John Wayne Glover: The Granny Killer

Marriage

Retribution finally caught up with John Wayne Glover in 1965, but only in a small way when he was convicted on a Peeping Tom charge of being unlawfully on the premises. He was sentenced to three months in prison but served only six weeks behind bars.

Following his release from prison, Glover seemingly changed his ways and apart from a minor shoplifting charge in 1978, he would not come to police notice again for many years, however police now agree that it would have been almost impossible for a criminal of Glover's nature to keep his hands to himself for the following 25 years.

In fact some police wonder if Glover could have helped with enquires into at least five other unsolved murders with similar modus operandi committed between 1965 and 1989.

In Melbourne in 1968, Glover married Jacqueline Gail (Gay) Rolls. They had met while Glover was working at a wine and spirits store in Melbourne's inner-city. Gay's father, John Rolls, felt that the quiet, handsome young man was a good match for their beloved daughter. At first his wife Essie Rolls agreed, but it didn't take her long to figure out that Glover may have something to hide.

Even though she was from a well-to-do middle-class Sydney background, Gay loved the gentle English migrant who had arrived in Australia in the 1950s with only thirty shillings ($3) to his name. Glover came from a very poor working-class family and told his few friends that he had come to Australia to start a new life and leave behind a traumatic and disruptive family background. With her parents' blessings, Gay and John became engaged and married shortly after.

In 1970 the happy couple moved to Sydney to live with Gay's parents in the comfortable family home at Mosman. Gay's father was very ill and he asked the newlyweds if they would move into the house to keep him company. John Glover was delighted. The poor English migrant with a record of theft and violence had done well. To move to Mosman and into a two-storey house near the harbour was more than he could ever have dreamed possible.