Shivangi Sinha
Brad Perry was a young man with bright prospects, anticipating college and looking forward to getting married. In May 1984, while working the night shift at a gas station, he was brutally murdered. The police initially had very few leads and no suspects, making it seem unlikely that Brad would receive the justice he deserved. A&E’s ‘Cold Case Files’ episode titled ‘The Night Shift’ delves into the details of the crime and the extensive years of police work dedicated to finding his killer.
Brad Perry Was Found Dead at a Gas Station
Bradley Newell Perry was born on May 24, 1964, to Newell Burnell and Claudia Mangum Perry. As an active member of the Brigham City, Utah Sixth LDS (Latter Day Saints) ward, he held various positions, demonstrating leadership qualities early on. In 1980, he graduated with honors from Box Elder High School and LDS Seminary. Growing up with two brothers and two sisters, Brad was known for being the most loved, easy-going, and hardworking among them. His aspirations for a bright future led him to join Snow College soon after high school.
Brad transferred to Weber State College, and by 1984, he was working to save money for his tuition and upcoming nuptials. To achieve this, he took a night job at a convenience store at a Perry, Box Elder County, Utah gas station. In the early morning of May 26, 1984, two men stopped for gas at this station and bought some cigarettes from the convenience store. They handed a five-dollar bill to a man present there, and when they received their change, they noticed fresh blood on the bills, the man’s hands, and his shoes.
Scared, the men hurried away and called the police to report what they had seen. The police responded quickly, but there was no sign of the man the witnesses had described when they arrived. Investigating further, they found Brad’s body in a small room behind the counter. He had been brutally attacked and stabbed multiple times with a screwdriver and a knife, and his head had been crushed by a heavy canister. Brad had died before he could receive any medical attention. The police immediately began their work to find his killer.
Brad Perry’s Killer Was Seen With Blood on His Hands
Other than the two men who reported the crime, the police had no leads. They thoroughly searched the property and recovered some fingerprints and hair from the scene, but this evidence was not very useful at the time. The police called the witnesses back and asked for their help in creating a composite sketch of the suspect. Both men provided detailed descriptions of the suspect’s appearance, and one of them, who had some proficiency in drawing, helped refine the sketch to perfection.
This was all the police had to work with. They had a few suspects in mind; the first one they narrowed down on was the gas station manager. On the morning when Brad was found killed, the manager had shown up late, claiming he had missed his alarm. The police ran his fingerprints, but they did not match the evidence from the scene. The police also suspected that the manager had been selling drugs from the gas station, and Brad might have found out about it, leading to his attack. During this investigation, the police came across another name: Wade Maughan.
Wade was a local drug dealer and close to the store manager. The police brought him in for questioning, but his hair and DNA samples did not match the evidence from the scene. The case remained cold for years, with no leads leading to a definitive conclusion. In 2005, advancements in DNA technology rekindled police interest in the case. They ran the hair sample collected from the scene through their database, and surprisingly, they got a match with a man named Glenn Griffin, who was already serving time in a California prison.
The police questioned Maughan again and informed him that the DNA sample matched Griffin’s. Under pressure, Maughan started confessing to the crime. He revealed that on the night of the murder, he and Griffin had gone to the convenience store and gotten into an argument with Brad over the change he gave them. Griffin became very angry and started beating Brad. This was when the two men who initially called the police showed up, and Griffin went to talk to them. Afterward, Maughan helped Griffin take Brad’s body into the small room where Maughan held Brad while Griffin killed him. The sketch drawn at the beginning of the investigation also matched Griffin’s face.
Glenn Griffin is Serving a Life Sentence Today
Wade Maughan turned into a witness for the police and was not charged with any crimes. During Glenn Griffin’s trial in 2005, the police produced substantial evidence, including his location at the time of the murder and his criminal activities in the area. Griffin was convicted of capital homicide. Although the prosecutors sought the death penalty, he received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. He is currently serving his sentence at the Central Utah Correctional Facility, with no chance of release from the state prison.
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