Glenn Meyer

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Glenn Meyer was a man who was renting a room from the Ramseys' neighbors the Barnhills at the time of the killing. Meyer was one of the first people investigated as a potential intruder suspect in the days after the crime. Meyer was fully cooperative with the Boulder Police Department. He provided multiple DNA samples, handwriting samples, fingerprints, and hair. He also voluntarily took a polygraph test. Police found no physical evidence to link Meyer to the crime scene and no credible motive for him to commit the crime. Meyer also had an alibi from the Ramseys' elderly neighbor Joe Barnhill, in whose house Meyer was staying.

In spite of this, the District Attorney's office and the Ramseys' private investigators continued to investigate Meyer independently. They also found no evidence to link him to the crime, and soon moved on to other suspected intruders such as Michael Helgoth and John Mark Karr.

In recent years, theories of Meyer's involvement have been touted in Facebook groups and in a series of 2018 tabloid articles published by Dylan Howard.

Personal Background


Glenn R. Meyer (November 5, 1932-July 3, 2005) was born in Indiana. He had no criminal record. Meyer was a US Army veteran of the Korean War. He lived in California and had two sons there in the 1950s with his first wife Ethel Meyer (it is not known when they divorced).

Between 1964 and 1970, Meyer ran a home construction and furniture company.

It is not known when Meyer moved to Colorado. Meyer married Charlotte Hey on March 22, 1980 (Meyer was 48 years old at the time) and they were separated in October 1986, ten years before the Ramsey killing. He had no children with Charlotte Hey. He worked as a mortgage lender for Meyer Mortgage Company in Boulder, Colorado, from 1989-1999. At some point after that, Meyer returned to Shelby, Indiana, and moved into Major Manor, a retirement community (falsely referred to as a "shelter for the homeless" in the tabloids).

Meyer reportedly knew the Barnhills through a Methodist church - Meyer had been attending a weekly men's Bible study group with Joe Barnhill.

Meyer was 64 years old at the time of the killing of JonBenet Ramsey.

Murder of Meyer's Son
On June 16, 1996, Meyer's 38-year-old son Tom Meyer was murdered in a homophobic hate-crime along with his friend Athos Oliveira. They were murdered by a man named Eric Brown, while walking down the street in Boston. Meyer and Oliveira had simply been walking down the street when Brown shot each of them at close range with a shotgun. Tom Meyer was openly gay and living in San Franscisco at the time, and had been in Boston to celebrate a friend's wedding.

Police initially speculated that Meyer and Oliveira may have witnessed a drug deal. However, the killer, Eric Brown (who was arrested after his shotgun matched casings found at the scene) pled insanity and told a psychiatrist that a voice in his head had told him to murder homosexuals.


 * "Homophobic delusions were particularly prominent in Brown's schizophrenia [...] the voices in his head told him to kill two men, "one for Sodom, one for Gomorrah." [...] When he saw Meyer, Brown thought Meyer was "walking like a lady," and so the voices told him to "shoot him when he gets close." At another point Brown told the expert: "The gay people were sexual immoralizers. It was my job [to kill them]."

Tom Meyer's friends, family, and his partner, Drew Bertagnolli, were devastated by the senseless killing.


 * Bertagnolli now carries photos of his lover, the late Tom Meyer, wherever he goes. "Sometimes I have to just stop in the street and look at them," he says.


 * The mother of Thomas Meyer wrote [in a statement to the court] that she sometimes tries to easer her pain by pretending that her son is coming home for a visit.

Police Investigation
Glenn Meyer was investigated during the first week of the crime. Meyer was fully cooperative with police. Detective Steve Thomas said he "could not have been more cooperative". Meyer provided DNA samples, handwriting samples, fingerprints, and hair. He also took a polygraph test on January 1, 1997. Nothing was found to link him to the crime.

Furthermore, Joe and Betty Barnhill, who lived with Meyer, stated they had watched television with Meyer in their home until 9:00 PM on Christmas night, making it impossible for Meyer to have broken into the Ramsey home while the Ramseys were away. The Barnhills also told police that Meyer had gone to bed after watching television with them, and that he had a stomach flu that night.

In March 1997, at the urging of the Ramseys' private investigator Ellis Armistead, police re-investigated Glenn Meyer. The Ramseys' private investigators had found that Meyer had financial debts, which they said may have given him a motive to kidnap JonBenet for ransom. It is unclear where they thought Meyer was intending to take JonBenet after kidnapping her, or why he decided to murder her in the home using Patsy's paint set and hide her in the basement, rather than going ahead with the kidnapping.

Police questioned Meyer again and took another blood sample from him. Again nothing was found to link him to the crime.

John and Patsy Ramsey both mentioned Meyer in their police interviews, stressing that he had come to a Christmas party at their home a few days before the killing looking for Joe Barnhill.

The DA's re-investigator Lou Smit investigated Glenn Meyer yet again in 1998, asking questions about him in his 1998 interview of John Ramsey. Lou Smit never named Meyer as a suspect, despite naming several others over the years.

By the 2000s, having been investigated at least three times by different investigators, Meyer was no longer being touted as a suspect by anyone involved in the case.

Tabloid Theories
Tabloid editor Dylan Howard, who runs The National Enquirer and various other tabloids, and who is known for promoting a new intruder suspect every year around the holiday period, published a string of articles about Glenn Meyer in 2018:


 * February 2, 2018 "Shock Confession: My Husband Murdered JonBenet!": claims by Meyer's ex-wife Charlotte Hey (now Charlotte Cole) that she believed Meyer killed JonBenet because she asked him about it and "he didn't deny it". She claims it was suspicious that he had kept newspaper clippings about the case. She also claims "he used up all my savings" and "couldn't keep a job". It is not clear why she waited 20 years to share her suspicions, and did so in a tabloid interview, rather than by calling police. Article also cites Facebook posts by amateur researcher Roscoe Clark (See below). Published by Dylan Howard in The National Enquirer and other tabloids.


 * February 8, 2018. "Glenn Meyer's body to be dug up": calls by anonymous "investigators" to exhume Meyer's body. Despite the fact that Meyer's DNA does not match the unidentified DNA found at the scene, one anonymous "investigator" tells the Enquirer, "I think there could be benefits, forensically, to exhuming him". Published by Dylan Howard in The National Enquirer and New Idea.


 * Mar 7, 2018: "JonBenét Murder Bombshell! Beauty Queen Was Killed By TWO Men." Published by Dylan Howard in Radar Online, New Idea, In Touch Weekly.


 * April 4, 2018: "Case Closed? Ransom Note IDs JonBenét Ramsey’s Killer!" Claims Glenn Meyer's "handwriting matches the ransom note". Its sole basis for this claim is a Facebook post by amateur researcher Roscoe Clark (see below). Published by Dylan Howard in The National Enquirer, Radar Online, New Idea, In Touch Weekly.


 * July 23, 2018: "JonBenét Killer Finally Found". Claims that amateur Facebook poster Roscoe Clark (see below) has solved the case after reportedly giving information about Meyer to Boulder Police Department. Published by Dylan Howard in The National Enquirer and other tabloids.

Facebook Speculation


Many of the tabloid articles implicating Meyer are explicitly based on claims by a man named Roscoe Clark, who runs the Facebook page "Jonbenet Investigation". Clark, who has no formal training or accreditation in any form of forensic investigation, is known for reconstructing pieces of evidence in his own home and photographing them on backgrounds similar to the original Boulder Police evidence photographs. Clark also dresses up in clothing resembling an actual CSI investigator. Clark also makes elaborate drawings and diagrams of elements of the crime scene and has made plaster casts of JonBenet Ramsey's skull.

Clark's elaborate theory of the crime is that there were multiple intruders, one of whom was Glenn Meyer, and that they were still hiding in the Ramsey home on December 26, even while police were searching the house. He believes JonBenet was "stab [sic] in the head more than seven times with the screwdriver end of a Red Swiss Army Knife". Clark also claimed:


 * "The small brown extention power cord that had one end cut off was inverted into JonBenet inside her oversize panty, all the killer to revived her using 120 volts of power"

Clark also creates ice-sculptures depicting JonBenet Ramsey and has been in contact with John Ramsey. He refers to himself on his Facebook page as "a group of experts".

Other Comments on Meyer
Jeff Shapiro, an investigative journalist who pursued several intruder suspects over the years, replied to a question about Meyer saying, "I know Meyer and he's harmless, just a nice guy."

Meyer himself made one known public comment on the case, shortly after the killing:

"I never did meet JonBenet or the mother," Meyer said. "But I can't imagine a mother would do that. I don't know why neither one [of the parents] wants to take a lie detector test. The truth is what always comes out."