes later, he got a call from his mother asking him to pick up his child from his estranged wife's apartment. He then took the child body into the basement.
On Sunday July 23rd, a week later, he attempted to mask the odor coming form the body with cleaning products.
Greg Skordas is a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor. He says, "It's going to be much, much more difficult for him to argue a mental health defense, if in fact he did plan this event before it occurred as it appears from the search warrant."
The court documents state that "at the end of the post polygraph interview Craig Gregerson provide a signed statement confessing his involvement to the abduction and murder of Destiny Norton.
The search warrant gave police the court approval to search Gregerson's home, which they did, finding Destiny Norton. It also lists an inventory of 27 other items, some that may have forensic evidence including a "White Tyvek Suit hanging on a curtain rod," a "Bible," a "letter handwritten and typed" in a box, "unnamed VHS cassette" tapes, also a "couch," "comforter," "pillows," a "towel" "tan shirt" and "brown hair" from a sink.
"That's to corroborate the story and to prove she was there and she was moved in the manner he describes," Skordas explains. "That makes the government's case much, much stronger."
There's nothing here about a computer on the list of items seized. Also, there's no information about precisely what Gregerson wrote about in those "written plans to abduct Destiny" that we discussed.
