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Background: Jennifer Gledhill appears in court in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Feb. 7. 2025 (YouTube/KSL). Inset: Matthew Johnson (Cottonwood Heights Police Department)
New details have been revealed in the case of a 42-year-old mother of three in Utah accused of fatally shooting her sleeping husband after he confronted her about having an extramarital affair.
In newly released court documents, authorities allege that in the days before Jennifer Gledhill allegedly killed 51-year-old Matthew Johnson, she asked for more than $10,000 from her parents — both of whom are accused of helping her cover up her husband’s murder.
Jennifer Gledhill was arrested in October 2024, less than a month after reporting her husband missing, and charged with Johnson’s murder. Authorities believe the fatal shooting took place between Sept. 20 and Sept. 21, 2024.
Gledhill’s parents, Thomas and Rosalie Gledhill, were arrested days later and charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly assisting their daughter after the shooting by cleaning the home and purchasing a new mattress to replace the one where the victim was killed.
Johnson was a member of the National Guard at the time of his presumed death. His body has not been recovered.
According to a recently unsealed probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, investigators looking into Johnson’s whereabouts conducted interviews with Gledhill’s neighbors and learned that Thomas Gledhill was seen at his daughter’s home at about 5 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2024.
“Neighbors reported they observed Thomas, and Jennifer in the home ‘Cleaning,”” the affidavit states. “The neighbors reported they observed Thomas leaving the home late at approx. 2300 hrs. Data from Jennifer Gledhill’s cell phone, shows she only contacts her father, Thomas Gledhill, when Matthew is last seen or heard from.”
Investigators obtained a search warrant for Thomas Gledhill’s cellphone, which they say showed “messages between him and Jennifer about money being transferred and purchases made.”
Data from Jennifer Gledhill’s phone also showed messages between her and her father about “financial assistance.”
On Sept. 18, Jennifer messages Thomas and states, ‘I need 13K by Friday.’ Messages show the victim, Matthew Johnson, transferred money to Thomas’s account to be given to Jennifer’s account. On Sept. 18, I observed a transfer from Thomas to Jennifer’s Venmo account of $1,000.00,” the affidavit states. “On Sept. 19, Jennifer sends a message to Thomas to ‘Don’t forget to give me your card information.’”
The newly revealed affidavit does not state why Jennifer Gledhill allegedly sought the $13,000 from her father.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Jennifer Gledhill is facing a total of nine charges: one count of first-degree felony murder, five counts of second-degree felony obstruction of justice, one count of second-degree felony possession with intent to distribute, one count of third-degree felony desecration of a human body, and one count of third-degree felony witness tampering.
Prosecutors said her arrest was based in large part on information provided by the man with whom Jennifer Gledhill was having the extramarital affair.
He allegedly told investigators that Jennifer Gledhill, who has three young children with Johnson, came over to his house on Sept. 22, 2024. He relayed that she described to him how her husband had come home on Sept. 20 and “yelled at her because he knew she had been sleeping with someone else,” prosecutors claim. She allegedly told her lover that the next day, on Sept. 21, she shot Johnson 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,” prosecutors wrote.
Gledhill allegedly “smashed” Johnson’s phone and ditched his truck in a nearby neighborhood. She then drove his body “north” and buried him in a shallow grave, according to prosecutors. The informant noticed bruises on Gledhill’s body; she allegedly told him she got them while burying her husband’s body and cleaning the house.
Authorities have some corroborating evidence to back the lover’s claims. GPS data from Gledhill’s phone places her in the location where she allegedly left Johnson’s truck the morning after the alleged murder. Later that afternoon, data reportedly shows she was in Davis County — which is north of Salt Lake City — until she turned her phone off shortly after 2:30 p.m. When she turned the phone back on around 5 p.m., it showed she was driving along a Davis County highway, prosecutors said.
Surveillance video at a car wash allegedly shows her “thoroughly” cleaning her vehicle around 11 p.m. before driving to her lover’s house shortly before midnight.
Neighbors also told cops they saw Gledhill’s parents cleaning in her house for several hours on Sept. 24. When confronted with this fact, her parents claimed they were only there for a short period of time, prosecutors said. Detectives asked her father if he went into the master bedroom and he allegedly responded “I did not go in where the incident happened.”
Perhaps most eye-popping of all, Gledhill allegedly bought a new mattress to replace the one where Johnson was shot to death, but that apparently didn’t stop investigators from finding a “large blood-stained spot in the master bedroom carpet underneath the bed” and blood on “the bed frame slats[.]”
Gledhill’s parents claimed they bought her a new mattress on Amazon at their daughter’s request.
Investigators also searched her parents’ home. In a bedroom where Gledhill would sleep, they allegedly found a green and tan Glock 19x box wrapped in a baby’s onesie in a tote bag. The gun wasn’t there, but prosecutors believe the box contained the murder weapon.
Cops arrested Gledhill on Oct. 2. She has been in jail ever since.
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