Greg Malarik's girlfriend testifies he shot wife twice two decades ago in Cantonment

Gregory Malarik's alleged co-conspirator and former girlfriend testified in his first degree murder trial Thursday that she helped dispose of evidence used in the murder of his wife.

Malarik is accused of shooting his wife, Sherri Malarik, on Sept. 21, 2001, and stuffing her body into the passenger seat of the family minivan before leaving the van and the body in Winn-Dixie's parking lot in Cantonment. Malarik was not charged in the homicide until 2020.

While Sherri was deployed in Greece with the U.S. Navy the year prior to her death, Malarik and Jennifer Spohn began a romantic relationship. Almost 20 years later in 2020, Spohn confessed to Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigator Mark Smeester that she helped Malarik leave the Winn-Dixie parking lot the night of the homicide.

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"I was told to be at the Winn-Dixie ... at 7 p.m.," Spohn testified Thursday. "I pulled up next to the van. He got out of the van and got into the car."

Malarik later told Spohn that he was forced to shoot his wife twice because the first bullet was not fatal, she said.

"He told me that when he had shot her that it didn't kill her, and that he was upset," Spohn said. "He was trying to figure out how to take it back, and he knew he couldn't, and he had to shoot her a second time."

She also testified that Malarik left the family van with a bag that contained a gun, CB radio and Sherri's rings. Spohn said Malarik told her to leave his house with the bag and dispose of the evidence, leading her to dump the bag's contents into the Escambia River.

Defense attorney Chris Crawford attacked several points of Spohn's testimony, particularly information gleaned during the two days Smeester and State Attorney investigator Wayne Wright interviewed her in Illinois.

Crawford argued that Spohn's confession was fed to her over the two days by Smeester. On March 6, 2020, Spohn denied any knowledge of Sherri's death and denied being part of her death in two separate interviews.

During the two March 6 interviews, either Smeester or Wright provided a hypothetical situation of a woman driving a man home from the scene of a murder and said that woman could either be arrested or given immunity by telling the truth. Spohn again denied any involvement.

During a third interview the next day on March 7, Spohn confessed to helping Malarik in exactly the same way the investigators' hypothetical situation was explained, which Crawford argued is evidence her confession may not be the truth.

"The next day on March 7 after you hear this hypothetical and are given full immunity, that's what you tell investigators, plus this thing about a wig," Crawford said, referring to Spohn's statement that Malarik might have been wearing a wig when she picked him up.

Spohn testified in court that she had thrown a gun over the bridge into Escambia Bay, but Crawford asked her if she remembered that she never told investigators about the gun after being given immunity. She replied, "Yes."

This week's trial is the second time Malarik faced a jury. After a four-day trial in 2022, the jury could not agree on a verdict and Circuit Judge John Simon declared a mistrial.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Gregory Malarik's girlfriend testifies she disposed of evidence