A Jacksonville man beat a 20-year-old mother to death with a fireplace log three days after Christmas in 1987 – and left her 13-month-old baby crying alone on the couch.
Thirty-nine years later, Gary Edward Glowacz picked up the phone and called the sheriff's office.
He said he had information about the case – and Jacksonville detectives gave him exactly the kind of meeting he was looking for.
The Night Melissa Ellison Was Murdered
On December 28, 1987, police responded to a home on Colejean Road at 4:40 in the morning after neighbors reported a deceased person.
They found Melissa Ellison – known to everyone as Missy – lying in her bed, beaten to death with a charred log pulled from her own fireplace.
Her 13-month-old daughter Casie was found unharmed on the couch, surrounded by pillows.
The Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death blunt force trauma to the head.
Detectives came up with shoe prints, a charcoal handprint on the victim's arm, tire tracks on the back patio, and a 911 call the night after the murder – a man who said, "I'm sorry, I had to do it."
No arrest was made.
The case went cold.
Casie Ellison grew up without a mother, without answers, and with one haunting reality: someone had lived freely for decades knowing exactly what happened to Missy Taylor Ellison.
"My mother was beat to death," Casie said in January, when the family made a public plea for new information. "She died slowly and painfully. She was stolen from our lives. Someone knows who did this."
What Happened When He Called
On July 8, 2026, Gary Edward Glowacz, now 70 years old, called the Clay County Sheriff's Office and told dispatch he wanted to provide information about Ellison's death.
What exactly he told investigators is redacted in the arrest report.
https://twitter.com/TheErikHoffmann/status/2075523139983769681?s=20
What is not redacted: detectives had him in handcuffs before the day was out.
He was transported to Jacksonville Sheriff's Office headquarters, interviewed, and arrested on charges of murder and burglary with battery.
He was booked into the Duval County Jail with no bond.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters announced the arrest Thursday, with members of Ellison's family seated in the room.
"Television shows condition us to believe that homicide cases that are not solved within the first 48 hours will not be solved," Waters said. "That is patently false."
Waters called the arrest a "shining symbol" of the agency's commitment to justice and confirmed that Glowacz has a documented history of burglaries stretching back decades.
Glowacz was 31 years old on the night Missy Taylor Ellison was murdered.
They Never Stopped Looking
This arrest didn't happen because someone stumbled across a tip.
It happened because Jacksonville's Cold Case Unit, First Coast Crime Stoppers, Project: Cold Case, the State Attorney's Office, and the Clay County Sheriff's Office refused to let Melissa Ellison's murder disappear into a file cabinet.
Six months after Casie stood before cameras and described what nearly four decades without justice looks like, the man investigators believe is responsible called the police himself.
Law enforcement confirmed that information surfacing after that January press conference "played a pivotal role" in the arrest.
Here's what that tells you: cold case work is not passive record-keeping. It's sustained, grinding, unglamorous pressure applied over years – until the weight of it becomes unbearable for the person who knows what happened.
Killers age. Their circumstances change. Their confidence erodes.
Whatever drove Glowacz to pick up that phone, the Jacksonville Cold Case Unit was ready to answer it.
Remember that the next time someone tells you we need to defund police departments and redirect the money to "community programs."
Those "community programs" don't show up at 4:40 in the morning when a baby is crying next to her mother's body.
They don't spend decades refusing to close a file.
They don't answer the phone when a killer finally breaks and calls looking for absolution.
Sheriff T.K. Waters and his Cold Case Unit do.
That's exactly why you fund law enforcement – and exactly why the people trying to dismantle it are dangerous.
Casie Ellison, now nearly 40, said the news is making her "see the world differently."
"I know it's never going to bring my mom back," she said. "But it does have a ridiculous release of closure."
Thirty-nine years. One phone call. Justice.
Sources:
- Michael Sinkewicz, "Florida man who contacted police about 1987 killing arrested in connection to cold case," Fox News, July 9, 2026.
- "A man called deputies and said he had information about a cold-case murder from 1987. A few hours later, he was arrested," News4Jax, July 9, 2026.
- "70-year-old man accused of beating mom to death in 1987," Jacksonville Today, July 9, 2026.
- "70-year-old arrested in connection with a decades-old Jacksonville cold case," First Coast News, July 9, 2026.
- "Arrest made in 1987 cold case of 20-year-old Jacksonville woman," AOL/Florida Times-Union, July 9, 2026.
