A Florida man accused in the decades-old murder of a young mother reportedly confessed when he voluntarily contacted authorities. Investigators claim that Gary Edward Glowacz, charged in this cold case, shared details about the crime scene that had never been publicly released before.

Now 70 years old, Glowacz faces charges of second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery in connection with the 1987 death of 20-year-old Melissa Ellison. Court documents reviewed by News Media indicate these charges stem from Ellison’s death at her home in Jacksonville on December 28, 1987.

The tragic scene unfolded when Ellison’s roommates found her 13-month-old child sobbing alone on a living room couch. The child’s cries led them to Ellison, who was discovered lying lifeless on her bed, as noted in the arrest report for Glowacz.

Investigative reports detail that Ellison suffered severe blunt-force injuries to her head and neck. Blood was present on her bedsheets, and her head was oddly positioned beneath a pillow while her nightgown was pulled up over her waist. Detectives also identified soot or ash traces, linking them to a log believed to have been used in the attack.

The case remained unsolved for decades.

On July 8, 2026, Glowacz called authorities in Clay County and said he wanted to “set things straight” about Ellison’s death, according to the arrest report. Police said he told a deputy that he had committed a burglary at the home and had struck Ellison with a log.

During a subsequent interview with Jacksonville cold case detectives, Glowacz allegedly said he had been using narcotics at the time and entered the residence looking for money or property he could sell.

Glowacz told detectives he found Ellison and her baby in a bedroom, left the room, picked up a wooden log inside the residence and returned, according to the report. He allegedly said he struck Ellison once in the head, then carried the child into the living room and placed the baby on a couch.

Police said Glowacz then returned to the bedroom to look for money.

He allegedly told detectives he pulled Ellison’s body by the legs and lifted a corner of the mattress while searching underneath it.

Investigators said those details closely matched evidence documented at the scene in 1987.

The arrest report says that Glowacz accurately described the layout of the residence and where the log had been located.

Detectives wrote that those details had not previously been released publicly and were not contained in the article Glowacz said he read before contacting authorities.

Police also said law-enforcement databases showed Glowacz lived about half a mile from the crime scene in 1987 and had been arrested in connection with an unrelated burglary in the area on the same day Ellison was found dead.

According to the arrest report, Glowacz told detectives he had seen an article about the cold case in March 2026 and said that was when he realized Ellison had died.

According to investigators, he told them he had delayed coming forward until after the holiday season because he wished to spend time with his family. Police arrested Glowacz following the interview.

Prosecutors later formally charged him with second-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery.

The charging document alleges Glowacz killed Ellison by striking her while committing second-degree murder and entered or remained in her dwelling while armed with a dangerous weapon.

News Media has reached out to Glowacz’s public defender for comment.

Just days before her tragic death aboard Chris Durnan’s boat, Hamptons fashion entrepreneur Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra claimed she was being “harassed” and wrongfully accused of fraud by the financier, according to text messages seen by The Post.

On August 1, 2025, the 33-year-old Nolan-O’Slatarra, a swimwear designer originally from Ireland, had blocked Durnan on her phone. This did not stop Durnan from sending a series of heated messages accusing Nolan-O’Slatara and her East x East business partner Dylan Grace of fraudulent activities.

In response to the escalating situation, Nolan-O’Slatara assured Grace that she planned to meet Durnan, who had invested about 13% in their company in 2022 for the sum of $250,000, to directly address these allegations.

“Oh god . . . I’ll meet him Monday,” Nolan-O’Slatarra confirmed to Grace, as evidenced by the screenshots provided. She appeared determined to resolve the situation.

Dylan Grace then urged, “Can you unblock him for the weekend?” to which Martha promptly replied, “Did it.”

The next day, Nolan-O’Slatarra, who had blocked Durnan from calling her months earlier, complained that Durnan was aggressively messaging her.

“I’m getting harassed,” Nolan-O’Slatarra wrote to Grace on Aug. 2. “He won’t stop texting me like 10 times.”

The Irish-born beauty wrote that Durnan was saying “shite like you ghosting me” and that Durnan was “looking for attention such a kid.”

Two days later, on Aug. 4, Nolan-O’Slatarra met Durnan for a business meeting. It would end in her death.

Nolan-O’Slatarra met Durnan on his boat “Hell in a Bucket” at about 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Yacht Club and the two took the boat out for a tour and drank champagne at sunset, which was at 8:08 p.m. that night, according to a New York Magazine report.

The pair then returned at an unknown time to the yacht club and moved to Durnan’s other boat, “Ripple,” the magazine reported.

What transpired is still the subject of a police investigation.

Here is the latest on the dead body found on a Montauk Yacht Club boat

EMTs who responded to the boat at midnight found Nolan-O’Slattara dead — cold to the touch, covered in blood, and purpling under her nailbeds.

She was completely clothed on a bed on the boat, while Durnan was stark naked on the dock, where he had hailed another man, who called 911 and performed CPR, according to an EMT report obtained by The Post.

Durnan has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with her death and he has also denied any involvement.

His lawyer claimed to New York Magazine that Durnan ditched his clothes because they were covered in Nolan-O’Slattara’s vomit, but the EMT report made no mention of vomit. His clothes were never recovered.

A photo obtained by The Post showed the pair on apparently good terms on Nov. 11, 2022.

In the image, snapped at roughly the time when he was investing, Nolan-O’Slatarra and Durnan sit smiling at a table covered in drinks, including champagne flutes and empty glasses of Guinness.

Nolan-O’Slatarra’s family filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Durnan in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“For months prior to that meeting, Martha had him blocked from messaging and only unblocked him at the request of her business partner to try to assuage Durnan’s complaints about the business,” said Mike Bowe, lawyer for Brithem LLP, which is representing Nolan-O’Slatarra’s family in their suit against Durnan.

“She agreed to meet him. She died at that meeting.”

The estate of Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra opened up a tip line on Thursday seeking information that may help the investigation into her death.

Dylan Grace did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

The Post also reached out to Chris Durnan and his attorney, Robert Holdman. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the forsaken Gold Rush town of Bodie has garnered a reputation as one of America’s most bewitched locales.

Local folklore warns that anyone who dares to take even a pebble, a rusty nail, or a pinch of dust from this eerie California ghost town risks encountering a string of dreadful misfortunes.

Tourists who couldn’t resist pocketing a keepsake have often attributed these items to a series of unfortunate events, including car crashes, serious health battles, job losses, and prolonged periods of personal chaos.

Some souvenirs proved so ominous that their owners were compelled to return them, sending back the cursed tokens with heartfelt apologies and pleas for Bodie’s mercy.

The park staff has amassed so many of these remorseful confession letters that they have curated an exhibit in the Bodie museum to showcase them, serving as a stern warning to future visitors.

One visitor admitted that their trail of misfortune was so long and depressing that they could not bear to list it.

Others warned that their lives began to unravel only after they dismissed the curse as harmless folklore.

But the sinister legend may have been created by a park ranger to frighten tourists into leaving the town’s historic treasures untouched.

Bodie stands in the Bodie Hills, east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and close to California’s border with Nevada.

The former mining settlement is now preserved in a state of ‘arrested decay,’ with buildings stabilized but not restored and interiors maintained largely as they were left by their last occupants.

The town is also reputedly haunted by several ghosts, including a Chinese woman, a mysterious figure who peers from an upstairs window and a little girl whose laughter can supposedly be heard in the cemetery.

Kieron Connolly, author of Abandoned Places, a book about some of the world’s most mysterious abandoned locations, said Bodie’s eerie emptiness made it fertile ground for supernatural stories.

Connolly told the Daily Mail: ‘Whether you believe in the curse or not, you can see how the eerie emptiness of Bodie lends itself to the supernatural.

‘We expect towns to get bigger and busier and to be modernised. When we see somewhere that time has forgotten, unpopulated and left behind, we find it a bit unsettling – but fascinating.’

The letters sent back to Bodie offer chilling accounts from visitors who claim their troubles began after they removed objects from the town.

One, sent in 2004 with a collection of rocks, reads: ‘You can have these godforsaken rocks back. I’ve never had so much rotten luck in my life. Please forgive me for ever testing the curse of Bodie.’

Another visitor returned a shoe taken decades earlier.

‘Please find enclosed one weather-beaten old shoe. The shoe was removed from Bodie during the month of August 1978… My trail of misfortune is so long and depressing it can’t be listed here,’ the letter reads.

Even people who took seemingly worthless objects, including old nails and scraps of metal, later blamed them for a sudden run of bad luck.

One letter sent in 2003 said, ‘Dear Bodie… I’m sorry that I took this piece of metal from the town. I thought it was all a joke, but it wasn’t at all. Things are happening that are very hard to explain.’

Another, dated 1998, said, ‘So sorry for picking these up. I love antiques and being a Christian I felt so guilty for taking these on Monday. Not to mention Tuesday we got a flat tire and my husband hit his head on a rock.’

A visitor writing in 2002 issued an ominous warning to anyone tempted to test the legend.

‘Fair warning for anyone that thinks this is just folklore — my life has never seen such turmoil. Please take my warning and do not remove even a speck of dust.’

The stream of returned objects became so regular that park employees reportedly learned to recognize the packages when collecting Bodie’s mail.

However, California State Parks warns that returned objects create additional problems for the site.

Employees may be unable to prove that an item genuinely came from Bodie or determine its original location, meaning it cannot necessarily be placed back inside the park.

Processing the objects is also time-consuming, and park interpreter Catherine Jones said in 2018 that employees had to file a law-enforcement report for every returned item, regardless of its size.

Taking the objects is not merely an invitation for supernatural revenge – it is illegal.

California regulations prohibit visitors from removing rocks or disturbing objects of archaeological or historical interest inside state parks.

Officials also ask visitors not to pick up and move objects because Bodie is effectively a vast outdoor museum whose artifacts help tell the town’s story.

Long before it became associated with ghosts and curses, Bodie was one of California’s most notorious boomtowns.

Gold was discovered there in 1859 by W.S. Bodey, who died in a blizzard that same year while attempting to return to the site.

It remains unclear whether the town’s altered spelling resulted from a mistake or an attempt to make its pronunciation clearer.

Connolly said, ‘Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush), and it went from mining camp to boomtown.’

Mining initially progressed slowly as richer discoveries elsewhere drew prospectors away.

But in the mid-1870s, the Bunker Hill Mine, later renamed the Standard Mining Company, struck a rich deposit of gold and silver ore.

The discovery triggered a rush, and by 1879 Bodie had approximately 8,500 residents and more than 2,000 buildings, according to California State Parks.

At its height, the town resembled something from a Western, with more than 60 saloons and dance halls lining its streets.

Gunfights, stagecoach robberies and street brawls helped give rise to the legend of the ‘Bad Man of Bodie,’ although historians believe the supposed outlaw was likely a composite of several lawless residents.

Bodie also had a sizeable Chinese community numbering several hundred people.

Its Chinatown contained general stores, laundries, boarding houses, gambling halls, saloons and a Taoist temple.

Chinese residents were largely excluded from white society and built what California State Parks describes as a ‘town within the town,’ where they could preserve their customs and traditions.

In 1881, Reverend F.M. Warrington described Bodie as ‘A sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.’

But the boom did not last.

Connolly said, ‘Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned.’

The town was already in decline by 1881 as rich deposits were exhausted, mining companies failed and residents departed for more profitable areas.

Its population had fallen to approximately 1,500 by 1886.

Fires subsequently destroyed much of Bodie, including a major blaze in 1932, and the settlement faded into a ghost town during the 1940s.

Connolly said, ‘By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction.’

The surviving portion of the town became a California State Historic Park in 1962 and was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Its deserted homes and violent past eventually spawned stories of restless spirits.

The J.S. Cain House is said to be haunted by a Chinese woman who reportedly dislikes adults but is fond of children.

Stories claim adults sleeping in the house have felt an invisible weight pressing down on them, while doors have allegedly opened and closed on their own.

The Dechambeau House is said to be visited by the apparition of a woman who peers from an upstairs window.

Bodie’s cemetery is also associated with the ghost of Evelyn Myers, known as the ‘Angel of Bodie.’

The three-year-old died in April 1897 after being accidentally struck in the head with a pickaxe while a worker was digging a drainage ditch near her family’s home.

Her grave is marked by a white marble angel, and legend holds that her laughter can still be heard around the cemetery.

The origins of the Bodie Curse are more recent, and apparently less supernatural.

Jones told KQED in 2018 that a lone park ranger had created the story years earlier in an attempt to stop visitors from stealing artifacts.

‘Years back,’ says Jones, a single park ranger at Bodie apparently invented the notion that misfortune would befall anyone who took something from the park. ‘That maybe if we started this idea that you’d have bad luck if you took artifacts from Bodie, it would try to keep people from stealing artifacts.’

Theft had plagued Bodie even before it became a state park, with one person reportedly removing an entire piano from the abandoned town and driving away with it.

That piano was eventually returned and placed inside Bodie’s Odd Fellows Hall.

But the strategy intended to protect the town had an unintended consequence.

Instead of simply discouraging theft, the legend apparently convinced visitors that returning stolen objects could reverse their misfortune, creating a steady flow of rocks, nails, glass and other items through the mail.

Skeptics say coincidence, guilt and the human tendency to connect unrelated events offer more likely explanations for the accidents, illnesses and other calamities described in the letters.

California State Parks now emphasizes the damage caused by removing artifacts rather than promoting the curse.

Officials warn that when an object is taken, part of Bodie’s history disappears with it, and mailing it back may not repair the harm.

Yet the letters continue to provide an ominous warning to anyone tempted to test the legend.

Whether the curse is supernatural or a remarkably effective piece of park folklore, many visitors have decided it is safer not to take the chance.