John Wayne Glover’s despicable urge to fondle elderly women led to at least six vicious murders
HE lived an upstanding life in one of Australia’s most exclusive suburbs — except when he unleashed his “dark side” to kill at least six elderly women to satisfy evil sexual needs.
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AUSSIE serial killer John Wayne Glover did not consider himself a typical mass murderer even though he fit the bill.
A man who attacked and killed elderly women — he often used a hammer or their pantyhose — Glover did not revel in the limelight like so many of his callous contemporaries around the world.
But, according to one detective who knew Glover better than most, the Sydney stalker may have had a habit common to most serial killers — collecting sordid trophies.
“A number of the elderly ladies were found without panties,” former Det-Insp Dennis O’Toole told The Daily Telegraph after Glover’s death in September 2005.
“We’ve never located them. He has stolen them and hidden them somewhere. He has always denied he did that — he expected us to believe not all elderly women wear panties; that he wouldn’t do that.’’
Glover never accepted the serial killer tag and died in custody ten years ago on September 9, 2005.
He hated being included among their ranks, because he claimed he had diminished responsibility and felt nothing during the attacks.
A former work colleague, who knew Glover well, said he did not like being portrayed as a monster.
English-born Glover, who first emigrated to Melbourne in 1956, was living a comfortable life in Mosman, near Sydney, with his wife and two daughters, when he embarked on his murder spree.
A pie salesman, he harboured a sick need to stalk and inappropriately touch elderly women, particularly in nursing homes.
He murdered six old ladies, but investigators believe his total number of victims goes higher than that.
Glover either bashed his victims with a hammer, slammed their heads into brick walls or strangled them with their own pantyhose.
His murder victims were: Gwendoline Mitchelhill, 82; Lady Winifreda Ashton, 84; Margaret Pahud, 85; Olive Cleveland, 81; Muriel Falconer, 92; and Joan Sinclair, 60.
His attacks occurred across Sydney’s affluent north shore suburbs, from Lane Cove to Mosman, between 1989 and 1990.
He killed during daylight hours, usually after he finished selling and delivering his food products.
A court was told Glover did not plan the attacks, but rather set upon old women he noticed walking in the street or sitting alone near their homes.
Most of the women were attacked in lanes, gardens or alcoves in the blocks of flats or retirement homes where they lived.
After some of the murders Glover would play the pokies before heading home to his wife and children.
Police arrested him after he killed Ms Sinclair, the only one of his murder victims he knew.
He’d tried to commit suicide in her home by drinking a bottle of scotch and swallowing pills after murdering her.
In a suicide note he’d written: “No more grannies.”
A preliminary hearing at the City Court in Glebe heard that Glover told police he should be “strung up” after admitting to murdering six elderly women on Sydney’s north shore.
“You just seem to see these ladies and it seems to trigger something,” it was alleged he said during a police interview.
“I’ve just got to be violent to them. One side of me was all right. The other dark, evil. I can’t control it.”
Glover, formally refused bail and ordered to be remanded in the psychiatric section of Long Bay jail, reserved his defence and was sent to trial.
At trial he pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Wendy Robinson, QC, told the NSW Supreme Court that Glover attacked the women from behind, often with a claw hammer.
On four occasions he allegedly took off their pantyhose and strangled the women with them.
In evidence, Dennis O’Toole, then a detective sergeant, said Glover admitted murdering the women and signed a record of interview during which he’d listed the victims and detailed the murders.
According to Det-Sgt O’Toole, Glover said he hadn’t been able to stop himself because his victims had “an uncanny resemblance” to his dead mother-in-law.
According to Glover, his mother-in-law, Essie, caused problems — and he despised her.
He also despised his mother, a dominating woman he’d “escaped” from by moving to Australia.
Glover had assaulted six other women during the period in which he bashed or strangled his murder victims, the jury was told.
Dr John Shand told the court Glover had “paraphilia involving sexual sadism ... and a narcissistic disorder”.
During the trial, Glover finally admitted to killing the six women.
In a statement to the court, he described a dysfunctional upbringing and how he travelled from England to Melbourne for work — and to “escape” his dominating “loose” mother.
“I got into trouble with the police in Melbourne on two occasions for assault on women,” he read from his prepared statement.
“One was quite young, 35, the other quite old. No death occurred. I was put on probation.
“There was another matter which arose. I was accused of voyeurism which was proved and I admitted anyway. That was six weeks in the Metropolitan Remand Centre in Melbourne.
“My relations with women at that time — before, during and after — were quite normal, quite successful. That went by, and I met my wife-to-be.”
After getting married, Glover moved in with his wife’s parents.
He and his wife had two girls.
“Things got progressively awkward with the in-laws,” Glover said.
In a move that exacerbated Glover’s relationship problems with maternal figures, his mother moved from England to Sydney.
She died of cancer after a previous mastectomy, he explained.
Glover described how he too developed cancer, and how it rendered him impotent.
Around that time, he said, his work as a sales rep gave him access to factory canteens, hospitals and nursing homes.
“I then felt compelled to molest elderly women in nursing homes,” he told the jury.
“I have no excuse, no reason. I can’t give you what compulsion drove me to do it, but the fact remains it happened.”
He said he didn’t know why he gravitated to murder.
“My lifestyle in Mosman was superb,” he explained.
“We had lots of friends and no worries about debts, home, or anything like that. The kids were getting through school beautifully.
“I was well respected in the community. I belonged to good clubs, but these things occurred and ... when it happened it was ‘see someone and attack’.
“I felt detached, as if I was witnessing the thing and not actually doing it.”
Forensic psychiatrist Dr John Strum, a defence witness, told the court Glover housed two personalities.
“I think Mr Glover fits closely to our ideal of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — with similar problems,” Dr Strum said.
He believed the murder hammer was a tool through which Glover vented frustration about his impotence; a physical problem caused by cancer his mother had genetically passed on to him.
Crown forensic psychiatrist Dr Rod Milton told the jury Glover was sexually aroused but not insane when he killed the women.
Dr Milton said it was possible Glover’s violence was a reflection of the anger he felt towards his “loose” four-times-married mother.
After a very short deliberation, the jury found Glover guilty.
Justice James Wood handed Glover six life sentences, saying Glover was never to be released.
“This is a man, I’m afraid, of extreme cunning, of extreme dangerousness, who is prepared to attack whenever or wherever it pleases him,” Justice Wood said during sentencing.
Dennis O’Toole continued to visit Glover in the hope Glover might confess to other murders.
“I’m absolutely, totally convinced that he has committed at least five other murders,” Mr O’Toole told The Sunday Telegraph in February 2001.
Those murders were of Wanda Amundsen at Umina, NSW, in 1998; Josephine McDonnell at Ettalong, NSW, in 1984; socialite Florence Broadhurst at Paddington, NSW, in 1977; Irene Kiddle in St Kilda, Victoria, in 1963; and Christina Yankos in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1968.
Glover never confessed to those killings.
In September 2005, a cancer-ravaged Glover, aged 72, committed suicide in his jail cell by hanging himself with a shower curtain.
“His defence (was) that something happened — that some dark evil overtook him and made him do things,” Mr O’Toole told The Sunday Telegraph.
“The reality is that John Glover did it because John Glover got an enormous sense of power out of it.
“If you go into his background, he’s identical to all your well-known serial murderers — your Ted Bundys.”
Despite Glover’s protestations, he will forever be ranked among the list of the world’s most infamous serial killers.
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