THE MIND OF A KILLER
THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ‘GRANNY KILLER’ MURDERS IS A REMINDER OF ONE OF THE DARKEST CRIME CHAPTERS IN OUR HISTORY
John Wayne Glover looked like a regular Aussie grandfather, the kind of jovial man who enjoyed a drink at the local club as well as a spin on the pokies.
But what lay beneath his unexceptional appearance was a monster responsible for one the most horrific killing sprees across Sydney’s leafy North Shore, 30 years ago. From 1989-90, Glover embarked on a brutal series of assaults and murders of elderly women, earning him the title of the ‘Granny Killer’.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the end of Glover’s murderous rampage, but the haunting tale of the vicious attacks remains one of the darkest chapters in Sydney’s history.
“It was the most bizarre case and I had never seen anything like it before,” A Current Affair crime reporter Simon Bouda, who covered the case at the time, recalls.
Along with fellow authors Larry Writer and Steve Barrett, Simon later wrote about Glover in the book Garden of Evil.
“This case gripped Australia as it upset so many people – this man was killing old ladies,” Simon says. “No-one would have ever picked Glover as a killer, which is why I believe he was able to get away with it for such a long time.”
English-born Glover lived a life of petty crime long before he emigrated to Australia in 1956 at the age of 24, and he continued in the same vein once here, with numerous charges of larceny and assault.
Glover had settled in Mosman, was married with two daughters, and worked as a pie sales representative for a pie company. But he had a troubled history with older female figures, particularly his mother, Freda, and mother-inlaw, Essie. Months after Freda died in 1989, Glover embarked on his rampage.
“He had serious issues stemming from growing up with a promiscuous mother,” Simon says. “He took all that rage and transposed that to the women he attacked and those whose lives he claimed.”
The first murder was on March 1, 1989, when he bashed Gwendoline Mitchelhill, 82, with a hammer. Months later on May 9, he murdered Lady Winfreda Isabel Ashton, 84, in the same manner, but this time he also removed her pantyhose and strangled her – an act he would repeat in other murders.
In November, he murdered Margaret Pahud, 78, Olive Cleveland, 81 and Muriel Falconer, 93. In addition to the murders, Glover also assaulted seven other elderly women, including Mosman’s Doris Cox. Sometimes they were random attacks on the street, other times Glover sexually molested residents in nursing homes.
It was after one particular assault in Greenwich Hospital
that he was identified. After police contacted him, Glover attempted suicide by overdose and ended up in hospital.
A suicide note Glover had left contained the breakthrough in the case. Scrawled across it were the words, ‘No more grannies’. Glover became the main suspect and was put under police surveillance.
He struck a final time on March 19, 1990, when he killed Joan Sinclair, 60. When police later entered her house, they found not only her dead body, but also Glover, who had attempted suicide again with another overdose and had also slashed his wrist.
In total, Glover killed six women and assaulted seven others, but he also became a suspect in seven other murders, including the 1977 slaying of artist Florence Broadhurst.
In November 1991, Glover, then 59, was convicted on six counts of murders, with the recommendation he never be released from gaol.
It was while he was in Sydney’s Long Bay Prison that Simon and Steve interviewed the killer for their book. Simon recalls Glover showed no remorse, but the meeting did offer an insight into the mind of the criminal. “When we asked him about the killings, he explained there was a ‘black John Glover’ and a ‘white John Glover’,” Simon says. “One was evil and one was good, and it was where they met in the middle that he was lost.”
Steve recalls, “He was actually boastful about what he had done, and we made it very clear he was not the hero of the book – he was a killer and that made him the villain. He didn’t like that at all and that was when we saw the other side of him.”
Glover was later moved to Lithgow Correctional Centre. On September 10, 2005, he was found to have hanged himself in his cell. He was 72.
“For me, the lasting impression (of Glover) is about what was going on for a man, who had so much anger and violence, that he would do something like this,” Simon says. “We need to remember things like this do happen.”