The Granny Killer 3

On 23 November 1989, Glover was sitting in the Buena Vista Hotel in Middle Head Road, Mosman, when he saw 93-year-old widow Muriel Falconer walking opposite the hotel (returning home with her shopping). Glover returned to his car (parked opposite the police station), to retrieve his hammer and gloves. He followed Falconer to the exterior of her home in Muston Street. He quietly moved up behind her while the partially deaf and blind Falconer opened her front door. He put his hand around her mouth to silence her, before repeatedly hitting her around the head and neck with his hammer. When she fell to the floor, Glover began to remove Falconer's pantyhose. As he did this, she began to regain consciousness and cried for help. This prompted Glover to hit her multiple times with the hammer until she finally passed out. He removed her undergarments and used them to strangle her. He searched her purse and the rest of her house for valuables before leaving with $100, again after rearranging her shoes. The following afternoon, the body was discovered by a neighbour, who entered using a spare key. The crime scene was left undisturbed and investigators were able to collect forensic evidence, including bloody shoe prints. A neighbour described a suspect as middle-aged, portly, and grey-haired. The reward was increased to $250,000 by Christmas.

On 11 January 1990, Glover visited the Greenwich Hospital in River Road, Greenwich, on his pie sales round. He was in his work uniform and carried a clipboard, and entered the hospital's palliative care ward, which held four elderly and ill women, including 82-year-old advanced-cancer patient Daisy Roberts. Glover asked if she was losing any body heat, he then pulled up her nightgown and touched her in an indecent manner. Roberts panicked and called for help, upon which a nurse found Glover in the ward. When confronted, Glover ran from the ward and the nurse was able to record his car's registration number, and notified police.

The hospital staff were able to identify and name Glover, as he was known from doing his pie rounds. A week later, the police returned with a photograph of Glover, which both the nurse and Roberts positively identified. Although this was a significant breakthrough, the hospital assaults were not linked to the murders, nor reported to the murder task force for three weeks. Detectives from Chatswood police station contacted and confirmed Glover's name via his employers. Detectives contacted Glover and requested he attend an interview at the station the following day. When Glover failed to appear, the police rang his home and were informed by his wife that he had attempted suicide by overdose and was recovering at the Royal North Shore Hospital. Police went to the hospital to see Glover, but he declined to be interviewed, although he did permit them to take a photograph. Staff at the hospital handed police a suicide note that was written by Glover, in the middle of the page on Four'N Twenty Pies business paper, that contained the words "no more grannies ... grannies" and "Essie [Glover's mother-in-law] started it".

Two weeks later, the suicide note and photo were passed onto the task force (now numbering some 70 members), whereupon detectives believed immediately that Glover was the killer, although they had no evidence. The head of the detective task force said,

If he had said to us, "I don't want to talk," we couldn't have proved a thing. Still, the photo matched the descriptions of the gray-haired suspect and in his job as a pie salesman, Glover could have been at any of the murder scenes.

Glover was interviewed over the nursing-home assaults and denied all accusations. Police had limited evidence and decided not to question him over the murders, which would have let Glover know of the police suspicions. Glover was put under constant police surveillance, including at one stage, with an automatic tracking device. To make sure that he was not being followed, Glover would drive around the block more than once, or drive the wrong way up one-way streets.

On 19 March 1990, Glover killed his sixth and final victim in Mosman. She was 60-year-old divorcee Joan Sinclair from Beauty Point, with whom Glover had a platonic relationship. By this stage, police had Glover under constant surveillance and watched as Sinclair let Glover into her home around 10:00am. By 1:00pm, no sign of Glover or movement within the house was seen. Police and the surveillance team became concerned around 5:00pm, and got permission to enter the house at 6:00pm. Two uniformed police knocked on the front door (ostensibly to check on barking dogs) to no answer, and when looking through the rear glass door, saw a hammer lying in a pool of dry blood on a mat. Four detectives searched the house and found Sinclair's battered head wrapped in a bundle of blood-soaked towels. She was naked from the waist down and her pantyhose were tied around her neck. Her genitals were damaged, but Glover later denied raping her. After finding Sinclair's body, they then searched the house for Glover, who was found unconscious in the filled bathtub.

Glover later told police he murdered Joan Sinclair and explained they had been having a relationship for some time. He said that he beat her about the head with his hammer, removed her pantyhose, and strangled her with it. Glover rolled the body onto a mat, wrapped four towels around her extensive head wounds to stem the flow of blood, then dragged her body across the room, leaving a trail of blood. He then ran the bath, swallowed a handful of Valium with a bottle of Vat 69, slashed his left wrist, and lay in the tub to die.