Although it was now a strong possibility, the thought of one individual seeking out and murdering defenceless old women was almost beyond comprehension. At the time, police prayed that they were wrong but secretly they knew the truth — they had a homicidal maniac on their hands.
But the chinks were starting to show in the maniac's armour. In a bizarre twist of events, Glover started molesting old women confined to their beds in the nursing homes he visited in the course of his rounds as a pie salesman. This was an aspect of the case that detectives and psychiatrists would later find confusing.
Glover maintained that he had no sexual interest in anyone. He never sexually attacked any of his robbery and murder victims. Yet here he was, prowling around nursing homes and assaulting bed-ridden old women.
Local police investigated, but the alarm bells didn't ring. The molestations were not connected to the murders at the time, though at a later date the incidents would play an important part in identifying Glover.
On his nursing-home rounds, Glover first molested 77-year-old Mrs Marjorie Moseley on June 6, 1989 at the Wesley Gardens, Retirement Home in Belrose, which is quite a distance from Mosman. Mrs Moseley reported the incident and said that the man put his hand under her nightie. She couldn't recall what he looked like.
Then, on June 24, Glover visited the Caroline Chisholm Nursing Home in nearby Lane Cove. He leisurely strolled upstairs, where he 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 terrified woman cried out and Glover was questioned briefly by staff but not held as he made a hurried exit.
The incidents were investigated by local police but were not connected to the murders in Mosman. And it was a long time before it was thought that this information may be of any use to the Granny Killer task force. By the time the connection was made there had been more attacks, more bashings and more murders.
On August 8, 1989, Glover bashed elderly Effie Carnie in a quiet street in Lindfield, not far from Mosman, and stole her groceries. On October 6 he passed himself off as a doctor and ran his hand up the dress of Phylis McNeil, a patient at the Wybenia Nursing Home at Neutral Bay, the harbourside suburb next but one to Mosman. Again he eluded capture when the blind old woman called for help.
It seemed that Glover could walk in and out of hospitals as he pleased. No one suspected the pastry salesman. Not once, through that series of molestations, was he ever identified.
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