Angelo Grenci, former 'America's Most Wanted' fugitive, admits fatal Berkeley stabbing

TOMS RIVER - A former "America's Most Wanted'' fugitive from Berkeley Township, who absconded from trial in a violent burglary case decades ago, has now admitted killing the former bunkmate of a man who allegedly assaulted him in 2016 at the Ocean County Jail.

Angelo Grenci, 47, pleaded guilty Monday before Superior Court Judge Kimarie Rahill to aggravated manslaughter in the November 2020 death of Carlton Williams, 50, of Seaside Heights, said Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer.

Williams turned up at Community Medical Center the night of Nov. 14, 2020, with a stab wound to his neck, driven there by his girlfriend. He was flown to Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, where he died a week later from a lack of blood to the brain resulting from the massive bleeding from the stab wound.

The investigation revealed that Grenci ambushed and stabbed Williams in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Magnolia Avenue in the Manitou Park section of Berkeley Township, where the victim had gone to settle a loan with another man.

Grenci has been in the Ocean County Jail since his arrest in the case on Nov. 16, 2020.

The investigation into Williams' stabbing revealed the victim had been the onetime bunkmate of Brandon Meechum, one of six men suspected of beating and stabbing Grenci at the Ocean County Jail on Feb. 16, 2016, while Grenci was being held there on a bank robbery charge to which he subsequently pleaded guilty, police documents revealed. No charges were brought against Meechum in the assault because Grenci refused to cooperate in that investigation.

As the investigation into Williams' death progressed, detectives uncovered more than 1,000 images of child pornography on Grenci's phone and charged him with possession of child pornography, in addition to the murder charge related to Williams' death.

The murder charge was downgraded in a plea bargain in which the child pornography charge will be dismissed, authorities said.

Prosecutors will recommend Grenci receive a 25-year prison term when he is sentenced on April 19. He will have to serve 85 percent of the prison term before he can be considered for release on parole, under the state's No Early Release Act.

The maximum term for aggravated manslaughter is 30 years.

Grenci was featured on the network television program "America's Most Wanted'' in 2005, after skipping out on a trial in an assault and burglary case in Ocean County two years earlier.

He was accused in that case of breaking beer bottles over the heads of two men and trying to run over one of them with a car in Berkeley Township in 2002.

Grenci did not appear for his 2003 trial in that case and was convicted in absentia of burglary and assault.

After "America's Most Wanted'' ran an episode on Grenci in 2005, he was captured in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and returned to Ocean County to face sentencing. However, his conviction and 24-year sentence were later overturned by the state Supreme Court because he never had the chance to waive his right to attend the trial. Grenci subsequently pleaded guilty to armed burglary in the case and received a nine-year prison term.

While serving the prison term, Grenci wrote a book titled "In Absentia,'' which he said was meant to steer troubled youth away from a life of crime. But his reformation was short-lived: Grenci was charged with an armed robbery in July 2015 and with a knifepoint robbery at a TD Bank in Toms River in November 2015.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to robbery, was sentenced to five years in prison, and was paroled from prison about nine months before Williams' death.

The present case was prosecuted by Michael Abatemarco and Victoria Veni, assistant Ocean County prosecutors.

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.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Berkeley man, former 'most wanted' fugitive, admits to fatal stabbing