Glenda Jones was found murdered in Tahlequah on April 9, 1980. She was forty years old.
Glenda and her husband owned a farm, which is where one of Glenda’s young daughters discovered her naked body. She had been strangled and left in a well house that was approximately three hundred feet from her house, she had been stuffed head first into the pumping compartment in the well house. In addition to being strangled she was also beaten about the head. Whether she was sexually assaulted is unknown. Her daughter had gone looking for her mother after finding a pool of blood just inside the front door of their house.
In April of 1984 a man named Edward Garner was arrested and charged with Glenda’s murder. Some of the evidence against him included a yellow pocket knife that was found in the bedroom of Glenda’s home. Allegedly the knife belonged to Garner, and he had told a friend that he had lost his knife. However, after a series of legal missteps and the fact that hairs found at the scene didn’t match Garners, the case against him was dismissed. No one else has ever been charged in Glenda’s murder.
If you have any information about the murder of Glenda Jones, please contact the OSBI at 800-522-8017.