Nearly 40 Years After Young Mother Was Killed, A Phone Call Cracks Cold Case

Melissa “Missy” Taylor Ellison’s killing remained a mystery for nearly four decades after the 20-year-old mother was found dead in her Jacksonville, Florida, home in December 1987, while her 13-month-old daughter was left crying in the living room.

For her daughter, Casie Ellison, growing up meant carrying a loss she was too young to remember but could never escape. For years, she said she tried to suppress her feelings about her mother’s death.

Visit mwafrika.life for more information.

About 25 years after the killing, those emotions resurfaced when Casie realised her own daughter had reached the same age she was when her mother died, CNN reports.

“It just took me understanding that this is a little Casie,” she said. “I was seeing myself.”

A phone call after 38 years

On July 8, more than 38 years after Melissa was killed, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office received a call from a man who said he had information about a cold case.

Gary Glowacz, 70, of Middleburg, Florida, told a Clay County sergeant that he wanted to “set things straight” over Melissa’s death, according to his arrest report.

Glowacz said he had struck Melissa with a log while searching for money during a burglary. He later told detectives from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit that he had come across an article about Melissa’s case in March and realised he was responsible for her death, the report said.

Glowacz was charged with second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery. His attorney and the district attorney declined to comment.

He is being held without bond in the Duval County Jail, with his next court appearance scheduled for Thursday.

No arrests had been made in connection with Melissa’s killing during the initial investigation.

What happened on Dec 28, 1987

Melissa, known to family and friends as Missy Taylor, was found dead in her bedroom by her two roommates on Dec 28, 1987.

The medical examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head.

According to the arrest report, Glowacz told detectives he had been looking for money or valuables he could sell to buy drugs. He lived about half a mile from Melissa’s home and was arrested on suspicion of an unrelated burglary on the same day she was found dead, according to the report and law enforcement databases.

Glowacz, who was 31 at the time, allegedly entered Melissa’s home through a window and went into her bedroom, where she was lying on the bed with Casie.

He told detectives that he used a log he found inside the house to strike Melissa once on the head near her neck. He then picked up Casie, placed her on the living-room couch and returned to the bedroom to search beneath Melissa’s mattress for money.

Detectives said Glowacz provided details about the crime scene that had never been publicly released and were not contained in the article he had read.

Asked why he was confessing decades later, Glowacz said he had not known Melissa died until he saw the article about the case.

The calls her family had waited decades for

After Glowacz was arrested, Casie said detectives called her first that night.

“It felt exactly how I was hoping that it would feel every time I imagined that it would be possible,” Casie Ellison said.

Her aunts, Glenda Blandford and Sissy Bennett, who were 17 and 15 respectively when their sister was killed, received the next two calls.

“I knew in my heart, I knew in the back of my mind that this is it. Something’s happened,” Bennett said of the moment she got the phone call.

For decades, the family had searched for answers. Blandford and Bennett said their parents pursued every possible lead and took information to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, hoping it would produce a breakthrough.

“I carried my mother so many times down to the sheriff’s office. I watched everything that she went through, and I had to be the stronger one because … I had to be there for her while my dad continued to work,” Blandford said. “And I watched every disappointment, I watched every ounce of hope.”

Their mother, Catherine Taylor, died in 2019 without learning what happened on the night Melissa was killed.

A renewed push for answers

A year before Catherine’s death, a friend of Bennett submitted Melissa’s case to Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit organisation that supports families of unsolved homicide victims. The organisation created a page documenting Melissa’s story and information gathered by her family over the years.

In January 2026, six months before Glowacz confessed, Melissa’s family joined Project: Cold Case and First Coast Crime Stoppers at a news conference seeking information about the killing.

“Someone knows exactly what happened that night. Someone remembers a detail that has never been spoken,” Casie Ellison said at the January news conference. “Someone has lived with this knowledge for nearly four decades. And someone listening to this right now knows that this is about them.”

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office later credited the January news conference with helping the investigation, saying in July that information received following the appeal played a role in the arrest.

“While his arrest cannot fill the enormous void left in the hearts of Melissa Ellison’s loved ones, I hope that this arrest is another step in the healing process,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said in July.

But after nearly four decades without answers, Casie, Blandford and Bennett said the arrest had not yet brought them relief.

An arrest, but not yet justice

Blandford and Bennett said they still think about their sister every day. When Blandford moved to the beach five years ago, she thought of Missy and her love of the beach.

Bennett also keeps her sister’s memory alive through her purple “Reign” Jeep Wrangler, bought in tribute to Missy’s favourite song, Purple Rain by Prince.

Chinese Long March 7A Rocket Explodes 85 Seconds After Liftoff, Satellite Lost | Video

Missy’s memory also lives on through Casie, who now has three children of her own.

For Casie, however, there was never a life untouched by the case.

“There was no ‘before the incident’ for me,” Casie Ellison said.

The family said its losses extended beyond Missy’s death, with three other relatives dying in the years that followed.

“I don’t know if justice would ever be officially served,” Casie Ellison said. “There’s been so much loss just from the grief and the no answers of this being such a long process. I think maybe had it been sooner, especially when my grandma was alive, and she would have been able to see there be some type of wrap to this in her lifetime, it might be a different answer.”

Before learning about Glowacz’s arrest, the family had been planning a remembrance party for Missy. Blandford said the gathering would still go ahead, but the family now has a renewed prayer.

“We’re still praying for justice,” Blandford said. “(We) pray and beg that God sheds serious light on this case and gives guidance to the hands of all the detectives … and that this case gets its proper justice, because right now, we’re sitting on an arrest, not justice.”

Read full story at source