A Mother Was Beaten to Death in 1987. 37 Years Later, Her Killer Called the Police Himself

Three days after Christmas in 1987, a young mother was beaten to death in her own bed. The weapon was a log pulled straight from her fireplace, still charred from the fire that had burned that night. Her killer carried it to the front door on his way out and left it there in plain sight, like he wanted it found.

In the next room, her 13-month-old daughter was asleep on the couch. Someone had tucked pillows around her so she wouldn’t roll off. For 37 years, nobody was arrested. The only real clue anyone had was a phone call. The night after the murder, a man dialed 911. He didn’t give his name. He said five words about her death.

“I’m sorry. I had to do it.” Then he hung up and there was silence for almost four decades, until 2026. A 70-year-old man walked into a credit union in Clay County, Florida, and picked up a phone. He called the sheriff’s office himself. Nobody made him do it. Nobody had a warrant out for him. He just called. By the end of that day, he was in handcuffs.

This is the story of Melissa Ellison and the man who, decades later, turned himself in. Everyone who knew her called her Missy. She was 20 years old, the second of five sisters. By every account, she was the one who held her family and her friends together. Her sister Glenda would later say that if a group of them were meeting up for a concert or a movie, they always ended up at Missy’s place first.

It wasn’t planned. People just ended up there because that’s who Missy was. By the winter of 1987, Missy was living in a mobile home on Collazine Road in a trailer park her parents owned. She’d separated from her husband, Mark, and she was raising their daughter, Casey, mostly on her own. Casey had just turned 1.

To help cover the bills, Missy had invited a friend, Charlene Boger, and Charlene’s boyfriend, Wayne Contreras, to move in with her. It was a hard stretch, but she had family nearby to help. Christmas had just passed. Casey had just celebrated her first birthday, a party her aunts would later say was the only one Missy ever got to give her.

On the night of December 28th at around 11:30, Missy called her mother. She told her she was scared. Her mother asked why. Missy had two roommates in the house with her. She wasn’t alone. She wouldn’t say why. She just said it again, and then the call ended. Inside the house, Wayne Contreras would tell investigators that someone shined a flashlight on him in the dark.

Then that person ran out through the back door. Charlene Boger woke up because she heard Casey crying. She got up, walked into the living room, and found the baby alone on the couch. She was propped up safely with pillows, as if someone had made sure she wouldn’t fall. Charlene picked Casey up, fed her, and carried her toward Missy’s bedroom.

The door was open just a crack. As she got closer, someone on the other side slowly pushed it shut. She didn’t think much of it. She assumed it was Missy’s estranged husband, or maybe a date, and that whoever it was didn’t want the baby in the room. So, she went back to the couch, held Casey, and fell asleep. She woke up again to the sound of a door slamming.

This time, she got up and went to check. That was when she found Missy. Police arrived at 4:40 in the morning. They found Melissa Ellison in her bed, killed by blunt force trauma to the head. The medical examiner later confirmed the log from the fireplace, left standing by the front door, was the weapon. At first, investigators considered a simple explanation.

There had been a string of burglaries around the trailer park that winter, and a break-in gone wrong seemed like the obvious answer. Then they walked through the house with Missy’s family, asking them to look for anything missing. Nothing of real value was gone. No cash, no jewelry. The only things anyone could identify as missing were two photographs from the mantel, both of Missy at the beach in a bathing suit, and a set of keys she’d borrowed from someone.

That detail didn’t fit a burglary. A burglar doesn’t take photographs of the person who lives there and leave everything of value behind. It suggested something else. Someone who wanted those photographs. Someone who knew her. Investigators found shoe prints in the home. They found a charcoal handprint on Missy’s arm, likely left by whoever had picked up the burned log.

They found tire tracks on the back patio. They also had Mark Ellison, Missy’s estranged husband, who became a suspect almost immediately. He would later say publicly that he felt accused from the very beginning, even though he was never charged, and that all he’d wanted to do afterward was keep going and raise his daughter.

Missy’s family says they were eventually told there was a suspect, but not enough evidence to make an arrest. No one was arrested in 1987. No one was arrested in the years that followed. The case went cold. Missy’s funeral drew a crowd so large that the procession stretched for 3 miles down the interstate from the funeral home on the west side of Jacksonville to the cemetery in Orange Park.

Her sister Glenda would say later that if that didn’t speak to who Missy was, nothing would. Her parents never got past it. Glenda said her mother’s smile faded over the years that followed and that she was never the same. In her own words, they watched their mother grieve herself to death. Casey grew up without any memory of her mother at all.

She was too young when it happened to remember her voice, her laugh, the way she held her. What Casey had instead was other people’s memories, the stories they told her about who her mother had been. As an adult, Casey became a mother herself three times over. She has said that becoming a parent made the loss harder to carry, not easier.

Once she had her own children, she understood exactly what her mother must have felt in those final moments. Eventually, Casey turned that pain into something else. She founded a nonprofit called Change the Face of Depression to support people struggling the way she had. Through all of it, the case sat unsolved.

Detectives changed, technology changed, Missy’s file stayed open, but empty of answers. In January of 2026, almost 40 years after Missy’s death, her family decided to try again. They partnered with First Coast Crime Stoppers and a nonprofit called Project Cold Case for a public appeal, live-streamed for anyone who might be watching.

A reward of $5,000 was offered for information leading to an arrest. Casey spoke directly to whoever might be listening. She said someone had lived for 38 years knowing exactly what happened while her family had lived 38 years without the truth. She said the smallest detail could matter. A name, a car, a conversation someone once dismissed as nothing.

Her aunt Glenda spoke, too, and her words were sharper. She addressed her sister’s killer directly, telling him she hoped Missy’s face had haunted him every day for 38 years. Neither of them knew it yet, but 6 months later, someone would answer. On July 8th of 2026, a 70-year-old man walked into a VyStar Credit Union on Blanding Boulevard in Clay County, Florida.

He picked up a phone and called the Clay County Sheriff’s Office directly. He told the dispatcher he wanted to provide information about the death of Melissa Ellison. There was no warrant out for him and no tip already pointing detectives his way. He made the call himself. Deputies brought him in. Detectives with the Jacksonville Cold Case Unit interviewed him in Jacksonville.

Investigators have not released what was said inside that room, and that part of his arrest report has been kept out of public view. After the interview, detectives told him he was under arrest for murder and burglary involving battery. By the end of the day, 6 months to the day after Casey and her aunts had stood in front of cameras asking for answers, the man who made that call was in handcuffs.

His name is Gary Edward Glowatsky. Glowatsky was 31 years old in 1987, the year Melissa Ellison was killed. Public records show an otherwise ordinary life with a handful of brushes with the law. In 1986, he was charged with burglary, though it never led to a conviction. He was convicted of buying cocaine in 1989 and again in 1996.

Then convicted of burglary in 1998. About a decade ago, he pleaded guilty to a DUI in Clay County. He’s had addresses in both Jacksonville and Middleburg. None of that explains why he called. Investigators have not said whether he knew Melissa Ellison personally, whether he was ever considered a suspect in the original investigation, or what, if anything, changed for him in 2026.

The sheriff’s office has only said that new information came forward after the family’s January appeal, and that it helped move the case forward again. What that information was has not been made public. Glowatsky is currently charged with second-degree murder and burglary with assault or battery. He has not been convicted of anything.

He was arraigned on July 30th, and the case is now moving through the state attorney’s office toward trial. Under the law, he is presumed innocent unless and until a jury says otherwise. For Missy’s family, the arrest itself was already something they weren’t sure they’d live to see. Casey said afterward that it wouldn’t bring her mother back, but that it gave her, in her own words, a ridiculous release of closure.

37 years ago, someone picked up a log from a dying fire and used it to end a young mother’s life, then carried it to the door on the way out. 37 years later, an old man walked into a credit union and picked up a different phone. And for reasons he has not explained to the public, decided the silence was over. Nobody outside that interview room knows why he waited 37 years to speak.

Missy Allison’s mother never got an answer to the question she asked that last night. Missy never explained why she was scared. Her family may finally be closer to the one.