THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 15, 1995 TAG: 9508150252
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
A Navy man whose wife was murdered and dismembered by a neighbor at the Camp Allen Navy housing complex in 1993 is suing the federal government, saying it failed to protect her.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, seeks $5 million. It accuses the government of failing to evict killer Mark Christopher Poe from Camp Allen, despite ``his well-demonstrated propensities to violence and sexual misconduct.''
The victim, Judy N. Greer, 20, was killed in her home at Camp Allen on the Norfolk Naval Base. Police found her head, torso and arms scattered in a lake, a swamp and ditches in Suffolk and Virginia Beach.
Poe, 21, lived a few doors down on Bexhill Road with his wife and daughter. At the time, Greer's husband was away on a Navy deployment, and Poe's wife was on leave from the Navy in North Carolina.
Poe was convicted of first-degree murder last year and sentenced to life in prison.
The lawsuit says Poe was ``known to the United States to be dangerous'' and should not have been allowed to live at Camp Allen. It says Poe ``had for a long time prior (to the murder) exhibited behavior and demonstrated actions which placed the defendant on notice that there was an imminent probability of harm and danger'' to Greer and others.
Three months before the murder, in January 1993, Poe was arrested on charges of molesting a 13-year-old neighborhood girl who had baby-sat his child. Poe was out of jail on bond when he killed Greer.
Shortly before the murder, Greer had confronted Poe and demanded that he stop showing snapshots of nude or seminude children around the neighborhood or she would report him to police.
``He shouldn't have been in Navy housing, absolutely,'' said Daniel Greer's attorney, Stanley E. Sacks of Norfolk. ``They have general rules against certain misconduct on the premises. People can be expelled from there.
``When they saw they had a sexual offender, under those circumstances, with Navy wives there, unprotected many times, that is evidence that they knew or should have known other people were in danger,'' Sacks said.
The fact that the Navy could not have foreseen this specific murder is immaterial, Sacks added. ``The general obligation is there,'' he said.
The lawsuit accuses the government of negligence for failure to provide security to Greer and failure ``to exercise reasonable care to prevent harm and injury to the plaintiff and other tenants lawfully using the premises.''
Before the lawsuit was filed, Sacks filed a claim with the Navy, but it was denied.
A lawsuit represents only one side of a dispute. The government has three weeks from the time it receives the lawsuit to file its reply. ILLUSTRATION: Color file photo
Judy N. Greer was killed in 1993 at her home at Camp Allen on the
Norfolk Naval Base.
Mark C. Poe lived near Judy Greer. He was convicted in her murder
and received a life sentence.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT MURDER U.S. NAVY by CNB