Jennifer Gledhill is accused of shooting her husband Matthew Johnson to death as he slept. Now her elderly parents face charges after they were spotted cleaning up days after the alleged murder
The parents of a woman charged with murdering her own husband after he found out she was having an affair, have been accused of helping her clean the crime scene.
Jennifer Gledhill is accused of shooting her husband Matthew Johnson to death as he slept, after the pair had a screaming match during a night of drunken sex in which the 42-year-old mum of three admitted to sleeping with another man. And now an eyewitness has told police they saw her parents arrive at the Cottonwood Heights home, Utah, in late September to help clean for more than five hours.
Now her dad Ray Gledhill, 71, and mum Rosalie Christianson Gledhill, 67, have been arrested on and are facing four counts of obstruction of justice. Both stand accused by police of helping their daughter Jennifer Gledhill, clean her home after the reported murder. Her mom told authorities they were only there for an hour, and her dad said he didn’t remember the details of the day.
The alleged killing only came to light after a man came forward and told cops he’d had “an extramarital affair ” with Gledhill and that she confessed to him about the gruesome murder, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a statement in October.
Her alleged lover — who has not been named — claimed Gledhill told him her husband, a Utah National Guard member, had confronted her on September 20 last year and “yelled at her because he knew she had been sleeping with someone else.”
Mr Gill said: “The defendant told the informant that she shot Mr. Johnson [the next day] as he slept in their bed. She told the informant that she put Mr. Johnson’s body into a rooftop storage container, slid him down the stairs of their home, and loaded his body into the back of their minivan.” Gledhill “then took her husband’s body north, dug a hole, and buried him in a shallow grave,” the DA added.
Prosecutors then believe she smashed Johnson’s phone, drove his truck to a different part of the neighbourhood, and brought her car to a car wash. She was caught on CCTV cameras “thoroughly” cleaning the car after the alleged killing and police tracked her phone’s GPS data to the exact spot where the truck was later found. Investigators have still not found his body.
Mr Gill said the man claiming to be Gledhill’s lover provided message screenshots and phone recordings to authorities. “The informant said that he noticed bruises all over the defendant’s body, and when asked about them, the defendant said they were from moving Mr Johnson’s body and cleaning their house,” the district attorney’s statement said.
Court records revealed the couple was going through a contentious divorce and custody battle over their three children, who are 11, 7, and 5 years old. She is due back in court later this month.
