Iowan
has crucial voice in '98 Wisconsin death
Polk County's medical examiner says
investigators withheld key details in a case from his previous job in
another state.
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By TOM ALEX
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
February 19, 2007
Dr.
Gregory Schmunk
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Dr. Gregory
Schmunk is a fairly low-key figure in Polk County,
where he handles some 175 to 200 cases a year as medical examiner. But
in Wisconsin, Schmunk is now at the center of an increasingly
controversial conviction that is making headlines.
The case sounds like fiction: a Green Bay police officer, John Maloney,
was accused of murdering his wife, Sandy Maloney, in 1998. Her burned
body was found in her fire-damaged home. Germane to the case: John
Maloney was not just a cop, he was an arson investigator.
A special prosecutor, District Attorney Joseph Paulus from nearby
Winnebago County, Wis., was called in to prevent special consideration
for the defendant. John Maloney was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison in 1999.
Then Paulus was tainted. He was
convicted of accepting bribes in
his own county. He is serving a 58-month term in a federal prison.
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Believing that John Maloney was falsely accused,
Maloney's family began working with Ira Robins, an investigative
consultant from Milwaukee. Robins started digging for information.
"I believe Dr. Schmunk can shed a lot of light on this," said Gin
Maloney, sister of John Maloney. "We are so grateful he has come
forward."
Schmunk said he now believes that investigators withheld information
that may have affected a medical examiner's ruling.
Gin Maloney said the family believes that Sandy Maloney intended to
hang herself but failed, and fell and perhaps hit her head on a corner
of a table. They believe that she passed out or had a seizure and that
a cigarette caused the fire.
"We've been questioning all this since 1998," she said. "The Green Bay
Fire Department ruled it an accident. Then state investigators came in
and it went from accidental to homicide and arson."
She said, "To boil it all down, we've been trying to prove it was
careless use of smoking materials and that my brother has spent eight
years in prison for no reason at all.
"We are not asking for a get-out-of-jail-free card," she said. "We'd
just like to present all the information, not just the information that
was presented by a corrupt prosecutor."
In August of last year Robins, the family's investigator, was on the
steps of the Brown County Courthouse in Green Bay accusing a state fire
investigator of lying about information in the case. Then Robins got
Schmunk to sign a sworn statement saying that two state investigators
assigned to the Maloney case "withheld the fact that suicide notes
written by Ms. Maloney were found in a wastebasket in her residence."
The statement says the agents may have withheld other key information,
including the fact that an arson task force at one point concluded the
fire was accidental.
An affidavit signed by Schmunk in November says that the cause and
manner of death of Sandra Maloney may need to be revised, and that
further examination of the evidence in the case may be warranted.
Schmunk used the words "may need to be revised" because most of the
information he has been getting has come from reporters or others
outside the investigation, such as Robins.
"I never said John Maloney killed Sandy," Schmunk said in a recent
interview. "I said someone killed her. There is still strong evidence
that it was a homicide, but if you take arson out of it, then, well,
you look at a case as a whole, and information given to me was that
this was arson."
Robins said the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused his request in October
to begin an investigation into allegations. Robins said he didn't get
the affidavit from Schmunk until a month later.
"Two things," said Robins. "Dr. Schmunk has the courage to stand up
against what's wrong. And there's a cancer in Wisconsin to get a
conviction no matter what, and they will lie and tamper with evidence."
Schmunk said it should be made clear that he has neither reconsidered
the case nor re-examined the evidence.
"I don't have the documents to re-examine it, and I haven't been back
to Green Bay since the day I left," he said. "There was a corrupt
prosecutor. We know that. He's been convicted. It might be prudent to
go back and look at it. But that's not my place because I'm no longer
the Brown County medical examiner."
Calls to the Wisconsin Department of Justice were not returned.
Department spokesman Michael Bauer told the Green Bay Press-Gazette
newspaper in August that his agency stands by the conviction and
doesn't believe there was any wrongdoing.
Complicating the family's efforts to get Maloney's case re-examined are
the circumstances of Maloney's arrest. He was taken into custody in Las
Vegas after he made admissions to a girlfriend in a motel room,
officials reported at the time of arrest.
Investigators reported that they had the room bugged.
Something else: Schmunk wasn't the one who made his then-office's call
on the Maloney case.
That fell to Milwaukee County Assistant Medical Examiner John Teggatz,
who came up with a preliminary finding that Sandy Maloney appeared to
be a victim of manual strangulation.
Schmunk was attending a medical conference in another state at the time
and was not available to perform an autopsy.
Teggatz died last year, putting Schmunk at the center of the case.
"Dr. Teggatz thought it was a homicide and I supported his conclusion,"
said Schmunk. "John Maloney was an arson investigator and that's one of
the reasons arson became a big part of this.
"If you take the arson away, well, it's like taking a leg from a
chair," he said.
Reporter Tom Alex can be reached at (515) 284-8088 or talex@dmreg.com
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