John Wayne Glover: The Granny Killer

Interview with "The Granny Killer" I

Sydney's Granny Killer had a profound affect on me like no other, both professionally and personally. This vicious serial killer was a horrific criminal phenomenon that forced the sleepy but trendy north shore of Sydney into more than a year of hysteria.

Who was this lunatic who was hammer-bashing and strangling fragile women in their twilight years? They were grannies for God's sake!

Finally at the end of John Wayne Glover's killing spree, in which he murdered six elderly women over a 13-month period, myself and fellow reporter, Simon Bouda along with author Larry Writer wrote a book called Garden of Evil, The Granny Killer's Reign of Terror.

As part of that work, in early 1992 after Glover had been found guilty on six counts of murder and sentenced to never to be released, Simon and I managed to scoop an interview with him and spent several hours inside Sydney's Long Bay Jail talking to this very troubled man.

In my career with Sydney's Channel 9 as a crime reporter and now a producer with 60 Minutes, I have covered many sensational stories but the Granny Killer had a more disturbing effect on me than any of the variety of the many criminals I have encountered.

Glover was a vicious serial killer. Not of young boys, girls or adolescents. But elderly women. For homicide investigators he was unique. His modus operandi had never been seen before in this country. Maybe a long time ago with the Boston Strangler in America perhaps, but not in Australia.

Glover was, and still is today, the ultimate challenge to the forensic psychiatrists. His crimes are now case studies for law enforcement bodies around the world.

I first laid eyes on Glover when the police task force team took him on a "run around" of his crime scenes not long after his arrest. I instinctively knew that somehow I would meet him, this grey haired, portly shaped Father Christmas without the beard who was nudging 60, and probably not far off becoming a "granny" himself, although his pair of lovely daughters who attended an exclusive north shore girl's school during his reign of terror, were only teenagers.

While researching the book Garden of Evil, The Granny Killer's Reign of Terror and in the lead-up to actually meeting and speaking with Glover, it was agreed by my co-authors and myself that out of courtesy an approach would be made to his wife Gay, informing her of our project.

Although Gay Glover declined to be interviewed for the book, she was very polite and dignified, considering what she had just lived through... the horrific realisation that her husband, the man she slept next to, was in fact Sydney's Granny Killer.

When I went to see Gay Glover at her home in Mosman it was a weird sensation actually sitting in John Glover's lounge room for those 20 or so minutes delicately discussing only minor aspects of the case with her.

All the time I kept wondering if at any stage how close to danger she may have been. After all, the last woman John Glover killed was an 'on the side' acquaintance, someone of Glover's own age who knew and trusted him.