Toilet seat helps doom killer Clues galore clinch guilty plea in retired nun's 2012 killing 
 
 Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Michael Briggs (Albany County Sheriff's Department) Michael Briggs (Albany County Sheriff's Department) Toilet seat helps doom killer 1 / 1 Back to Gallery 
 
 Schenectady 
 
 When Sgt. Darryl Mallard arrived at the scene of Mary Greco's murder, he saw a blanket that her killer had draped over the retired nun's body. He noticed coffee mugs and glassware in the kitchen of her Stanford Street home. The veteran cop spotted something in the bathroom. 
 
 The toilet seat was up. 
 
 The 82-year-old woman lived alone. Perhaps, Mallard hypothesized, the killer was a man who also used her bathroom. 
 
 Fingerprints lifted from the toilet's handle matched those of Michael Briggs, a 38-year-old robber on parole. Those prints would become part of a ream of evidence, large and small, that connected Briggs to Greco's murder in 2012, a crime he confessed to Monday, a week before his trial was to start. He will be sentenced in June to 30 years to life. 
 
 Greco was a deeply spiritual, soft-spoken woman. The longtime parishioner at St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church on State Street volunteered as a teacher on international mission trips. 
 
 Briggs lived a short walk from Greco's home near Vale Cemetery. The two crossed paths on Dec 27, 2012, when Briggs offered to shovel Greco's car out after a snowstorm. She paid him in cash and cookies, prosecutors said. 
 
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 Three days later, on the morning of Dec. 30, Briggs returned after nearly half a foot of snow blanketed the city. As he again cleared off Greco's car, she called her neighbor and asked if she wanted Briggs to shovel her car out as well. The neighbor declined. That, said District Attorney Robert Carney, was last time Greco spoke with anyone but her killer. 
 
 After strangling and stabbing her, Briggs stole Greco's car. It was later found in a nearby church parking lot. A rosary with Swarovski amethyst beads and a 2-inch sterling silver crucifix, a gift to her just days before, was never found. 
 
 Greco's call to her neighbor helped authorities put Briggs at the scene. So did the fingerprints from the toilet and others lifted from a coffee mug on the kitchen counter and a glass in the sink. Briggs' fingerprints were in Greco's car as well. His DNA turned up on the blanket that covered her body. 
 
 The most crucial piece of evidence, however, was video surveillance footage that showed Briggs leaving his home, snow shovel in hand, and walking toward Greco's just before she was killed. 
 
 "There was everything a jury could sink their teeth into," said Michael Mansion, Briggs' attorney, who struck a plea deal after seeing the video for the first time Friday 
 
 "As I got myself deeper and deeper into trial preparation, it became pretty apparent there was more than sufficient evidence for a jury to find a guilty verdict on all counts," said Mansion, who took over as assigned counsel for Briggs last fall. 
 
 Briggs was released from prison in 2007 after serving 10 years of a 15-year sentence for a robbery in Nassau County. In that crime, Carney said, Briggs tied up a 12-year-old boy and sexually assaulted him. 
 
 At the time of Greco's killing, Briggs had violated parole and was being sought by authorities, Carney said. That factored into Carney's decision to agree to a plea to second-degree murder and burglary rather than take the case to trial. Given Briggs' violent history and the fact he was had violated parole just before the murder, Carney said he can't envision any parole board ever letting Briggs out of prison. 
 
 bfitzgerald@timesunion.com • 518-454-5414 • @BFitzgeraldTU ||||| Man admits to killing retired nun in 2012 Posted: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 1:45 PM EDT 
 
 SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – A man has pleaded guilty to killing a former nun in December 2012. 
 
 Schenectady County officials have confirmed that Michael Briggs, 38, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and attempted burglary on Monday in county court. 
 
 Briggs admitted to strangling Mary Greco, 82, in her apartment in 2012. She was found on New Year's Day 2013. Briggs had shoveled snow for Greco around the time she was killed, said officials. 
 
 At the time of the murder, Briggs was on parole in Long Island for a burglary and robbery.
– A Schenectady man confessed this week to the horrendous crime of murdering a retired nun in her own home, reports News10. And the Albany Times Union notes that police caught 38-year-old Michael Briggs thanks in part to a dumb move on his part at the crime scene: He used the toilet and left the seat up. It caught the attention of a detective who wondered why an 82-year-old woman who lived alone would have the seat in that position, and, sure enough, Briggs' fingerprints turned up on the toilet handle. Police had other evidence, including surveillance video that showed him leaving his house with a snow shovel and heading toward the victim's house shortly before she was killed. But the prints (he left some elsewhere, too) put him inside the house, and defense lawyers opted to have him plead guilty. Briggs will get 30 years to life, and the DA doesn't expect he'll ever be a free man again.