A man charged with killing his wife in 1996 — and who is already in prison for killing his infant son in 2005 — is due in court this morning.
Michael Jim Medina, 41, was indicted by an Arapahoe County grand jury this spring on charges he killed Kimmy Greene-Medina in October 1997. He is already serving a 48-year prison sentence for the 2005 killing of his 2-year-old son, Degan, in Rio Blanco County.
Investigators never found Greene’s body after she was last seen Oct. 29, 1996, and have declined to say what changed in the case and led to Medina’s indictment. A spokeswoman for the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s Office said documents in the case are sealed.
But investigators took a closer look at Medina after Degan’s death when his new wife came forward and said Medina confessed to Greene’s killing.
According to court documents, Medina’s wife said in the days before he killed Degan, a shaking and sobbing Medina laid out a detailed confession to her about how he killed Greene. The woman said Medina told her about the crime to prove to her he was capable of killing Degan.
According to the woman’s story, Medina said he believed Greene cheated on him so one morning in October 1996, he drove to a field and dug a hole.
Later, he, Greene and the two girls piled into Medina’s truck and drove to the field.
While the girls slept in the back of the truck, Medina and Greene stepped out to talk about their deteriorating relationship.
As they talked, Medina stepped back and pulled a baseball bat from his coat. He told Greene: “You should have never cheated on me,” then he smashed her over the head with the bat.
He bludgeoned her several times and while she was alive, rolled her into the hole and stripped her naked.
Medina said Greene was alive and he could hear her gurgling and breathing as he buried her.
Aside from the purported confession, investigators also found a journal entry Medina wrote that said Greene was dead. That detail was important, investigators said, because Medina had long contended Greene wasn’t dead but had simply run away.
Sources said an Arapahoe County grand jury took up Greene’s disappearance in 2007, but the case was slow to develop after that.
Then, this year, the grand jury handed down its indictment, charging Medina in March with first-degree murder after deliberation. State records list the date of the murder as Oct. 29, 1996, the day Greene was last seen at her Aurora apartment.
Reach reporter Brandon Johansson at 720-449-9040 or [email protected]
