Gregory Agnew has been arrested for the murder of his estranged wife, Martha Agnew, in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, in February
A man in Michigan whose ex-girlfriend disappeared a quarter century ago has just been charged with strangling his estranged wife and injecting her with heroin and fentanyl.
Police arrested Gregory Agnew, 50, on Friday July 27, after a medical examiner’s report revealed how his wife Martha had been killed earlier this year.
Martha’s daughter had found her mother dead in her home in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, on February 17.
Investigators determined that someone else had injected the 49-year-old with the drug cocktail, about a day earlier, but no cause was listed on her death certificate until last week.
Four months after the ‘suspicious’ death, police have charged Gregory with open murder and have also reopened their investigation into the 1993 disappearance of his ex-girlfriend Tammy Niver. She was 24 when she vanished without trace.
Martha Agnew, [eight], was found strangled and injected with heroin and fentanyl at her home in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, in Feb. Her husband Gregory Agnew [left], is the primary suspect in the murder
Gregory Agnew was also a suspect in the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend Tammy Niver, [photo], who vanished without trace in 1993, just days after they became estranged. That cold case investigation has now been revived.
Niver went missing on August 7, 1993, just days after breaking up with Gregory and moving out of the apartment they shared.
At the time of her disappearance Gregory had told police she left his apartment at about 2.25am. Her car was found abandoned with the keys still in the ignition nearby hours later.
An investigation by MLive this year revealed that Martha had taken in Niver’s two children after the mom’s disappearance.
The same investigation found that police had tried to arrest Gregory for Niver’s murder in 2014, concurrently serving Martha with a subpoena.
That case was thrown out after it was revealed that police didn’t have a warrant, and the county ended up settling in a federal lawsuit for $45,000.
Gregory Agnew appeared for his arraignment via satellite link on Friday
At the time of Martha’s death this February, she and Gregory were in the midst of divorce, remarkably similar circumstance to that of Niver’s disappearance. Martha’s body was found in one of two homes the couple shared by order of a judge in their divorce.
Police have yet to take Gregory’s statement, but he is being held on $500,000 bond in his wife’s death. His attorney Ronald R Gold has repeatedly expressed confidence in his client’s innocence and says he is interested in seeing the evidence against Gregory.
‘I’m a little surprised they are charging him. They’re not going to be able to prove his case,’ Gold stated to MLive.
Gold previously said prosecutors were targeting Gregory in his wife’s death as retaliation for the previous lawsuit and settlement.
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