Kathleen HopkinsAsbury Park Press
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TOMS RIVER — When Christopher Gregor was stopped by police in Tennessee two days after his 6-year-old son died in New Jersey, he called the child's mother "a special kind of dirt bag,'' and told the officers his boy would still be alive if his mother wasn't a drug addict.
"A lot of me thinks like it's partially my fault in a sense that if she did something,'' Gregor told officers in Alcoa, Tennessee, referring to his son's mother.
"If he didn't have a drug-addicted mother, then he'd still be alive,'' Gregor said after he was stopped by police on April 4, 2021.
The officers questioned Gregor repeatedly about his route of travel from New Jersey through Arkansas, and almost to Texas, and why he had just picked up a female friend from New Jersey at McGhee Tyson Airport in Alcoa.
One Alcoa police officer even suggested Gregor may have been trying to flee to Mexico.
"Were you trying to cross the border?'' the officer asked him.
"No, I mean, even if I was, I wouldn't be headed in the direction I'm in,'' Gregor said, telling them he turned around somewhere in Arkansas and was now heading straight home.
Gregor's interactions with police in Alcoa that day were captured on video by police body cameras.
A portion of the body-camera video was played last week in court here, where Gregor, 31, of Barnegat, is on trial before Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan, charged with the murder of 6-year-old Corey Micciolo and endangering the child's welfare.
The jury that will decide Gregor's guilt or innocence, however, will not get to view the body-camera footage.
Ryan, at hearing outside the presence of the panel Wednesday, ruled last week the video was inadmissible as evidence because it was filled with hearsay.
However, Jamie Schron, an assistant Ocean County prosecutor, told the judge the state will confront Gregor with statements he made on the video during cross-examination of him if he says something different when he is on the witness stand later this week.
Corey died at 5:02 p.m. on April 2, 2021, a little more than an hour after Gregor brought him to the emergency room at Southern Ocean Medical Center in Stafford Township. Hospital surveillance video played previously during the trial shows Gregor leaving the hospital, getting into his car and driving away at 5:19 p.m. that day.
Two days later, when stopped in Alcoa, Tennessee, on Easter Sunday, Gregor told police he had driven for 20 hours straight and had made it to somewhere near the Arkansas-Texas state line when he turned around and drove another five hours to Nashville. There, he said, he ate dinner, had a drink, got a hotel room, called his female friend who was flying to meet him, and then went to sleep.
Gregor told the officers at one point he was thinking about going to see his brother who lives in California. He seemed uncertain whether he was actually in Arkansas or Texas when he turned around to go back to New Jersey.
The officers questioning Gregor asked him why he picked up his female friend at the airport in Alcoa.
"Because the flights lined up where she would get in at a specific time,'' he responded. "I didn't check the flights out. I didn't question why. I just said okay.''
When one officer told him that didn't make sense, Gregor said, "I don't think it doesn't make sense, but that's fine.''
He told them the woman flew down from New Jersey to meet him because she was concerned about him making the drive back home by himself.
"She didn't feel comfortable with me driving another 13 hours after I've driven so much already,'' Gregor said. "I haven't slept much, as you can imagine.''
On some parts of the video, the officers can be heard conversing among themselves.
One officer informed the others that Gregor was stopped for speeding in a construction zone.
"He seems pretty cooperative,'' an officer said.
Another noted that Gregor's hands were shaking on the steering wheel.
"He's shaking like a leaf,'' the officer said.
Another officer said Gregor mentioned that his son had just died.
When an officer asked him how the boy died, Gregor responded, "They didn't know. They thought it was some internal bleeding.
"When he got home, I knew something was wrong in my gut,'' Gregor said indicating he thought the boy's mother had done something to him.
He went on to tell the officers he was arrested once in New Jersey after "they planted marijuana on me,'' referring to the child's mother and her family.
"She's a special kind of dirt bag,'' Gregor said, referring to Corey's mother, Breanna Micciolo. "I regret ever meeting her.''
The beginning of the video shows Gregor, clad in jeans and a beer company sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off of it, getting out of his car and placing his hands on the roof as officers frisk him.
"We're a little more dressed, we got sleeves,'' an officer later tells Gregor.
"Yea, I took mine off,'' Gregor tells him."I actually ripped them off on the drive.''
The officer then asks him if he was wearing a seat belt and if he "took them off while wearing a seat belt?''
Gregor responded, "I gave them a pull.''
Gregor's attorney had hoped to introduce the video to the jury to show his client was cooperative with police during the traffic stop, agreeing to let them search his car.
"I said, I don't mind you guys searching my vehicle at all,'' Gregor told the officers. "There's nothing that I'm hiding.''
He later asked them if there was a warrant to search the car.
"We're trying to figure out why we're doing all this,'' an officer told him. "I don't know about that. The state of New Jersey is run by Democrats. We have very little to do with them.''
Gregor responded, "You and me both.''
Later on, the police tell Gregor to sit on the bumper of a police car. After he does for awhile, Gregor gets up from the bumper.
"I'm not going anywhere,'' he tells the officer. "My dad was a state trooper in New Jersey, very much respected, unlike most people in New Jersey.''
Gregor expressed concern about what was going on and why it was taking so long.
"It's Easter, I understand that,'' he said. "Did they say where it originated from - the search warrant?''
An officer responded, "No idea, man. We don't get that information.''
Police eventually let Gregor go, but they took his car and cell phone into evidence.
Gregor's father, David Gregor, has testified he arranged for his son to then rent a car so he could drive home to New Jersey.
Gregor wasn't charged in the case until July 2021, and then only with endangering the welfare of a child. The endangerment charge stems from an incident on March 20, 2021, in which Gregor is seen on surveillance video from the gym in his apartment complex speeding up a treadmill on which Corey was running, causing the child to repeatedly fall face-first off the machine.
Gregor was charged with his son's murder in March 2022 after a medical examiner ruled the boy's death was a result of blunt-force trauma and lacerations to his heart and liver.
Gallucci, however, says his expert witness, renowned pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, will say the death was a result of sepsis due to pneumonia. Baden is expected to testify Friday morning.
The trial resumes Wednesday when a medical expert for the state is expected to be on the witness stand.
Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.
