Nevada man gets 100 years in Montana murder; body not found

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Nevada man received a 100-year sentence on Friday for killing a woman in Montana in a case that lacked a body, murder weapon or cause of death.

State District Judge Jessica Fehr in Billings sentenced 54-year-old Gregory Green to prison with the possibility of future parole, after a jury previously convicted him in the September 2018 murder of Laura Johnson.

A neighbor’s surveillance camera showed Johnson going into a house she shared with Green, but never leaving. Video also showed Green carrying a heavy item covered in a blanket and blood found in his pickup truck matched with Johnson’s blood, according to prosecutors.

Before she died, Johnson, 49, had been in drug treatment, was breaking up with Green and had secured full-time work.

Members of Johnson's family had asked for the maximum sentence. “I ask the court to show Greg Green the mercy he showed my mother,” Stephen Johnson, Laura Johnson’s son, said.

The surveillance video was key to the case and turned up after Stephen Johnson and a second son, Jonathan, traveled to Montana from Washington to look for their mother when they could get no response from her, the Billings Gazette reported.

The two sons approached the neighbor in the house across the street from Green’s home, who told them he had surveillance cameras that covered his front yard and pointed toward Green’s property.

Defense attorneys asked for a sentence of 40 years, the minimum allowed. They had argued during the trial that Johnson had struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues and may have fallen back into drug use. Green maintained she left the house one day while he was away at work and never returned.

Investigators believe Green killed Johnson and hid her body in a rural area outside Billings.

He could become eligible for parole after 25 years in prison.