NJ Cop Jailed For Killing Husband Getting Bigger Pension Payout

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ — A retired police officer from Sussex County who is imprisoned for killing his husband will receive an increased pension payout, according to a recent ruling.

Joseph C. Grieco, 39, formerly a police officer in Tenafly, Bergen County, has won an appeal to collect an increased pension retroactively due to health complications related to long-COVID.

One reason his disability pension collection was brought into question was that in 2023, a year after Grieco’s retirement, he accidentally shot and killed his husband in their Vernon home. Reports say he was trying to show his husband, a 44-year-old NYPD officer named John Kelly, how to shoot a snake when the gun went off and struck Kelly.

Grieco was found guilty earlier this year and is currently serving an 11-year sentence for first-degree aggravated manslaughter.

Read More: Ex-NJ Cop Shot Husband Dead Demonstrating How To Kill Snake: Report

Grieco’s attorney, Christopher Gray, told NJ.com the effort to secure a higher pension started before the shooting and has “nothing to do with his crime.”

Grieco’s health issues began in February 2020 after he spent around 30 minutes in a room with a nursing home patient who was “visually symptomatic” while on a medical call.

While the first reported COVID case in New Jersey wasn’t confirmed for another few weeks, Grieco was later diagnosed by two doctors who the pension board sent. He was diagnosed with post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or “long-COVID,” as a result of the encounter, those doctors determined.

Grieco’s chronic symptoms of long-COVID include vestibular migraines, memory loss, chest pains, and vertigo, which prevented him from performing his job as a police officer, he argued.

However, the Board of Trustees of the Police and Firemen’s Retirement System of New Jersey initially granted him “ordinary disability benefits” rather than “accidental disability benefits,” arguing his disabilities were preexisting and not the result of actions taken as a police officer.

Grieco appealed the Board’s decision prior to Kelly’s shooting, calling it “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable because it disregards the undisputed medical evidence.”

The Board’s decision was appealed on Dec. 1.

While Grieco has not currently been collecting his disability pension as a result of his conviction, any ordinary disability benefits already made before his conviction will be increased by roughly 16 percent, the difference between ordinary and accidental disability benefits.

Grieco will be eligible for parole in May 2034.