For nearly four decades, the murder of 20-year-old Melissa "Missy" Ellison sat as an open wound in Jacksonville, Florida. The young mother was beaten to death in her own home while her infant daughter lay unharmed just feet away. There was no arrest. No answers.
Left behind was a family that kept asking questions no one had the answers to. Then, on July 8, 2026, the silence was broken. A 70-year-old man picked up the phone, called a sheriff's dispatcher, and said he wanted to set things straight.
Ellison was 20 years old in December 1987, living in a mobile home on Jacksonville's west side with roommates and her baby daughter. Police say she was asleep when she was beaten to death with a fire log during what investigators believe was a burglary. She'd married young, right out of high school, and had separated from her husband by the time of her death.
Perhaps the most haunting detail from that night is what investigators found when they arrived: Ellison's 13-month-old daughter, Casie, tucked safely on a couch, surrounded by pillows, completely unharmed. Whatever happened in that mobile home, the baby was left untouched. This harrowing detail would shape the rest of Casie's life as she grew up without her mother and without answers about who took her life.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Homicide Unit and Crime Scene Unit worked the case hard in its early days, reviewing evidence and conducting numerous interviews. But without a break, the investigation eventually stalled, and Ellison's murder joined the ranks of Jacksonville's unsolved cold cases. For decades, it was simply a file that got reopened periodically but never really found any forward progress.
Casie Ellison grew up carrying her mother's absence closely with her. An understandable result, considering the circumstances. In later years, Casie channeled that grief into advocacy for the case.
Melissa's sister, Glenda Blanford, became another public voice for the family, speaking openly about the milestones—being called "grandma," being called "aunt"—that were stolen from her sister and from the family. Neither Casie nor Glenda ever stopped asking who was responsible.
Six months before Glowacz's confession, the family's advocacy converged with an organized public push. Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit that supports families of unsolved homicide victims, had taken up Ellison's case after a family friend submitted it in 2018. In January 2026, the organization joined Ellison's family and First Coast Crime Stoppers for a news conference urging anyone with information to come forward.
Casie made a direct appeal, saying that someone out there had lived with the knowledge of what happened for decades. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office later credited that news conference with generating a tip that played a real role in the arrest. The killer himself phoned in to police.
The call came in to the Clay County Sheriff's Office from a parking lot outside a VyStar Credit Union branch on Blanding Boulevard. According to his arrest report, Gary Edward Glowacz informed the sergeant on the other end of the phone that he wanted to provide information about Ellison's 1987 death.
Glowacz was transported to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, where homicide detectives sat down with him. By the end of that interview, investigators said they had enough information to seek an arrest warrant.
Glowacz, a resident of Middleburg, Florida, had spent decades as an unknown quantity in the case. His name was never publicly connected to Ellison's death until summer 2026. Authorities haven't released extensive details on why he chose this particular moment to come forward, but reporting on the case suggests he'd recently come across coverage of his own decades-old crime, which appears to have prompted the confession.
Sheriff T.K. Waters announced the arrest at a news conference on July 9, 2026, with members of Ellison's family in the audience. Glowacz was charged with murder and burglary with assault. Waters said limited additional detail could be shared publicly as the case moved into the prosecution phase, deferring further specifics to the State Attorney's Office.
For Melissa Ellison's family, the arrest closes one chapter but doesn't erase the decades of grief and unanswered questions that came before it. Casie Ellison has spoken about the bittersweet nature of the moment—relief mixed with the ache of knowing her mother didn't live to see this day.
The family had already been planning a remembrance gathering for Missy before news of the arrest broke. That gathering went forward, but carried a different kind of weight.
