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The World’s Deadliest Pie Salesman

A friendly man in his late fifties, John Wayne Glover held down a job as a sales representative with a pie company and was a volunteer charity worker with the Senior Citizens Society. He was married and had two daughters, and they all lived in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Mosman.

It was mainly in these tranquil surroundings that he would kill his victims – all elderly females. He would bash them about the head until they fell to his feet covered in blood, and then he would remove their pantyhose and strangle them.

The murders weren’t sexually motivated. John Glover was impotent. Still, because of the pantyhose, police originally believed a sex killer was responsible. But Glover was addicted to poker machines, and the easiest way to feed his addiction was to steal money.

When he immigrated to Australia from England in 1956, 24-year-old Glover already had a criminal record for stealing, dating back to 1947. Soon after his arrival he was convicted on two counts of larceny in Victoria and one of theft in New South Wales. In 1962 he was convicted on two counts of assaulting females in Melbourne, two of indecent assault, one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and four of larceny. He got off with three years’ probation. The Melbourne attacks were extremely violent. On each occasion articles of clothing were forcibly removed and the victims were repeatedly bashed about the head and body.

Then, in 1965, Glover was convicted on a peeping tom charge – being unlawfully on a premises. He was sentenced to three months in prison but served only six weeks. Following his release, Glover seemed to change his ways. Apart from a minor shoplifting charge in 1978, he would not come to police notice again for many years.

In Melbourne in 1968 Glover married Jacqueline Gail [Gay] Rolls. In 1970 they moved to Sydney to live with Gay’s parents in Mosman. The ‘start of it all’, as Glover would refer to it later, came on 11 January 1989, when he saw 84-year-old Margaret Todhunter walking along Mosman’s quiet Hale Road. He parked his car, satisfied himself that nobody was looking, then punched the unsuspecting victim in the face, taking her handbag, which contained $209. Glover then went to the nearby Mosman RSL Club, where he drank and played the poker machines with the stolen money. Mrs Todhunter survived the ordeal but was badly bruised and shaken. Glover’s next victim wasn’t so fortunate.

On 1 March 1989 Glover had a few drinks at the Mosman RSL Club after work and was walking down busy Military Road when he spotted Gwendolyn Mitchelhill heading home at a slow pace with her walking stick. Glover hurried to his car and tucked a hammer into his belt. Then he followed the old woman to the entry foyer of her retirement village. As she turned the key, he brought the hammer down into the back of her skull. He then repeatedly bashed her about the head and body, breaking several ribs. He fled the scene, taking her wallet containing $100. Mrs Mitchelhill was still alive when two schoolboys found her, but she became the Granny Killer’s first official murder victim a few minutes after the police and ambulance arrived.

Ten weeks later, in the afternoon of 9 May, Glover was heading for the Mosman RSL Club when he saw Lady Winifred Ashton, 84, moving slowly towards him, using her walking stick to help. She was heading to her home in nearby Raglan Street. Glover pulled on a pair of gloves and followed her into the foyer of her apartment building, where he attacked her with his hammer and threw her to the ground in the rubbish bin alcove. She was unconscious as Glover removed her pantyhose and strangled her with them. Then he lay her walking stick and shoes at her feet before leaving with her purse, which contained $100. Later, as he calmly fed the contents of Lady Ashton’s purse through the poker machines, Glover commented to the bar staff at the Mosman RSL Club that he hoped the sirens they could hear weren’t for another mugging.

Glover soon started molesting old women confined to their beds in the nursing homes he visited on his rounds as a pie salesman. This was an aspect of the case detectives and psychiatrists would find confusing, because Glover maintained that he had no sexual interest in anyone. Still, he molested 77-year-old Mrs Marjorie Moseley on 6 June 1989 at the Wesley Gardens Retirement Home in Belrose. Mrs Moseley reported the incident, saying a man put his hand under her nightie, but she couldn’t recall what he looked like.

On 24 June, Glover visited the Caroline Chisholm Nursing Home in Lane Cove. He strolled upstairs, 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 woman cried out – Glover was questioned briefly by staff, but not held. He made a hurried exit. On 8 August 1989, he bashed elderly Effie Carnie in a quiet street in Lindfield and stole her groceries. On 6 October he passed himself off as a doctor and ran his hand up the dress of Phyllis McNeil, a patient at the Wybenia Nursing Home at Neutral Bay.

Then, on the afternoon of 18 October, Glover struck up a conversation with 86-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer Doris Cox as she made her way along Mosman’s Spit Road. He walked with her into the secluded stairwell of her retirement village then attacked her from behind, smashing her face into a wall. After finding nothing that he wanted in her handbag, Glover went home.

Mrs Cox survived the assault, but was hazy about what her attacker looked like. She thought he was a younger man, and assisted police as best as she could as they prepared an identikit drawing.

To Detective Inspector Mike Hagan, head of a task force set up to investigate the killings, the new information made sense. He suspected the killer was a local because of the close proximity of the attacks to each other. Police psychological profiles suggested that the killer would most likely be a teenager with a grandmother fixation. Hagan concentrated the task force’s energies on searching for a young local who was acting strangely or had a connection to the victims.

On 2 November, 85-year-old Mrs Margaret Pahud was bashed on the back of the head with a blunt instrument as she made her way home along a laneway off Longueville Road, Lane Cove. Glover took her handbag, tucked it inside his shirt, along with the hammer, and calmly left the scene. As police and ambulance sirens wailed their way to the murder scene, Glover examined the contents of Mrs Pahud’s purse on the grounds of a nearby golf club. He pocketed $300 before going to the Mosman RSL Club.

The Granny Killer’s fourth victim was 81-one-year-old Miss Olive Cleveland, a resident of the Wesley Gardens Retirement Village at Belrose, on Sydney’s north side. Glover had called there in the early afternoon; unable to secure a pie order from the catering manager, he left. On his way through the garden he struck up a conversation with Mrs Cleveland, then seized her from behind and forced her into a secluded walkway, where he repeatedly slammed her head into the concrete. He then removed her pantyhose and knotted them around her neck before making off with $60 from her handbag.

A week later the police got their first break. In several of the attacks the victims recalled seeing a grey-haired, well-dressed, middle-aged man. Now the first victim, Margaret Todhunter, recalled a man of that description passing her just before she was attacked from behind. Effie Carnie also described her assailant as a well-built, mature man with grey hair. Police realised they may have been looking for the wrong man.

On 23 November another body turned up, the third for the month. While purchasing whisky in Mosman, Glover had spotted 92-year-old Muriel Falconer struggling down the street with her shopping. He returned to his car, collected his hammer and gloves and followed her home. Partially deaf and blind, Mrs Falconer didn’t notice Glover slip through the door behind her. He held his hand over her mouth as he hit her repeatedly about the head and neck. As she fell to the floor he started to remove her pantyhose but she regained consciousness and cried out. Glover resumed hitting her with the hammer. Only when he was finally satisfied that she was unconscious did he remove the undergarments and throttle her with them. He then closed the front door, searched her purse and the rest of the house – and left with $100. It wasn’t until the following afternoon that the body was discovered. Although the murder scene was chaotic, police found a footprint in blood on the carpet. It was their first solid clue.

Then, on 11 January 1990, Glover called at the Greenwich Hospital for an appointment with its administrator, Mr Reg Cadman. Afterwards, dressed in his blue-and-white salesman’s jacket and carrying a clipboard, Glover walked into a hospital ward where four old, sick women lay in their beds. He approached Mrs Daisy Roberts, who was suffering from advanced cancer, asking if she was losing any body heat. He then pulled up her nightie and began to prod her in an indecent manner.

Mrs Roberts became alarmed and rang the buzzer beside her bed. An employee, Sister Davis, answered the call. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she called out to Glover. He ran from the ward. Davis chased him, and took down the registration number of his car as he drove off. She then called the police. Later that day two uniformed officers from Chatswood police station arrived to investigate. Hospital staff were able to identify and name Glover; he was popular from previous visits on his pastry round.

Detectives from Chatswood police station rang Glover at home and asked him to drop in at 5 pm the following day. When he hadn’t turned up by 6 pm, police called his home. Gay told them he was in hospital. He had attempted suicide. Police visited, but Glover was too sick to talk. Staff handed them a suicide note that included the words ‘no more grannies’. The police returned on 18 January and, with Glover’s reluctant approval, picked up a photo of him to show to Sister Davis and Mrs Roberts. After the positive identification, one of the officers told Davis and Roberts: ‘We know all about him.’

Another two weeks would pass before the suicide note and photo found their way to Mike Hagan. As soon as he saw them he knew he had his man. The photo matched the descriptions of the mysterious grey-haired, middle-aged man, and in his job as a sales representative Glover could have been at any of the murder scenes. The problem now was proving his guilt. Detectives interviewed Glover. He denied everything. They gave him the impression that they were satisfied. But Glover was placed under around-the-clock surveillance, with six detectives assigned to follow him. Even at this stage the police didn’t have any evidence that would stand up in court, but in their minds there was no question Glover was the culprit. Hagan had to make a choice – go in now, despite the lack of solid evidence, or wait to catch him in the act? Hagan opted for the latter. Sadly, the decision cost another life.

The police didn’t let him out of their sight, but Glover didn’t put a foot wrong. He occasionally stopped to look at old women, but his behaviour was exemplary. Then, at 10 am on 19 March, Glover called at the home of a friend, Joan Sinclair. The police on surveillance had no reason to believe it was anything other than a social visit – the Granny Killer had only ever struck in the afternoon, and with elderly women.

At 1 pm there was no sign of life from the house. At 5 pm all was still quiet. At 6 pm, the observing officers got permission to enter the premises. The detectives noticed the pools of blood almost as soon as they crept in the door. With guns drawn, they began their search. They saw a hammer lying in a pool of drying blood on the mat. As they peered further around the doorway they saw a pair of woman’s panties and a man’s shirt covered in blood. Then a woman’s body came into view. Naked from the waist down, Joan Sinclair’s battered head was wrapped in blood-soaked towels. Pantyhose were tied around her neck. Her genitals were damaged, but Glover would later deny interfering with her sexually. The officers then found feet sticking out of the end of the bath. The air was heavy with the smell of alcohol and vomit. Glover was unconscious, and naked, and lying in the tub. One wrist was slashed.

After Glover recovered in hospital, he told police he had known Sinclair for some time. They were fond of each other in a platonic way. Still, after he entered the house, Glover got his hammer out of his briefcase and bashed her about the head. He then removed her pantyhose and strangled her. Afterwards, Glover rolled Sinclair’s body over on the mat, wrapped four towels around her massive head wound to stem the flow of blood, then dragged her body across the room. When he had done that he ran a bath, washed down a handful of Valium with a bottle of Vat 69, slashed his left wrist and lay in the tub to die.

Glover confessed to everything, but he frustrated police and psychiatrists with his inability or unwillingness to supply a reason for his acts. The question ‘Why?’ was repeatedly met with the same answer – ‘I don’t know. I just see these ladies and it seems to trigger something. I just have to be violent towards them.’

At his trial in November 1991 John Wayne Glover pleaded not guilty to six counts of murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to six life terms of imprisonment.