Logan trial under way in 1984 murder case

LOGAN — The prosecutor held up a screwdriver for the jury to see and dropped a large soda canister on the courtroom floor with a thud.

These were the weapons Glenn Howard Griffin used to kill Bradley Newell Perry more than 20 years ago, a prosecutor said Wednesday, as attorneys gave their opening arguments in the capital murder trial.

"Mr. Perry was stabbed, brutalized, bound and bludgeoned to death," prosecutor Brad Smith said. "We use these words and they sound somewhat sanitary. Let me make it clear: This was nothing of the sort."

He cautioned jurors they would have to view difficult images over the next few weeks. In a 24-year-old murder trial, the prosecutor said, little is easy.

Perry was 21 when he was found slain in the early morning of May 26, 1984, inside his family's Box Elder County gas station. Much has changed since then.

Two detectives who collected hair and blood from the station have died, and the defense has questioned the chain of custody for those samples with no firsthand rebuttal from the prosecution.

Griffin has changed, too. No longer a wiry, 20-something with long hair, Griffin wore a dark suit Wednesday. His salt-and-pepper hair, which a judge had previously ordered him to grow long for evidentiary purposes, had been cut short.

Though he may look different, prosecutors said Griffin is the man who was eager to pump gasoline, fetch cigarettes and make change for two Utah State University students who stopped at the self-service station on the morning of Perry's death.

Those former students are expected to testify in the coming weeks, but neither has been able to identify Griffin as the man they saw that morning, defense attorney Dee Smith said. One of the students drew a picture of the man, which was published in several newspapers, including one in Logan, where Griffin lived. Nobody came forward to identify Griffin as the suspected killer.

Griffin, who has a long criminal history, was arrested in 2005 only after improved technology linked him to blood found on a dollar bill given to one of those USU students as change, attorneys said.

The odds of that blood belonging to anyone other than Griffin are about one in 1.7 trillion, investigators said.

"Astronomically small," Brad Smith said. "Unreasonably small."

Defense attorneys said none of Griffin's blood or fingerprints were taken from the crime scene.

"Powerful evidence was left at the scene," Dee Smith said. "But none of it belongs to Mr. Griffin."

Griffin sat still, with his hands in his lap, as the prosecution called its first witnesses, including Box Elder County Sheriff Lynn Yeates, who was a patrol officer at the time of the homicide.

The prosecution also played a video that showed the bloody crime scene and Perry's body, hands bound behind his back with an electrical cord, bludgeoned to death on the ground.

The trial is expected to run through Nov. 21 in Logan's 1st District Court. Griffin, who has been charged with capital murder, could face the death penalty if he is convicted.

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