SMITHFIELD - A private investigator told police that a client who was trying to free her son from prison showed up at a meeting with a bag full of fake cash.

Jim Mabry's tip to Clayton police led them to charge Marcia Grimsley, 59, with possession of counterfeit money. According to police, Grimsley was using her home computer to print imitation $100 bills.

Detectives tailed Grimsley after the meeting Nov. 9 and found thousands of smeared, yellowed mugs of Benjamin Franklin on fake $100 bills stashed in her car.

"She swore she'd just gotten it out of the bank," said Clayton police Capt. Jon Gerrell.

No one answered the door at Grimsley's home Wednesday afternoon. Her attorney, Barry Winston, said Grimsley maintains her innocence.

Grimsley captured headlines in 2004 after Virginia prosecutors charged her with conspiring with her son to hire a hit man to kill his wife. Grimsley, then a first-grade teacher at McGee's Crossroads Elementary School outside Benson, is the widow of Joe Grimsley, a political heavyweight who twice served as a Cabinet member in Gov. Jim Hunt's administration.

After Grimsley spent 10 months in jail, prosecutors let her off the hook because of her health problems. Grimsley promised to stay away from her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Her son, David Ashford, is serving life in prison for his part in the murder-for-hire plot.

Grimsley has worked to free her son since her recent return to Johnston County.

For months, Grimsley has been stopping in the Johnston County Courthouse disguised in a wig and sunglasses, asking for help in her son's case, according to several clerks.

She hired Mabry, of Kinston, in October to dig up evidence in the criminal case against her son. Mabry said the relationship began to sour when Grimsley asked him to pay people to recant the testimony that helped convict her son. He hoped she was just joking.

But on Nov. 9, Mabry said, she met him at a Cracker Barrel with a satchel full of fake cash.

"She had a fit trying to tell me it was real money," Mabry said. "She'd been sitting up night after night, getting no sleep to print it."

Mabry challenged her to prove a bill was real by using it at the Cracker Barrel. Grimsley then jumped in her car and left, Mabry said.

Mabry phoned Gerrell at the Clayton Police Department, worried that Grimsley would go on a shopping spree on her way home.

An officer's question

Clayton police Detective John Coley spotted her car about 20 minutes later near her home on Fayetteville Street. He followed her and asked whether she had fake money in her car.

According to a search warrant, Grimsley showed him the fake cash, then brought him inside to see her equipment. There, Coley spotted three genuine $100 bills taped to a sheet of paper face down on a copying machine.

The Secret Service confiscated $218,000 in imitation cash, along with Grimsley's computer equipment.

Federal charges are pending against her, said Robert Trumbo, resident agent in charge of the Secret Service in Raleigh. Grimsley could spend up to 20 years in prison if convicted of manufacturing counterfeit money.

Clayton police charged her last week with possessing the tools to make fake money. Grimsley posted a $5,000 bail and went home, according to court records.

She paid in cash.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

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