A Florida man who phoned authorities claiming he had information about a nearly four-decade-old killing was arrested and charged with the murder himself, after he allegedly described crime-scene details that had never been made public.

Gary Edward Glowacz, 70, now faces charges of second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery in the December 1987 death of Melissa Ellison, a 20-year-old mother found beaten inside her Jacksonville home. Fox News Digital reported that Glowacz initiated the contact with law enforcement on July 8, 2026, calling a Clay County deputy and saying he wanted to "set things straight" about Ellison's death.

Within hours, cold case detectives had interviewed Glowacz. By the next day, he was under arrest. The case had sat unsolved for nearly 39 years.

Roommates found a crying baby before they found the body

Ellison was discovered on December 28, 1987. Her roommates heard her 13-month-old daughter crying on a couch in the living room. When they went to check on Ellison, they found her dead in her bed. She had suffered blunt-force trauma to her head and neck.

Blood stained the sheets. Her head had been positioned below a pillow, and a nightgown had been pulled over her waistline. Detectives found soot or ash on the bed, residue they said was consistent with a charred wooden log having been used to strike her. An intruder had broken a window to enter the home, the New York Post reported.

No arrest followed. The case went cold, and Ellison's killer walked free for decades. Cold cases like this one have broken open across the country in recent years, including a 1988 Orlando killing solved after DNA evidence surfaced nearly four decades later.

Glowacz allegedly described details only the killer could know

When Glowacz called Clay County authorities on July 8, he told a deputy he had committed a burglary at Ellison's home and had struck her with a log. Jacksonville cold case detectives then sat down with him for a fuller interview.

What he allegedly told them was damning. Glowacz said he had been using drugs at the time and entered the home looking for money or property he could sell. He found Ellison and her baby in a bedroom, left the room, picked up a wooden log inside the house, and returned. He struck Ellison once in the head, he told detectives.

Then, he allegedly said, he carried the 13-month-old child into the living room and placed the baby on a couch. He went back to the bedroom to search for money. He pulled Ellison's body by the legs and lifted a corner of the mattress while looking underneath it.

Investigators noted that Glowacz accurately described the layout of the house and where the log had been located. Those details had never been released publicly. They were not contained in the article Glowacz told detectives he had read before contacting authorities. In other words, the only way he could have known them was if he had been inside the home.

Advances in investigative technology have helped crack other long-dormant murder cases in recent years. In one Florida example, Hillsborough County deputies arrested a suspect in a decade-old Tampa murder after DNA evidence and new witnesses surfaced. But Glowacz's case did not require a lab. He walked in and talked.

He lived half a mile away, and was arrested for burglary the same day

Law enforcement databases showed that Glowacz lived approximately half a mile from Ellison's home in 1987. And on December 28, 1987, the very day Ellison was found dead, Glowacz had been arrested in an unrelated burglary in the same area.

That coincidence sat in the record for decades without connecting the two events. No one linked Glowacz to Ellison's killing until he linked himself.

Glowacz told detectives he had read an article about the cold case in March 2026. He said that was when he realized Ellison had died from the assault. He claimed he had not known she was dead until reading that article, nearly 39 years after the fact.

He also told investigators he had delayed coming forward until after the holiday season because he wanted to spend time with his family. That gap, months between reading about the case and picking up the phone, raises its own questions about conscience and calculation. Similar delays have complicated investigations elsewhere, including cases where suspects in cold case killings were only identified years later through DNA genealogy programs.

Jacksonville sheriff says cold cases can still be solved

Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters addressed the arrest publicly. He pushed back on the popular assumption that unsolved cases stay unsolved.

"Television shows condition us to believe that homicide cases that are not solved within the first 48 hours will not be solved. That is patently false."

Waters also acknowledged the limits of any arrest in a case this old.

"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."

Prosecutors formally charged Glowacz with second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery. The charging document alleges he killed Ellison by striking her while committing second-degree murder and entered or remained in her dwelling while armed with a dangerous weapon. Fox News Digital reached out to Glowacz's public defender for comment but noted no response.

The case leaves significant questions unanswered. No forensic evidence, DNA, fingerprints, or other physical material, has been publicly cited as independently corroborating Glowacz's account beyond the unpublished details he described. Whether additional evidence exists has not been disclosed. It is also unclear whether Glowacz has entered a plea.

What happened to Ellison's daughter, now an adult approaching 40, has not been reported. The identity of the child who was left crying on a couch while her mother lay dead in the next room remains out of the public record. Cases involving violent crimes against young mothers carry a weight that time does not diminish.

Melissa Ellison was 20 years old. She deserved four decades of answers, not four decades of silence. The system did not find her killer. Her killer, for reasons only he fully understands, found the system.