Surf City killer gets 30 years
Gregory Gillick admitted killing his stepmother, Dorris Gillick, in 2004, the city's first homicide.
TOMS RIVER, N.J. - The man responsible for the first killing in Surf City's history has been sentenced to 30 years in prison without parole.
Gregory Gillick, 35, stabbed his stepmother in 2004 after an argument that followed a night of drinking. He pleaded guilty to murder in November.
Gillick told state Superior Court Judge Wendel E. Daniels on Friday that he had been out drinking on March 3, 2004. After getting home around midnight, he said, he got into an argument with Dorris Gillick, 75, picked up a knife, and stabbed her several times.
Her biological son reported her missing the next day. Police found blood on her apartment floor, and the Ocean County Major Crimes Unit found her body in the closet later that day.
"This type of thing is unheard of here," Surf City Mayor Leonard T. Connors told the Press of Atlantic City. "It was just a circumstance that it set itself up and happened in my town. Of that, I am not very proud. But Surf City has a long history of nothing like this ever happening."
The two officers who found the blood on the floor went on sick leave for stress-related symptoms. One retired after being out for more than a year. The other returned to work months after the crime but continued receiving psychiatric help through August 2006 and could not work.