COLUMBIA, Mo. — Sheena Chestnut Greitens grew concerned enough about her then-husband Eric Greitens’ violent and controlling behavior four years ago that she gave detailed allegations of the former Missouri governor being physically and emotionally abusive to her and their young children to a marriage therapist and a family lawyer, records show.
The two communications, sent in 2018, offer an exhaustive account of the abuse allegations against Eric Greitens that were first made public in a sworn statement filed by Sheena Greitens in March.
Now a candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, Eric Greitens has tried to paint the allegations as a political conspiracy orchestrated by establishment Republicans in an effort to derail his campaign.
The documents, obtained by The Kansas City Star, undercut Greitens’ claim that his ex-wife’s allegations were politically motivated and make clear that she described the same allegations to at least four people, including Eric Greitens himself, in 2018 — when the abuse is alleged to have happened.
The communications also describe the lengths that multiple people went to limit Eric Greitens’ access to guns because of his perceived mental state in the aftermath of his resignation as Missouri’s governor in 2018.
In a phone interview with the Star on Wednesday, Sheena Greitens said she wrote the email to the therapist during a “crisis situation that seemed to be escalating out of control.”
“When I sent that email, it was really out of desperation,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I felt unsafe and, at that point, really begging for help and trying to do it in a way that protected my family.”
The 2018 communications undergird her new concerns about physical violence in the aftermath of a campaign video that showed Greitens hunting his perceived political enemies.
Greitens has claimed the video was a “tongue-in-cheek.”
They also show that Greitens has previously accused Sheena Greitens of using allegations of child abuse against him, accusing her of sending claims to Missouri prosecutors who were investigating him and to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sheena Greitens called the claim “open paranoia.”
When asked about the allegations, Greitens’ attorney, Gary Stamper, accused Sheena Greitens of lying and again implied it was a politically orchestrated attack. He referenced the couple’s shared custody agreement as proof that the court does not view him as a threat to the children.
“We believe that the ex-wife’s continued and most recent efforts to drag their children into the press are not in their best interests,” Stamper said.
One week after sending the email to the marriage therapist, Sheena Greitens wrote a letter to a family lawyer that Eric Greitens had ordered her to delete and have the therapist delete it as well. Eric Greitens “threatened to write an email response that would counter-accuse me of abusing our children if I was not able to get the emails deleted within the next ten minutes,” the letter said.
After Sheena Greitens reached the therapist by phone, the therapist texted Eric Greitens that the email had been deleted, the letter said.
In the letter to the family lawyer, she expressed concern that Greitens’ violent behavior was escalating and increasing in frequency. She also expressed concern that Greitens did not recognize or acknowledge that his behavior was frightening to his family or inappropriate.
“Eric’s temper has been volatile and his fuse is basically non-existent; he goes from calm to physically angry in a flash,” she wrote in the letter.
The behavior she’s witnessed from her former husband over the last several months reminds her of how he acted in 2018, she said Wednesday. She said she initially wanted to restrict her comments to the courtroom, but decided to speak publicly after she watched Eric Greitens’ most recent campaign video.
The video made her decide to “set the record straight, that the allegations Eric has made are a complete fabricated set of lies,” she said.
“They are not true,” she said on the phone Wednesday. “They have no basis in fact. There was no prior conspiracy, and I feel obligated to clarify that for my own safety and that of my children.”
Sheena Greitens sent the first email to a marriage therapist on June 7, 2018 — six days after Eric Greitens left office amid allegations he blackmailed and sexually assaulted a woman he was having an affair with. The email describes the former governor’s escalating physically and emotionally abusive behavior.
“I am scared at Eric’s recent behavior,” she wrote in the five-page email that was also addressed to Eric Greitens. “…Moreover, if this pattern continues, I am afraid that an overreaction will actually become a safety issue. I do not want to get to that point.”
The incidents referenced in the 2018 email are the same events described in Sheena Greitens’ sworn statement from March of this year. In the email, she describes a time where Eric Greitens allegedly hit one of his sons in the face while he was sitting in his booster seat, an incident where the same son told Sheena that “Daddy grabbed my hair and pulled my head really hard and it hurt me,” and a time when he pushed Sheena and knocked her over.
In an emailed response the next day, the marriage therapist thanked Sheena Greitens “for voicing an immense amount of pain” and told Eric Greitens that the person described in the email was “NOT a guy leading with contrition, remorse, and justice to restore trust that he has shattered.”
The marriage therapist attached a document to the email and encouraged Eric Greitens to read it. “If this document can’t get through to you, then I believe I’m at my limits of effectiveness here,” he wrote.
There is no response from the former governor in the communications obtained from Sheena Greitens.
A week later, Sheena Greitens drafted a letter to an attorney that outlined her concerns about the former governor’s behavior. The detailed letter, which includes dates of specific events, is based on emails and a journal she kept, the letter said.
It’s divided into three areas of concern: Eric Greitens’ “treatment of me/kids (physical & controlling behavior); a pattern of suicide threats and firearm confiscation; and unwillingness to engage in individual therapy to address possible mental health concerns.”
The letter includes the same allegations of abusive behavior referenced in the email to the therapist and in Sheena Greitens’ affidavit. It also describes three instances in 2018 where people close to Eric Greitens’ removed or limited his access to guns.
On Feb. 22, 2018 – the day a St. Louis grand jury indicted Eric Greitens on a felony invasion of privacy charge – his general counsel Lucinda Luetkemeyer requested that the Governor’s Security Detail remove any access to firearms he might have “because she was concerned about his stability in the aftermath of the indictment,” the letter to the lawyer said.
Two months later, while Sheena Greitens was on a trip with her two sons, a friend flew to Missouri to see Eric Greitens and “took Eric’s firearm away for the weekend, but returned it to him at the end of the weekend, the letter said.
And then in May 2018, Sheena Greitens witnessed Gregg Favre, then-deputy director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, removing a bag from the family’s home that contained Eric Greitens’ firearm, the letter said. Favre, according to the letter, told Sheena Greitens he thought it was best “out of an abundance of caution.”
Sheena Greitens told the Star she has no problem repeating the events detailed in the emails and in the affidavit under oath and described her account as “very consistent.”
Asked why she thinks Eric Greitens has yet to answer questions under oath about her abuse allegations, Sheena Greitens said she didn’t want to speculate but thinks it’s because his answers would be “uncomfortable and damaging.”
“He’s done everything he possibly can to avoid going under oath,” she said. “Since when he raised his hand and took the oath of office.”
———
