Victim's Widow Settles Lawsuit Against FBI -- Agency Expresses `Regret' For Role In Man's Murder

TACOMA - Her husband murdered and her life shattered, what Janyce Griswold wanted most was someone to say, "I'm sorry."

After four years of court battles, she got her wish Friday, when the federal government settled her $5 million lawsuit that accused the FBI of negligence in the 1994 slaying of Dennis Griswold during a holdup at his Tacoma tavern.

Along with an undisclosed amount of cash, Griswold will receive a letter from the general counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation "expressing regret" for its role in the crime, attorney Mary Alice Theiler said.

"We're very glad the government has decided to do the right thing," Theiler said. "Now this family can begin its healing process."

Indeed, the Griswolds were prepared to walk into U.S. District Court in Tacoma tomorrow for a showdown with the government, whose hands they believed were stained as dark as those of the career criminal who shot Dennis Griswold dead.

The family blamed federal FBI agents, who helped a hoodlum named Henry Lewis Marshall III win early release from a Massachusetts prison to work as an informer.

"I believe they are responsible for my husband's death, every bit as much as if they pulled the trigger themselves," Janyce Griswold, 61, said last week.

Court documents show that the FBI admitted agents had broken the rules by enlisting Marshall as a so-called "cooperative witness" without the approval of the agent in charge. But the FBI saw no negligence or obligation, arguing that even though agents had sought Marshall's release, it was Massachusetts that let him go.

The Griswold family disagreed, although they filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts, which also was settled.

Brian Kipnis of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, confirmed that a settlement had been reached but declined further comment. Efforts to reach the FBI were unsuccessful.

At the time, Marshall was a 35-year-old convict who had spent all but three months of his adult life in prison, on parole or on probation. Agents wanted him to infiltrate an East Coast crime ring with outlaw motorcycle-gang connections.

Instead, he fled - Marshall was also a known escape risk - and came to Tacoma, where he shot Dennis Griswold during a holdup.

Marshall pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death last year.

Janyce Griswold and her three surviving children have had years of unrelenting grief. Finances forced her back to work at the tavern just weeks after the murder.

"Every day, I had to walk into the office where he was killed," she said. "There's the word `wailing' from the days of the Bible, but I never knew what it meant until Dennis was murdered."

600 came to the funeral

Dennis LeRoy Griswold, who was 56 when he died, was a generous friend to patrons of his 38th Street tavern, The Pub, in Tacoma.

"He was the kind of man who, if someone came in hungry, he'd make sure they were fed," his widow said.

When his daughter, Daniell, became a Tacoma police officer, his tavern became a social center for cops.

Early in the morning of June 18 - the day before Father's Day - Griswold and two employees arrived at The Pub to count the previous night's receipts. When Griswold went into the alley behind the tavern to dump trash, Marshall confronted him with a gun.

Griswold was forced into the office and pushed into a chair. When he fidgeted, Marshall shot him in the chest, stuffed a basket with cash and ran.

After his murder, the Tacoma Police Department sent an honor guard to his funeral. More than 600 people showed up at the chapel.

Griswold had begun to talk about slowing down that year, maybe selling the tavern. He wanted to spend more time with his two grandchildren.

"They were the moon and stars to him," Janyce Griswold said. "And it was all taken away, just like that."

The man who took it was Marshall, a stocky, heavily tattooed biker from Brockton, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Marshall's first adult arrest came at age 17. Over the next 18 years, he earned 23 convictions for a variety of offenses, including burglary and assault with intent to commit murder.

In 1978, he stabbed his future father-in-law with an ice pick, earning a six- to 10-year sentence. Out of prison barely a year, he went back after he shot a 27-year-old man in the stomach in a Taunton, Mass., tavern. That was in 1991.

Convict makes offer to FBI

Marshall came to the attention of the FBI in Boston two years later after he escaped while on work release. When authorities began to close in on him, Marshall surrendered to prison officials, bringing with him a tale of how he could help police snare a local crime kingpin named Rollie Lessard.

According to FBI and court documents, Lessard had connections to outlaw motorcycle gangs in the area, including a chapter of the Hell's Angels, and was running a robbery, drug and fencing operation in Brockton. Marshall claimed he could infiltrate the operation.

In June 1993, two FBI agents - Neil Cronin and Jim Crawford - met with Marshall at a prison hospital for two hours, where they talked about Lessard. It was the only time agents spoke with him before Marshall was paroled the following February.

In October and November, Cronin and his supervisor asked the Massachusetts Board of Pardons to release Marshall for use in their investigation. Later, Cronin said he reviewed Marshall's criminal history but did not delve into the details of his crimes or look at his prison file, which showed Marshall to be a flight risk and a recalcitrant and sometimes violent inmate.

Moreover, an internal FBI review after Griswold's murder determined that Cronin and his supervisor violated policy by not obtaining permission from the agent in charge of the Boston FBI office before seeking Marshall's release.

"Had they looked, it is our belief that he would have been shown to be an unreliable and inappropriate candidate for the cooperative-witness program and that he was prone to extreme and uncontrollable violence," said Theiler, the Griswolds' lawyer.

Said Janyce Griswold: "The horror of that man is found in what the FBI didn't read. This would never have happened if they had done their homework."

An unpleasant surprise

Pursuant to the FBI's request, Marshall was paroled on Jan. 18, 1994, 10 months before his scheduled release. Griswold was killed five months later.

In the interim, Marshall worked sporadically for the agents in their investigation of Lessard. FBI files show he made 19 contacts with agents between February and April 1994. Only four yielded any useful information. Cronin later acknowledged that a case against Lessard probably could have been made without Marshall's help.

Court files also show that Marshall's involvement in the Griswold murder came as an unpleasant surprise at FBI headquarters, where high-ranking supervisors earlier had told Boston agents to avoid using Marshall as a confidential witness because of liability concerns.

When Robert Conforti, the sector chief of the FBI's Violent Crimes and Major Offenders program, was told after Marshall's arrest that the inmate had, indeed, been made a cooperative witness, "he became very upset," a report in the court file says.

Trial briefs in the court file say agents selected Marshall only after "due deliberations." They point out that Massachusetts officials considered him only a moderate risk.

Slain on Father's Day weekend

Marshall absconded from parole in April. It took Massachusetts nearly a month to get a state warrant for the parole violation and the FBI another month to issue a federal warrant for unlawful flight.

The family settled its lawsuit with Massachusetts, where then-Gov. William Weld was sharply critical of the parole board's decision to release Marshall. The settlement was something less than $100,000, the maximum amount for which the family could sue under state law, Thieler said.

The Griswolds sought $5 million from the federal government. For the past two weeks, federal attorneys and the family had been trying to negotiate a settlement.

"I put a number of what my minimum settlement would be with a letter of apology," Janyce Griswold said Thursday. "If it weren't for the FBI, then Henry Marshall would not have gotten out of prison until September, and my Dennis would still be alive.

"I know I would feel responsible if someone got hurt because of something I had done. That's the way the federal government should feel."

Mike Carter's phone message number is 206-464-3706. His e-mail address is: mcarter@seattletimes.com