WASHINGTON – A federal judge has issued a gag order in the trial of Josephine Gray, one month after Montgomery County State’s Attorney Douglas Gansler appeared on NBC’s “Today” show to discuss the so-called “Black Widow” case.
It does not appear that U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow’s order applies to Gansler directly, but her opinion specifically cites him and his comments to newspapers and television stations.
It is the second time in two years that comments by Gansler, an increasingly familiar face on the media, have sparked a gag order in a high- profile case.
Gansler said Friday that he did nothing wrong and that Chasanow’s order is “inappropriate.” He further complained that the order, while not gagging him, will make it difficult for his office to pursue a state double-murder case against Gray, who is being tried in federal court on fraud charges.
“Lawyers are presumed to comply with the rules of ethics, and we absolutely abide by that here,” Gansler said Friday. “Anything I’ve said has been a regurgitation of public information.”
On Jan. 4, Gansler told “Today” co-host Matt Lauer during an on-air interview that Gray, a 55-year-old grandmother from Upper Marlboro, was “like the female black widow spider, she basically kills her mates, and in this particular case she did it three times. The only differences between her and a spider is she collected thousands of dollars of life insurance after killing these people.”
In her opinion, Chasanow cited Gansler’s comments on the TV show and in newspapers nationwide. She ruled Wednesday that no one connected with the federal case may make “any extrajudicial statements” or disseminate any information about Gray’s case to members of the media.
That was less than attorneys in the federal case had sought. They wanted the gag order to include anyone involved in “other criminal prosecutions in the state of Maryland, the investigations relating to this and other criminal prosecutions of the defendant in . . . Maryland, and the defendant,” which would have included Gansler.
Now in federal custody, Gray is awaiting a federal trial on charges of mail and wire fraud in connection with $165,000 she collected from the insurance policies of her late husbands and an alleged lover. The federal indictment alleges that Gray was “involved” in all three men’s deaths, making the insurance claims fraudulent.
Gansler has no jurisdiction in the federal case but plans to try Gray next for the deaths of her husbands.
“When they release her, we get her next,” Gansler said.
Until then, however, parties in the closely related federal case will be gagged. Gansler said that will impede his office’s preparation for the murder trial, since many of the same players will be involved in the fraud case.
The last time Gansler was silenced with a court order was in 2000, during the high-profile state retrial of James Edward Perry, charged with murdering a quadriplegic boy, his mother and nurse in their Silver Spring home.
Maryland officials have tried twice to prosecute Gray for plotting the 1974 and 1990 shooting deaths of her husbands. It was then that prosecutors started calling her the “black widow,” after the poisonous female spider that kills its mates.
Neither case went to trial however, because witnesses, fearing Gray’s rumored voodoo powers, disappeared each time.
The same day that Gansler went on “Today” to discuss the case, Montgomery County officials issued a new arrest warrant for Gray in connection with the murders of her husbands.
“At this point, she’s actually locked up on federal charges for the insurance fraud, of collecting money after having killed these people,” Gansler told Lauer. “So now they’re willing to come forward and we’re hopeful of . . . a successful prosecution.”