Granny-killer death 'may have been accidental'

A SERIAL murderer dubbed the "Granny Killer" boasted of plans to marry hours before he was found dead after hanging himself with a shower curtain inside his jail cell.

A SERIAL murderer dubbed the "Granny Killer" boasted of plans to marry hours before he was found dead after hanging himself with a shower curtain inside his jail cell.

A coronial inquest into the death of John Wayne Glover, who murdered six elderly women in the year to March 1990, has heard his death may have been a failed attempt to gain a transfer out of the Lithgow Correctional Centre.

Despite police evidence suggesting this was the case, in a brief hearing earlier this morning NSW Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanich found Glover had meant to kill himself on September 9 last year.

In a statement to the inquiry at Westmead Coroner's Court in Sydney's west, Detective Senior Constable Ian Mitchell of NSW police said Glover may not have realised a regular check of inmates at the jail had been suspended on the day he died.

His body was found by another inmate hanging from a grill in the cell wall shortly after the 1pm check would have taken place.

"Whether the suicide was intentional or an attempt at attention, with a transfer in mind, is not known, however, I believe this is the most likely scenario," the statement reads.

"John Glover, prior to his death, seemed future oriented...and planned (a) visit for the following Sunday with Elizabeth Howarth.

"Nothing was discovered in his cell that would indicate a suicide intention."

On the morning of his death, Glover telephoned Ms Howarth and later told staff at the jail he would get married the following January.

Ms Howarth, a former colleague of Glover who met him when he worked as a salesman for a pie company, has given evidence to police she visited Glover regularly and spoke to him by phone every fortnight.

In these conversations, she told police, Glover would ask her to marry him and, while she said she would do so, she later insisted this was a joke.

Glover had married before, in 1968 and brought up two children in Mosman on Sydney's north shore. After his conviction for the series of murders around the area in which he lived, the family have refused to have any contact with him.