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That's $50 off with code LISTEN at BlueNile.com. Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 142. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. And tonight, I am happy to bring to you a fresh new Serial Killer Expo say.
This tale will be a classic one. It features a serial killer who might not be very famous outside of his home country, but he is as wicked and vile as the serial killer superstars such as Gacy and Bundy was. He murdered at least six human beings in an extremely brutal manner and his choice of victims was particularly heinous.
choosing people who had few means to defend themselves. I am slightly tired of the cold winter months here in the high north, so I would also like to travel again with you, dear listener, to the land down under, Australia, in order to meet our subject.
I am, of course, talking about none other than the man with a very similar name as the famous killer clown, down to his very initials. His name was John Wayne Glover, and the type of serial killer he was is quite rare. In most cases of serial murder, the perpetrators very rarely leave a calling card.
a repetitive clue or injury, telling investigators that it is the work of the same killer. Remember, there is a difference between a serial killer's signature, modus operandi, and calling card.
Some serial killers prefer to abduct their victims, have their way with them, and then conceal their bodies. Others use different methods of murder from one killing to the next, while others blatantly go about killing prostitutes over and over again until they are stopped.
Calling card serial killers are the ones that keep committing identical murders time and again until they are caught, although some are never caught. Calling card serial killers are also the killers that get the most publicity, as the public is aware of each killing as it takes place, and are aware that there is a maniac on the loose.
Unlike when the victims are abducted and concealed and investigators can only suspect it is the work of the one killer. As a consequence, these murderers are certainly the best known serial killers in history. The killer clown Gacy, Jack the Ripper, the Yorkshire Ripper, the Zodiac, and New York's Son of Sam.
who went one step further and taunted police with letters, telling them when his next killing would be. They were all calling card serial killers. So was John Wayne Glover.
Each time Glover committed serial murder, he ruthlessly bashed his victims to death with a hammer in public places in broad daylight, and then throttled the last breath out of them with their own undergarments. The killings were unmistakably the work of the one person. John Glover was the Granny Killer, the Monster of Mossman.
a vicious and calculating serial killer who deep-etched a macabre niche for himself into the history of Australia's most despicable murderers. Enjoy. As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. This club includes 29 dignified members of exquisite taste, and their names are...
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William and Zosia, you are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you. If you want to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash theserialkillerpodcast. Link in the show description.
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John Wayne Glover was the least likely person you would suspect to be a serial killer.
He was as inconspicuous as he was deviant. A big, seemingly friendly man in his late fifties, he was the backbone of middle-class society and the type of guy you could leave in charge of your kids or ask to keep an eye on your house while you are away. In many ways, he not only shared a similar name with the infamous killer clown John Wayne Gacy,
But he looked quite a bit like him as well. Just as Gacy had been a pillar of his own middle-class community, so was Glover. In addition to being solidly middle-class, Glover had cemented his reputation by being married and having two lovely daughters.
Glover and his loved ones lived a contented lifestyle in their comfortable family home in the fashionable harbourside Sydney suburb of Marsman on Sydney Harbour. And, as if to enhance this tragic deception of normalcy, Glover was a volunteer charity worker with the Senior Citizens' Society.
and listed among his friends a former mayor of Mossman, with whom he would often have a drink at his favorite watering hole, the Mossman Returned Servicemen's League's Club. To add to his image of the regular middle-aged man, Glover held down a job as a sales representative with the 4 & 20 Pie Company. His warm handshake and jolly smile endeared new acquaintances to him immediately.
He was a walking advertisement for his product, the type of bloke that it was nice to be around. John Wayne Glover was born on the 26th of November 1932. When he migrated to Australia from England in 1956, the 24-year-old Glover already had a criminal record dating back to 1947 for stealing clothing and handbags.
He was later thrown out of the British Army when these crimes were discovered. Almost immediately after his arrival, he was convicted on two counts of theft of personal property in Victoria and one of theft in New South Wales.
and in 1962 he was convicted on two counts of assaulting females in Melbourne, two of indecent assault, one of assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, and four counts of theft of personal property. Incredibly, he got off with three years probation as a foreshadowing of what would happen later in life,
The Victorian attacks were extremely savage and violent, and on each occasion articles of clothing had been forcibly removed. Fortunately, Glover had been disturbed before the assaults could develop into rape or murder. On each occasion, the Melbourne victims were violently and repeatedly bashed about the head and body.
They were forced to the ground as the attacker frantically ripped off their clothes before their screams alerted local residents who rang the police and came to their aid. Those first on the scene were amazed at the ferocity of the attacks. The second victim, a 25-year-old woman walking home from a meeting at 10.30 p.m., was found on the front lawn of a home.
Dazed and in shock, she told police that the man had followed her down the dark suburban street and chased her when she tried to run away. She screamed as he knocked her to the ground unconscious. She awoke on the lawn to find herself bleeding profusely and with her undergarments in a state of disarray. The attacker had fled when her screams aroused the neighborhood.
Residents reported seeing a young man running into a nearby yard, and prompt police action saw the apprehension of 29-year-old Glover, then a television rigger with the Australian Broadcasting Commission and living in the quiet, tree-lined Melbourne suburb of Camberwell. Glover said that he had fought with his girlfriend and was emotionally strung out.
He was charged and, after spending the night in jail, was released on bail the following morning. As he was leaving the police station, Glover was stopped by two other detectives who had heard of his arrest. They wanted to have a chat with him about a similar assault a couple of weeks earlier. At first, Glover denied any knowledge of the incident.
but under intense questioning, he confessed to the previous assault and was taken back to the station and recharged. In light of Glover's previous convictions and the ferocity of the attacks, the detectives were astonished when he was let off with a good behavior bond and three years probation. Justice finally caught up with John Wayne Glover in 1965,
but only in a small way when he was convicted on a peeping Tom charge of being unlawfully on the premises. He was sentenced to three months in prison, but served only six weeks behind bars. Following his release from prison, Glover seemed to have changed his ways, and apart from a minor shoplifting charge in 1978,
he would not come into police notice again for many years. Police today agree that it would have been almost impossible for a criminal of Glover's nature to keep his hands to himself for the following 25 years, and those years we know dreadfully little about.
In fact, some police wonder if Glover could have helped with inquiries into at least seven other unsolved murders with similar modus operandi committed between 1961 and 1989. In Melbourne in 1968, Glover married Jacqueline Gale, known as Gay, Rawls.
They had met while Glover was working at a wine and spirit store in Melbourne's inner city. Gay's father, John Rawls, felt that the quiet, handsome young man was a good match for his beloved daughter. At first, his wife, Essie Rawls, agreed, but it didn't take her long to figure out that Glover may have something to hide.
Even though she was from a well-to-do, middle-class Sydney background, Gay loved the gentle English migrant who had arrived in Australia in the 1950s with only 30 shillings to his name. Clover came from a very poor, working-class family and told his few friends that he had come to Australia to start a new life and leave behind a traumatic and disruptive family background. With her parents' blessing,
Gay and John became engaged and married shortly after. In 1970, the happy couple moved to Sydney to live with Gay's parents in the comfortable family home at Mossman. Gay's father was very ill and he asked the newlyweds if they would move into the house to keep him company. Glover was delighted. The poor English migrant with a record of theft and violence had done well.
To move to Mosman and into a two-story house near the harbour was more than he could ever have dreamed possible.
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Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable.
For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it.
But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Everyone needs someone to talk to, even psychopaths, even your humble host.
Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Like all of the decisions in their married life, it was a joint one between John and Gay to move into his in-laws' home.
It was here that Glover's hatred for his mother-in-law, Essie, erupted. A separate wing was built on the house so that Gay and John and their two daughters, Kelly, born in 1971, and Marnie, born in 1973, could live an almost separate existence from the demanding Essie Rawls. Glover would say at his trial that he hated Essie.
that the atmosphere was always tense and that the situation became even worse when Gay's father died in 1981. Glover told the court that Essie was a tyrant. Police had no trouble confirming this when they interviewed staff of the nursing home in Marsman where she died in 1988. To add to Glover's domestic woes,
In 1982, his mother, Freda, migrated to Australia and turned up on his door. Glover loathed her almost as much as he loathed his mother-in-law. Freda Underwood, as she was now known, had been married four times and had had numerous lovers both during and between her marriages.
When she tried to move in as a temporary companion to S.E. Rawls, it was more than Glover could handle. The last thing he wanted was someone in the house who could bring him undone with tales of his unfortunate childhood. This was the type of ammunition that S.E. Rawls wanted.
To Glover, his mother's arrival and insistence on intimately becoming a part of his new family life was a massive shock to his system. The mere thought of having both his dreaded mother and the mother-in-law he hated under the one roof was more than he could stand. Glover demanded that his mother move to Gosford, one hundred kilometres north of Sydney.
He refused to allow his new family to have anything to do with her. She died at Gosford in 1988 of breast cancer. Surprisingly, John Wayne Glover was diagnosed with having the same cancer, although it is extremely rare amongst men. At the time, it was not something men would openly talk about, as breast cancer was looked at as a purely feminine phenomenon.
He had grown up being bullied and harassed and could not stand the idea of experiencing the same as an adult. He did, however, deal with the cancer and had a mastectomy. After this procedure, Glover developed a prostate condition and became sexually impotent.
His identity as a masculine man was losing ground quickly, and having both breast cancer and being impotent caused a burning rage to build inside him. His doting wife Gay knew nothing of her husband's dark past, and he never did anything to indicate that he was anything other than an adoring husband and father to their two daughters.
the quote-unquote start of it all as glover would refer to it later came on the eleventh of january nineteen eighty nine when he saw eighty-four-year-old mrs margaret todhunter walking along quiet hale road
He parked his car, and, after he was satisfied that no one was looking, he punched the unsuspecting victim in the face with a swinging right hook and relieved her of her handbag containing two hundred and nine dollars. As he fled down the street with her bag, Mrs. Todd Hunter called out after him, and I quote, "'You rotten bugger!'
Glover subsequently went to the Mossman Returned Servicemen's Club, where he drank and played the poker machines with the stolen money. Investigating police put the incident down to a mugging. They assumed that someone saw the elderly woman with the cash and waited for the right moment to strike. In the drug-ravaged suburbs of Sydney,
Muggings were a daily occurrence. While the case was investigated thoroughly, little hope was given of recovering the money or finding the perpetrator of such a cowardly act. Mrs. Toddhunter survived the ordeal, but was badly bruised and shaken. As it eventuated, she was also extremely lucky. Glover's next victim was not so fortunate.
On the 1st of March, 1989, he had a few drinks at the Marsman Club after work, and mid-afternoon was heading for his car down the busy military road when he spotted Gwendolyn Mitchellhill going home from the shops at a slow pace with her walking stick. Glover hurriedly returned to his car and tucked a hammer he had there into his belt.
Then he slowly followed the old woman to the seclusion of the entry foyer of her retirement village. As she turned the key and the lock, he brought the hammer down with a crushing blow to the back of her skull. He then repeatedly bashed her so viciously about the head and body that he broke several ribs in her tiny jockey weight frame.
He fled the scene, taking her wallet containing $100. Incredibly, Mrs. Mitchell Hill was still alive when the two schoolboys found her. But sadly, she became the granny killer's first official murder victim just a few minutes after the police and ambulance arrived.
As Mrs. Mitchell Hill drew her last breath, Glover was sitting in his lounge room, wondering out loud to his wife what the sirens in the distance were all about. Again, the police were baffled. But there was nothing concrete to link the two attacks. There was a theory that they could be the work of one person, but it was a long shot.
Police finally assumed that it was yet another mugging that had gone disastrously wrong. Ten weeks later, in the late afternoon on the 9th of May, Glover was heading for the Mosman Club in the military road again when he saw Lady Winifred Ashton walking slowly towards him in a red raincoat and with the aid of a walking stick.
Lady Ashton had been playing bingo at the club and was heading toward her home in nearby Raglan Street. Glover pulled on a pair of gloves and followed her into the foyer of her apartment building. There, he attacked her with his hammer and threw her to the ground in the rubbish bin alcove. Although suffering from lymph cancer, the tiny and frail Lady Ashton put up an incredible struggle.
Glover stated after his arrest the following, and I quote, At one stage she almost had me until I fell on top of her and repeatedly bashed her head against the concrete. End quote. As he finally managed to beat her unconscious, Glover removed her pantyhose and strangled her to death with them. Although no sexual act took place, this gruesome ritual would become Glover's calling card.
And then, almost ritualistically, Glover laid her walking stick and shoes at her feet before he headed off to the Mosman Club with her purse, which contained one hundred dollars. Glover later commented to the bar staff at the Mosman Club that he hoped that the sirens they could hear just around the corner weren't for another mugging.
He said this as he calmly fed the contents of Lady Ashton's purse through the poker machines. Only now did police believe they had a maniacal killer on the loose. There were too many similarities.
To date, all the three victims were wealthy old ladies. All came from the same suburb, all were assaulted or killed in a similar manner, and all were robbed of their handbags. This was no ordinary mugger. Although it was now a strong possibility, the thought of one individual seeking out and murdering defenseless old women was almost beyond comprehension.
If violently beating little old ladies with a hammer and strangling them with their own undergarments were not enough, Glover started molesting old women confined to their beds in their nursing homes he visited in the course of his rounds as a pie salesman. Local police investigated, but the alarm bells did not ring. The molestations were not connected to the murders at the time.
though at a later date the incidents would play an important part in identifying Glover. On his nursing home rounds, Glover first molested 77-year-old Mrs. Marjorie Mosley on the 6th of June 1989 at the Wesley Gardens Retirement Home in Belrose, which is quite a distance from Marsman.
Mrs. Moseley reported the incident and said that the man put his hand under her nightie. She could not recall what he looked like. Then, on the 24th of June, Glover visited the Caroline Chisholm Nursing Home in nearby Lane Cove. He leisurely strolled upstairs, where he lifted the dress of an elderly woman and fondled her buttocks.
Moving to the room next door, he slid his hand down the front of another woman's nightdress and stroked her breasts. The terrified woman cried out, and Glover was questioned briefly by staff, but not held as he made a hurried exit. The incidents were investigated by local police, but were not connected to the murders in Mosman.
and it was a long time before it was thought that this information may be of any use to the Granny Killer Task Force. By the time the connection was made, there had been more attacks, more bashings, and more murders. The next murder occurred on the 8th of August 1989. Glover bashed elderly Effie Carney's head and torso with his hammer,
then strangled the unconscious lady to death with her own undergarments this occurred in a quiet street in lindfield not far from mossman and he also stole her groceries
On the 6th of October, he passed himself off as a doctor and ran his hand up the dress of Phyllis McNeill, a patient at the Wibinia Nursing Home at Neutral Bay, the harborside suburb next but one to Mosman. Again he eluded captcha when the blind old woman called for help.
It seemed that Glover could walk in and out of hospitals as he pleased. No one suspected the pastry salesman. Not once, through that series of molestations, was he ever identified. On the 18th of October, Glover struck again, and this time with a ferocity that would convince police that their worst nightmare was a reality. The attacks were the work of one man.
but in what would later prove to be a cruel irony. This assault would start them looking for the wrong type of offender. In the mid-afternoon, Glover struck up a conversation with 86-year-old Mrs. Doris Cox as she slowly made her way home along Spit Road, Marsman. He walked with her into the secluded stairwell of her retirement village
Then he attacked her from behind, using his entire body weight to smash her face into a brick wall. She collapsed at his feet. After finding nothing that he wanted in her handbag, Glover left her for dead and went home.
Mrs. Cox, an Alzheimer's victim, somehow survived the attack, but she was hazy about the description of her attacker, even though she saw him while he walked with her. In her understandably confused state, she thought that her attacker was a younger man, and assisted police as best as she could in preparing an identikit drawing.
At last, the police believed they had a lead. To the head of the task force, Detective Inspector Mike Hagen, the new information made sense. He suspected that the killer was a local because of the close proximity of the killings and muggings. As well, police psychological profiles suggested the killer would most likely be a teenager with a grandmother fixation.
and Mrs. Cox thought that she had been bashed by a young man. Mike Hagen now concentrated the task force energies in search of a young local who may be acting strangely or had any possible relationship or connection to the victims. Tragically, this theory was only right to the extent it suggested the killer was a local. There is a Norwegian saying that goes like this.
Jævarn passer på sin egne. Translated, it means, the devil watches over his own, and it would almost appear that some malign force was protecting Glover, as his next attack would lead police to doubt that the man they sought was even a local.
I don't know.
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And with that, we come to the end of part one of two of the saga of the granny killer John Wayne Glover. Next episode, number 143 in number, will feature the second and final installment in this saga. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening to
If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast. Thank you, good night, and good luck.