Woman charged with murder as police make breakthrough in body in the wall cold case of Tanya Lee Glover
A 61-year-old woman has been charged with murder after detectives made a breakthrough in cold case of Tanya Lee Glover whose body was found in an alcove of a Brisbane unit.
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Detectives will allege a friend of Tanya Lee Glover murdered her and dumped her body in an alcove of a unit block in Brisbane, where she remained for more than a decade before being found.
In a major breakthrough in the complex murder investigation that also required specialist DNA methodologies to identify Ms Glover, a 61-year-old Townsville woman was arrested on Friday and charged with murdering her friend in January 2010.
The Wulguru woman, who will face Townsville Magistrates Court on Saturday, was also charged with moving her body and with fraud.
Cleaners found the body of Ms Glover, wrapped and stuffed in the alcove at the base of the Alderley unit complex, in December 2022.
At the time police were unable to identify her remains as she had been there for more than a decade. Ms Glover, a vulnerable vision and hearing-impaired woman, was also never reported missing.
Investigators were able to identify Ms Glover through genetic genealogy, using her DNA to build a family tree.
She was about 38 years old at the time of her death and had been living in the Fortitude Valley area.
Detective Inspector John Mison said investigations took detectives all over Australia to confirm Ms Glover’s identity.
He said the woman charged knew Ms Glover and described her as a friend. He declined to say the location where police would allege she was killed.
“What I can say is that we know that they were living at a location in the same complex, probably not living together, if that makes sense,” Det Insp Mison said.
“But definitely we’ve identified that the association was based on a friendship.”
The woman arrested in Townsville had been living there for years, Det Insp Mison said.
Det Insp Mison said the case was like no other he had seen in his career.
“I have been in the police force for 35 years,” he said.
“I’ve never come across anything like this. She was located in a busy city, approximately 5 kilometres from the centre of the city and she had been there for 12 or so years.
“So that in itself is quite remarkable.”
Det Insp Mison said the investigation was complex.
“For us, we’ve had to go back in time and piece together, it’s almost like starting a cold case from the start,” he said.
“And it’s taken a mammoth amount of police work to go through records, go through information, I’ve had detectives collecting information and gathering evidence in other states in Australia in so far as advancing this investigation.
“There have been some hurdles, we managed to address some of the hurdles, and that’s through sheer dedication and hard work.”
Det Insp Mison said the public had helped in the investigation however a $500,000 reward offered for information that led to the murder remained.
He said police believed there were more people that had information about Ms Glover’s murder and appealed for them to come forward.
At the time of the discovery in 2022, Superintendent Andrew Massingham said Ms Glover was not employed and led a “very quiet and subdued lifestyle”.
Originally published as Woman charged with murder as police make breakthrough in body in the wall cold case of Tanya Lee Glover
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