Hearing in '84 murder

BRIGHAM CITY — Two men who stopped at a 24-hour self-serve gas station thought it was strange when an attendant appeared and offered to pump gas for them.

While he was doing so, they noticed bruises and scratches on his arm and what looked like fresh blood on his shoes.

"I think there's something fishy going on," Ali Sabbah said he remembered thinking.

The customers tried to walk inside to buy cigarettes, but the man fetched a pack himself and charged the pair exactly $1. When one of the dollar bills the man gave as change appeared to have blood on it, the two men drove away and called police.

That was the testimony from Sabbah and Bassam Braish, who made their first public appearance Thursday during the preliminary hearing for Glenn Howard Griffin, who is going to trial in the 1984 slaying of a gas station attendant that prosecutors say took place just before Sabbah and Braish pulled up for gas and cigarettes. It was the blood stain on the money that eventually led to Griffin's arrest last year.

Bradley Newell Perry was found dead in a back room of the Texaco station where he worked May 26, 1984. He had been stabbed with a screwdriver and beaten and his arms were tied behind his back.

Following testimony, 1st District Judge Ben Hadfield found that he was presented with enough evidence in Thursday's hearing to have Griffin stand trial.

Perry's parents, Newell and Claudia Perry, said they are grateful the justice system is moving forward after 21 years of heartache and wondering if their son's killer would ever be found.

They are also grateful for Sabbah's and Braish's testimonies in court.

Braish said he tried not to touch the $1 bill in case it could be used as evidence.

"You couldn't ask for a better piece of evidence," said Box Elder County sheriff's detective Scott Cosgrove.

When the DNA from the bill was run through a criminal database, it matched Griffin, said Pilar Shortsleeve, a criminalist with the Utah State Crime Lab.

At the time, Griffin was in a federal prison in California on a firearms charge, which is why his DNA was in the database.

The statistical probability that the blood came from a white Caucasian other that Griffin is one in 1.7 trillion, Shortsleeve said.

But a signed statement by Wade Garrett Maughan, who has also been arrested in the case, may complement the DNA evidence against Griffin.