On the morning of March 25, 2005, George Greaves left his house in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, for work. He shared the house with his daughters, Heather and Lisa, and Heather's three-year-old daughter, Avery Johnson. When he came home later that day, all three were dead. A neighbor told police she had seen a man leave the house that morning, and the description led detectives to a family friend, a grocery clerk named John Eichinger, who was then working at an Acme market on the New Jersey shore.
Within hours of the detectives' arrival, Eichinger had confessed. Then, questioned by a detective who had worked the old case, he gave something more: an account of how he had used the same knife, almost six years earlier, to kill Jennifer Still, a 20-year-old woman from his circle of friends whose murder had never been solved. He was convicted of all four killings and sentenced to death three times. Two decades of appeals followed, and Pennsylvania has not carried out an execution in that time.
This account is built mainly on the court record: two opinions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, a 110-page federal court memorandum, the Third Circuit's orders and the filings at the U.S. Supreme Court, along with reporting by Oxygen and others. Where sources disagree, the text says so.
The court record gives only fragments of John Charles Eichinger's early life. He was an Eagle Scout, graduated from high school and attended college, though his later lawyers said he had flunked out of two colleges. His mother, Marie Christine Eichinger, testified for him at his sentencing, as did his brother, Steven. His mother later told his lawyers that she had drunk alcohol during her pregnancy and described him as a loner. His pediatric records, according to his post-conviction lawyers, showed recurring childhood headaches and Lyme disease.
He worked for the Acme supermarket chain. Friends knew him as "Acme John," Oxygen reported. He had once worked at an Acme near King of Prussia, and by 2005 he lived in Somers Point, New Jersey, and worked at the Acme market there. His post-conviction lawyers later named his Acme manager, Donald Houck, as a witness who could say he was good with repetition and structure, and his scoutmaster, assistant scoutmaster and a schoolteacher as witnesses who could say he was good at following rules.
He was closest to his father, according to the psychologist who testified for him at trial. His father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the defense experts tied both sets of killings to points in that illness: the first to a hospitalization about five weeks before the 1999 murder, the second to his father's move into hospice care in 2005.
Eichinger belonged to a group of friends in Montgomery County who played Dungeons & Dragons seriously and socialized together. Jennifer Still was part of it. So was Heather Greaves.
Jennifer Still was born on July 4. She was born with a cleft lip and palate and later developed scoliosis, both treated in childhood, and she was teased and bullied at school because of how she looked. Her mother, Wendy Lavin, described her as a "firecracker." Her lifelong friend Elizabeth Bullwinkle, whom she met in fifth grade, had also been teased as a child, and the two stayed close. Jennifer wrote poetry and hoped to be a poet.
By 1999 she was 20 and living in an apartment in Bridgeport, a borough in Montgomery County, with her boyfriend, Kevin, whom court records describe as her fiancé. Friends told reporters later that her personality had been changing and that she had begun dressing entirely in black.
On July 6, 1999, two days after her birthday, Kevin came home from his job at a car wash and found Jennifer dead in their apartment. He called 911. She had been stabbed many times in the abdomen and chest and her throat had been cut. Oxygen's two accounts give the number of stab wounds as 15 and 14. There was no sign of forced entry, and no weapon was found.
Eichinger's own account of that day, given to detectives in 2005 and quoted by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, is the only description of what happened in the apartment. He said he went there to tell Jennifer how he felt about her, and that she refused to leave Kevin for him. "I had the knife in my hand," he said. "I turned away from her for a second and couldn't believe she was doing that to me." He said that when she came close and put her hand on his shoulder, he turned around and stabbed her. He told police he killed her because she rejected him to stay with her fiancé.
Montgomery County detectives and Bridgeport police took up the case. One detail stood out. Investigators found a single drop of blood on the bathroom sink, away from the body. Retired county detective John Fallon later explained to Oxygen that people who attack with knives often cut themselves, so the blood could have come from the killer.
Kevin was cleared. He had an alibi from work, no injuries of the kind a knife attack leaves, and his DNA did not match the blood in the sink. Detectives then turned to Jennifer's friends and to the people who had left messages on her answering machine. One of those messages was from Eichinger, who said the two of them had plans that day. When detectives spoke to him, he said he had been in New Jersey, and he pointed them toward a couple in the gaming group. He told them the woman had been in love with Jennifer and that the two women had gone through a Wiccan marriage ceremony.
The couple gave DNA samples. Neither matched the blood in the sink. Rumors about witchcraft and the occult circulated in the press anyway; Jennifer's mother rejected them. Oxygen's 2026 account adds that one man connected to the gaming circle had been convicted of a double murder four years earlier, which drew police attention to the group. Nothing tied him to Jennifer's death.
The case went cold for nearly six years. Detective Richard Nilsen of the Montgomery County Detective Bureau was among those who had worked on it. Heather Greaves, one of Jennifer's friends, had been interviewed early in the investigation.
Heather Greaves was 27 in March 2005. She lived in her father's house in the King of Prussia section of Upper Merion Township with her father, George, her sister Lisa, 23, and her younger daughter, Avery Johnson, who was three. Heather had an older daughter, Melody, then six, who was with her own father on the day of the killings and survived. George Greaves later told a jury about how close he had been to his daughters and granddaughter and how his life had changed without them. Mrs. Greaves, who did not live with the family, testified about what their deaths had done to Melody.
Eichinger had known Heather for years through the same circle as Jennifer, and he had known Avery since she was born. The child knew his name and could say it. According to the prosecutors and to his own statements, he had developed a romantic fixation on Heather that she did not return. By March 2005 she had a new boyfriend.
The facts of the morning come from Eichinger's confessions, which he later accepted as true at trial, and from the findings of the courts that reviewed his case.
He told police that he set out that morning from his home in Somers Point intending to kill Heather unless she ended her relationship with her boyfriend. He had arranged to see her, so she was expecting him. He carried the knife he had used on Jennifer Still, and a pair of rubber gloves, in his waistband under a sweat jacket. According to the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, he reached King of Prussia at about 8 a.m. and passed time at the local Acme where he used to work, chatting with people he knew, while he waited for George Greaves to leave for work at 9:30. When he drove to the house, he found Lisa's car parked outside. He had not expected her to be home. He circled the block hoping she would leave, then went in anyway.
He and Heather argued, and he stabbed her. When Heather called out for Avery to dial 911, he turned on the child. Lisa came out of the bathroom, saw what was happening and tried to shut herself in, but he forced his way to her and stabbed her many times. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's 2007 opinion says 35 times. He then went back to Avery and to Heather, who was dying in the kitchen.
"I had to stab Lisa, too. I couldn't go to jail," he later told police. Of the child, he said: "I couldn't even let the three-year old identify me. I had known her since she was born and she knew my name. She could speak my name."
He cut his hand during the attack. He washed at the sink and used one of the rubber gloves to keep his blood off the scene. Before he left, he cut open Lisa's shirt to make it look as if she had been the target. Then he drove to work in New Jersey. A neighbor saw him leave. Oxygen reported that she described a man whose clothes were stained red, and George Greaves identified the man she described as Heather's friend John.
Investigators noticed quickly that the wounds resembled Jennifer Still's. Retired detective Albert Dinnell of the county's forensic unit and then District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. both told Oxygen that they saw the similarity. A small drop of blood had been left at the Greaves house as well.
Detective Nilsen and Detective James Godby of the Upper Merion Township Police Department drove to the Acme in Somers Point the same day. Eichinger had a bandaged hand. Godby told Oxygen that Eichinger said a dog had bitten and scratched him, and that he did not find the story credible.
Eichinger agreed to talk in an office on the second floor of the store. The detectives told him he was not under arrest and was free to leave, and the door stayed open. He gave an account of his whereabouts that morning that the detectives knew was false; Oxygen's accounts say he told them he had been on the Ocean City boardwalk and had not seen Heather since February. Nilsen stepped into the hall for a few moments, came back, and told Eichinger that police would find DNA in the Greaves driveway linking him to the killings. That was not true; it was a tactic. Eichinger dropped his head, crying, and said, "I did it." Nilsen asked whether he meant that he had killed Lisa, Avery and Heather Greaves. He said yes.
Only then did Nilsen read him his Miranda rights. Eichinger said he understood them and waived them, and gave a signed written statement about the Greaves killings. Nilsen, who had worked the Still case, asked him about Jennifer. He was warned of his rights again and gave a second signed statement, confessing to her murder and saying he had used the same knife.
He told detectives he had kept his clothes from the 1999 killing and had collected articles about it. He said he stored the knife in a sheath in a cooler. "I had it in the cooler with the rubber gloves and the Scream mask," he said. "Every Halloween I put the mask, gloves, and knife on and handed out candy at the door." Investigators later recovered keepsakes at his home, and DNA testing linked him to the blood found at both scenes.
Eichinger was taken before a New Jersey magistrate as a fugitive from justice and held over the weekend in a jail in Atlantic County. On the morning of Monday, March 28, 2005, he appeared before another magistrate and waived extradition. Detectives then drove him to Montgomery County for arraignment. In the car they warned him of his rights again, and he talked again about all four killings. After his preliminary arraignment he put that account in writing. Before signing, Nilsen noticed he did not have his glasses and had him read from his extradition papers to make sure he could read what he was signing. He signed every page and wrote that he had not been threatened or coerced. "I didn't feel like hiding it anymore," he said.
At no point between March 25 and March 28, the courts later found, did he ask for a lawyer or ask to stop talking.
Montgomery County charged Eichinger with four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of possessing an instrument of crime and three counts of unsworn falsification to authorities, the last for lying to the police. District Attorney Castor sought the death penalty for the Greaves and Johnson killings but not for Jennifer Still's.
The court appointed William McElroy to represent him on March 30, 2005, five days after the killings. McElroy moved to suppress the confessions and to sever the 1999 case from the 2005 case, so that the jury deciding one would not hear about the other. At a hearing on September 15, 2005, Eichinger and Detective Nilsen both testified. Judge William R. Carpenter of the Court of Common Pleas found Nilsen credible and ruled every statement admissible. A second lawyer, Paul Bauer, was appointed on September 30.
On September 28, Castor had written to McElroy that he considered the severance request "a tactical mistake" that would increase the chances of a death sentence. As "an incentive" to drop it, Castor offered to let the sentencing jury hear that Eichinger had not contested his guilt in the four murders, which ordinarily would not be admissible.
On October 17, 2005, Judge Carpenter granted the severance. Jury selection began the same day. By evening a full jury had been chosen for the Still trial and two jurors for the capital trial. The next morning, October 18, the defense announced that Eichinger was withdrawing the severance, waiving a jury and stipulating to the Commonwealth's evidence on all charges. He offered no defense. Carpenter found him guilty of everything. The jurors already chosen were sent home, and a new jury was selected to decide only the sentence.
The defense strategy, as the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania later described it, was to stipulate rather than plead guilty, so that he could still appeal the rulings on his confessions, and then to present him to the sentencing jury as a man who had accepted responsibility and was sorry. Eichinger later said he had always wanted a trial and agreed only because his lawyers told him the deal would let them argue remorse without challenge. That claim became the center of his federal appeals.
The sentencing hearing began on November 1, 2005, and lasted three days. The defense called a clinical psychologist, Dr. Gillian Blair, who diagnosed a schizoid personality disorder with prominent dependent traits and said Eichinger was liable to lose control under acute stress. A psychiatrist, Dr. Kenneth Weiss, diagnosed an adjustment disorder and a personality disorder and tied both sets of killings to his father's decline. His mother, his brother, a co-worker named Susan Broomall and a corrections counselor, Steven Allenson, who said Eichinger had followed jail rules, also testified. The Commonwealth called a psychiatrist, Dr. Timothy Michals, who found no personality disorder or other mitigating diagnosis.
Castor attacked the remorse argument directly. When Blair testified that Eichinger had told her he "pled guilty," Castor told her that was not true; he had not pleaded guilty. He asked whether she had heard of "crocodile tears." In his closing, he called the defense experts' evidence "psycho-babble" and "complete and utter nonsense," and told the jury that the defendant's failure to contest the evidence was no surprise when DNA showed "a one in seven trillion chance he didn't do it." He reminded jurors of the Eagle Scout badge and the high school diploma and called them "the last vestige of the scoundrel."
On November 3, 2005, the jury returned three death verdicts. For Heather Greaves, it found two aggravating circumstances: a prior conviction for an offense carrying a possible life sentence, meaning the Still murder, and another murder committed at the same time. For Lisa, it added that she was a witness killed to keep her from testifying. For Avery, it added that she was a child under 12. For each killing it found one mitigating circumstance: that Eichinger was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance, linked to his father's illness. It found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed it.
On December 12, 2005, Judge Carpenter imposed three consecutive death sentences, a life sentence for the murder of Jennifer Still, and further consecutive prison terms on the weapons and false-statement counts.
Eichinger's appeal went directly to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The appeal, No. 503 CAP, was argued on October 17, 2006, and decided on February 20, 2007, in an opinion by Chief Justice Cappy. The court independently reviewed the evidence and found it sufficient for first-degree murder in each death.
It rejected every claim. It held that Eichinger was not in custody when he first spoke to detectives in the store office, so they did not have to read him his rights before that first statement, and that the later warned statements were valid. It held that Pennsylvania law, not New Jersey law, governed the question, because the crimes were committed in Pennsylvania and nothing in the record showed where the car was when he spoke on the drive back. It upheld the witness aggravator for Avery, reasoning that what mattered was his purpose in killing her, which he had stated himself, not whether a three-year-old would have been allowed to testify. It found the Greaves family's testimony a proper personal account of the loss, and it held that if Eichinger had taken the stand to apologize, as he said he wished to, the prosecution could have cross-examined him. The court also noted that he had described the killings in a 90-page journal he sent to his brother from his cell. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case later in 2007.
Within weeks, the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia was appointed to represent him in federal court and obtained a pause of the federal case while the state courts heard his claims. On November 19, 2007, Eichinger filed a petition under Pennsylvania's Post Conviction Relief Act. His lawyers amended it to raise 27 claims. They argued that his trial lawyers had failed to investigate his mental health, had pushed him into the stipulated trial with mistaken advice, and had prepared the penalty case in a hurry; lead counsel's billing records showed 28 hours of penalty-phase preparation, according to the petition. They also argued that he was actually innocent of Jennifer Still's murder and of first-degree murder in the others, and that he had been incompetent to stand trial.
Judge Carpenter held 22 days of hearings, most of them in 2011. The defense called prior counsel, Eichinger himself, five mental health experts and 14 other witnesses. A neuropsychologist, Dr. Jonathan Mack, said Eichinger had brain dysfunction in the left temporal region, possibly from a car accident in which a tree limb fell on his head, or from Lyme disease, though he conceded Eichinger had not scored in the impaired range on any of his tests. Dr. Ruben Gur said a 2009 PET scan showed damage in the left hemisphere, which he attributed to Lyme disease, while conceding the scan did not necessarily show the state of Eichinger's brain in 1999 or 2005. The Commonwealth answered with two experts, including Dr. O'Brien, a psychiatrist whose testimony the judge credited. McElroy testified that in 2005 he had not known neuropsychologists could test for brain dysfunction.
On July 25, 2012, Carpenter denied the petition in a 129-page opinion. He found that Eichinger "was competent, did not suffer from any cognitive limitations and . . . was not brain damaged either at the time of the murders or at the time of trial." He found the trial lawyers' strategy reasonable given evidence he called overwhelming.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed on December 31, 2014, in Commonwealth v. Eichinger, 108 A.3d 821, written by Justice Eakin. It held that Eichinger had validly waived his jury and his right to contest the evidence after what it called an exhaustive colloquy; that his own corrections-counselor witness had opened the door to the prosecutor's argument about his future dangerousness; that the prosecutor's closing was not improper; and that counsel's mental health investigation and mitigation case were reasonable. Chief Justice Castille and Justices Saylor and Stevens wrote concurring opinions. The court quoted the trial judge's view that "if ever there were a criminal deserving of the death penalty it is John Charles Eichinger."
The federal case then resumed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. On January 16, 2019, Judge John R. Padova denied the petition in a 110-page memorandum after reviewing the state record and hearing oral argument. He found every claim meritless, held that the state courts had reasonably found Eichinger was not in custody when he first confessed, and wrote that there was "no hint in the record that Eichinger is actually innocent." He refused to certify any issue for appeal and denied a motion to reconsider on March 27, 2019.
Eichinger appealed to the Third Circuit in May 2019. On December 1, 2021, a panel of Circuit Judges Joseph A. Greenaway Jr., Bibas and Fisher denied a certificate of appealability, the permission a prisoner needs to appeal in a habeas case. The order said he had not made an arguable showing that his lawyers' performance on the trial waiver fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, and that he had not shown arguable error in their handling of prison-adjustment evidence, the lack of a neuropsychological evaluation or the cross-examination of Dr. Michals. The court denied rehearing on March 30, 2022.
His federal defenders, led by Joseph W. Luby, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on April 8, 2022. They argued that the prosecutor's letter had promised only to allow evidence that was admissible anyway, that it promised nothing about remorse, and that Eichinger had given up two trials on a misunderstanding. The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, through Robert M. Falin, opposed. The Court denied the petition on December 5, 2022. The petition noted that Eichinger had been moved from SCI Greene to SCI Phoenix while his appeal was pending.
Eichinger has had two dates set for his execution. A warrant from the governor's office set March 6, 2008; the federal court stayed it in January 2008, while his appeals were still at an early stage.
In February 2015, Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, carried out by granting a reprieve to each prisoner facing a date who did not have a court stay. Eichinger's federal stay remained in place through his appeals. After the Supreme Court denied review in December 2022, Pennsylvania law came into play again. When the governor does not sign a warrant within the time set by statute, the secretary of corrections has 30 days to issue a notice of execution. On January 9, 2023, Acting Corrections Secretary George Little signed a notice setting Eichinger's execution for March 7, 2023.
Josh Shapiro had succeeded Wolf as governor. On February 16, 2023, he announced in Philadelphia that he would not issue execution warrants and would continue the moratorium. "When an execution warrant comes to my desk, I will sign a reprieve each and every time," he said, and he asked the legislature to abolish the death penalty. WNEP reported at the time that Eichinger was the next person scheduled to be executed. The Third Circuit's capital case tracking record lists the March 7, 2023, date as expired and not carried out. The sources opened do not say whether a formal reprieve was signed for him.
Pennsylvania has carried out three executions since 1976, all of prisoners who gave up their appeals, and none since 1999.
As of the latest sources found, Eichinger remained under three death sentences and a life sentence. The Third Circuit's capital case record, last updated July 13, 2025, lists no execution date after March 2023. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that Governor Shapiro was still issuing reprieves in January 2026. His most recent known location, from the April 2022 Supreme Court petition, was the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix. No source found in this research reports any new appeal after December 2022. His ordinary appeals had run their course by the end of 2022.
Proven: Eichinger was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder on his own stipulation, and every court that reviewed the case upheld the convictions and the death sentences. His confessions, his written statements, his jail journal and DNA evidence all connected him to the killings.
His claimed defenses, rejected by the courts: in post-conviction proceedings he claimed he was actually innocent of Jennifer Still's murder and of first-degree murder in the others, and that he was incompetent to stand trial. The state courts rejected those claims, and the federal court found no hint of innocence in the record. His experts' findings of brain damage were weighed against the Commonwealth's experts and not credited.
Remorse: his lawyers presented him as remorseful. The prosecutor called it "crocodile tears," and a brief from the District Attorney's Office later cited a jail-diary entry in which Eichinger wrote that he had been "a little amused" by Lisa's last words. Whether he is sorry cannot be settled from the record.
Motive: the motive comes from his own statements, that both women had rejected him for other men. Witnesses in Oxygen's reporting described romantic obsession. No court made findings beyond what he admitted.
Witchcraft and the occult: rumors that Jennifer Still was involved in witchcraft or the occult came from the 1999 investigation and from Eichinger's own attempt to steer police toward another couple. Her mother rejected them, and nothing in the sources connects them to her death. The couple Eichinger named were cleared by DNA. Oxygen's two accounts give the woman different first names, possibly as pseudonyms; this page leaves both unnamed.
Details that vary: the number of Jennifer Still's wounds (15 in one Oxygen account, 14 in another) and how the neighbor described him on the day of the Greaves killings vary between accounts. The court record says only that a neighbor saw him leave the house.
Other victims: no source suggests other killings, and he has not been charged with or suspected of any.
Wendy Lavin, Jennifer Still's mother, waited nearly six years to learn who killed her daughter, and found out only because three more people had been killed. She told Oxygen there is "no such thing as closure."
George Greaves lost both his daughters and his granddaughter on a single morning, and found them himself. He was given custody of Heather's surviving daughter, Melody, who had been six. She "gave me a supreme purpose," he said.
Retired Montgomery County detective James McGowan, who worked the case, told Oxygen in 2026, "This man was pure evil."
July 6, 1999: Jennifer Still, 20, is stabbed to death in her Bridgeport apartment. Her fiancé finds her. A drop of blood is found in the bathroom sink.
1999 to 2005: Kevin and two members of her gaming circle are cleared by DNA. The case goes cold.
March 25, 2005: Heather Greaves, 27, Lisa Greaves, 23, and Avery Johnson, 3, are stabbed to death in King of Prussia. That day Eichinger confesses to detectives at the Acme in Somers Point, New Jersey, and then confesses to the Still murder.
March 28, 2005: He waives extradition and makes further statements on the drive to Montgomery County.
March 30, 2005: William McElroy is appointed his lawyer.
September 15, 2005: Suppression hearing; all statements ruled admissible.
September 28, 2005: District Attorney Bruce Castor's letter on severance.
October 17-18, 2005: Severance granted, juries begin to be chosen, then he withdraws the severance and is convicted of all four murders at a stipulated bench trial.
November 1-3, 2005: Penalty phase; the jury returns three death verdicts.
December 12, 2005: Formal sentencing: three death sentences and life for the Still murder.
February 20, 2007: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirms (915 A.2d 1122).
2007: U.S. Supreme Court denies review; a federal habeas case is opened.
November 19, 2007: State post-conviction petition filed.
January 2008: Federal court stays the execution set for March 6, 2008.
February 2015: Governor Wolf announces a moratorium on executions.
2011-2012: 22 days of post-conviction hearings; relief denied July 25, 2012.
December 31, 2014: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirms the denial (108 A.3d 821).
January 16, 2019: Federal habeas petition denied.
December 1, 2021: Third Circuit denies a certificate of appealability; rehearing denied March 30, 2022.
December 5, 2022: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
January 9, 2023: Acting Corrections Secretary signs a notice of execution for March 7, 2023.
February 16, 2023: Governor Shapiro says he will reprieve every execution.
March 7, 2023: The execution date passes; the notice expires.
As of the July 13, 2025 Third Circuit record: no further execution date listed.