After silent 911 call from Eric Greitens’ home, he said children played with phone
In May 2019, a 911 operator answered a call coming from former Gov. Eric Greitens’ lakeside home in eastern Missouri.
Twenty-nine seconds of near-silence followed.
The call came almost a year after Greitens resigned in scandal, accused of sexually assaulting and blackmailing his former hairdresser. He had disappeared from public view, apparently retreating much of the time to the home in Innsbrook, a wealthy and primarily gated community.
The 911 operator quickly called back. Greitens, answering the phone, apologized and assured her everything was fine.
“It was kids playing with the phone,” he said.
The May 26, 2019, 911 call came six months before one of Greitens’ two sons said his father hit him, knocking a tooth loose that was eventually removed, according to allegations made in an affidavit last month by Sheena Chesnut Greitens, the former governor’s ex-wife and a professor at the University of Texas-Austin.
She has also alleged that in April 2018, the former governor knocked her down in the Innsbrook home and took away her phone, wallet and keys to prevent her from seeking help. The couple separated in June 2018, according to court documents, and were divorced in 2020.
Sheena Greitens, through an attorney, said she was concerned by the 911 call. The attorney, Helen Wade, said the former Missouri first lady didn’t know about the episode until approached by The Star for comment.
In a statement, Eric Greitens dismissed the story as “laughable.” He did not answer specific questions about the 911 call.
Greitens is attempting to mount a political comeback by running for U.S. Senate and has framed Sheena Greitens’ allegations as part of a larger political conspiracy against him orchestrated by establishment Republicans. He has brushed aside pleas to drop out and continues to campaign.
The legal dispute between the two has escalated in recent weeks through a series of court filings in Boone County Circuit Court in which Sheena Greitens is seeking to move the court proceedings to Texas, where she lives.
In an apparent effort to bolster Eric Greitens’ claims of a conspiracy, his attorney has filed subpoenas for the cell phone records of several people, including Austin Chambers, Greitens’ former campaign manager, and Catherine Linkul, Sheena Greitens’ sister. Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider will hold a hearing Tuesday on a request to quash some of the subpoenas.
The Star obtained recordings of both the 911 call and the callback through records requests to Warren County, where Innsbrook is located. The first call came at 4:09 p.m. on a Sunday.
“Hello, can you hear me?” the operator asks after no one responds when the call begins.
No discernible sounds can be heard on the other end beyond a couple moments of static. The call ends after 29 seconds.
Less than a minute later, 911 calls back. The operator says the emergency center just received a hang up and asks if everything is OK.
“Everything’s fine, I’m sorry, I apologize. It was, uh, it was kids playing with the phone,” Eric Greitens says on the recording.
The operator asks Greitens for his home address and name. At one point, he appears to address someone near him, saying, “when, when you’ve touched the phone, sweetheart.”
“And you’re able to speak freely with me up there, everything is OK?” the operator asks.
“Yeah, everything is great,” Greitens responds.
Greitens’ two children were almost 5 and almost 3 at the time.
Wade confirmed that Sheena Greitens wasn’t at the home at the time and that Eric Greitens was exercising a period of visitation during that period.
“Dr. Greitens was certainly concerned about the fact that one of her children apparently placed the call, as any parent of young children would be,” Wade said in a statement. “She wishes she had been told about it earlier and at a time she could have clarified what, if anything, happened to prompt the call in her absence.”
“Ultimately, Dr. Greitens hopes that it was truly a mistake, and that nobody in the household needed assistance on that day,” Wade said.
Eric Greitens, in a statement released through his campaign, said: “If this is what my opponents and RINOs have resorted to, they must be in real trouble since their previous false attack on me was exposed. My children are my number one priority and my opponents trying to exploit my children just proves these RINOs are revolting human beings.”
The Star discovered the 911 call through a request to Warren County for records pertaining to Greitens and received no tips about it beforehand.
The previously unreported 911 call is the only one made from the Innsbrook home since the couple purchased the property in 2017, according to records provided by Warren County. The documents don’t specify whether the call came from a cell or landline phone.
The documents turned over by the county also include a report detailing a May 2018 traffic stop of Eric Greitens for speeding. He was given a warning and not ticketed. The stop was reported at the time.
It’s not clear whether authorities investigated the 911 call in May 2019 beyond calling back. Warren County Sheriff Kevin Harrison, whose department provides law enforcement services to Innsbrook, didn’t respond to emailed questions and a phone number listed for him on the Missouri Ethics Commission website was not in service.
911 hang ups, unresponsive and silent calls are not unheard of, often the result of pocket dials, pranks, and children handling phones. Standards from the National Emergency Number Association say if there’s doubt about the veracity of a caller’s claim that 911 was inadvertently dialed or emergency services aren’t needed, then a response should be made to verify the caller isn’t in a threatening situation.
Amy LaBanca, Warren County’s emergency services administrator, in an email said, “We always send units on 911 hang-ups, even if contact is made on the admin line. There was a deputy dispatched, yes.” But neither emergency services nor the sheriff’s department produced documentation confirming an officer visited the home.
The only document related to the call in Warren County’s possession was an event report listing the event as “closed” at 4:12 p.m. — three minutes after the call was placed.
It includes a brief description of the call that ends:
CHILD ON THE LINE
COOPERATIVE
