
The fact of the matter is, Richard Eugene Glossip, is not the most likable person on the face of the planet. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that he is. In every interview I’ve ever seen of him, he presents as cocky and self-important. One of the lead detectives on the Barry Van Treese murder case will tell you the same. In fact he did, in the 2017 documentary Killing Richard Glossip. Bob Bemo would say “[Glossip] was very arrogant and very cocky…. He was one of those guys that really irritates you, you know, with his comebacks and with what he was saying, and that’s why I would get in his face sometimes with, ‘I’ll tell you what, buddy’” Almost from the moment Barry Van Treese’s body was found on the night of January 7, 1997, Bob Bemo seemed pretty certain of two things: It seemed like their missing maintenance man, Justin Sneed, was the likely killer- and that he hadn’t acted alone. Bemo would state in a March 18, 1997 report that himself and Detective Bill Cook had been told that Glossip had been telling different versions of different stories since his arrival on scene at the hotel. At the time the day clerk, Billye Hooper, had been made aware of the disappearance of Barry Van Treese, she had contacted Glossip. Glossip had been at Wal-Mart with his girlfriend, Deanna Wood, when Deanna was paged that she had a phone call. From there, Glossip and Deanna returned to the hotel. The events of January 6th and the early morning hours of January 7th differ depending on which story you're listening to. According to Glossip, sometime between 3:30 am and 4:00 am, he and Deanna Wood retired to their room for the night and went to bed. It was not uncommon for them to go to bed so late, as Billye Hooper ran the hotel desk during the daytime. Sneed then came to Glossip’s apartment at the hotel and woke him up around 5 or 5:30 am the morning of January 7th. At that point Glossip notices that Sneed had a black eye and scratches on his face, upon asking Sneed what had happened to his face, Sneed had answered that he had slipped in the shower and hit his face on the attached soap dish. Sneed then told Glossip that some drunks had gotten out of hand and the glass in room 102 had gotten broken. Glossip told Sneed to clean up the room and then first thing in the morning to put plexiglass in the window. He also asks if the drunks were still around, to which Sneed replies that he had run them off. Glossip fully admits that he helped Sneed with putting the plexiglass up on the outside of room 102 around 8 or 8:30 am the morning of January 7th, but that he did not go into the room, did not see Van Treese’s vehicle outside, and did not notice anything amiss. The fact that he helped place the plexiglass is supported by the man who was staying in the room next door to room 102. This man stated as he was leaving the next day he saw two men fixing the window of room 102. On the face of it, it sounds absolutely ridiculous that Glossip could be that close to a murder scene and not notice a damn thing. However, here is a photo below of what room 102 looked like on the outside:

This was not a high class hotel, this was your classic no tell motel, and it was no stranger to drunks, sex workers, and drug deals. Glossip probably wouldn’t have blinked an eye at a broken outside window. It becomes even more likely that he wouldn’t have seen anything when you consider two additional facts: 1) the room had mini blinds installed and 2) a white shower curtain had been duct taped over the inside part of the window, with the mini blinds trapped in between the window glass and the shower curtain.

Shower curtain photo, taken from inside of room 102 on the night of Van Treese’s murder
Glossip had stated that after he assisted with the plexiglass installation, he had gone back to his room to sleep, telling Billye Hooper not to wake him until noon, she woke him instead at 1:30pm. After he woke up, he and his girlfriend, Deanna Wood, left to run errands. They were at Wal-Mart when they received an emergency page from the hotel’s number. When returning the phone call, Glossip says that Billye Hooper exclaimed Glossip needed to return because Barry was dead. When he gets back to the hotel, there was a lot of confusion on whether Barry was, in fact, dead- because no one had found his body yet. Glossip states that he was under the impression that Everhart and Sneed had already searched all of the hotel rooms and found nothing, as this was directly stated to him by Everhart when he got back to the hotel’s office. When he establishes that Billye knew about Van Treese’s car being found, and that she had just made the assumption Van Treese was dead, he and Everhart then made the decision to drive around the hotel, the Waffle House, the McDonald’s and the Weokie Credit Union, checking in all the dumpsters in the area. They did this to ensure nothing was in there linking to Van Treese as he had not been found yet. Finding nothing, Glossip and Wood then go over to the Waffle House to have coffee, when he returns to the hotel office, he tries to contact Sneed to have him go fix a TV in one of the rooms- only to find that Sneed was nowhere to be found. When Van Treese’s body is found, and Detectives Bob Bemo and William “Bill” Cook arrive on scene, they’re almost immediately directed to Richard Glossip by way of Officer Tim Brown who was the first on scene, and by Cliff Everhart. With Brown and Everhart telling Bemo and Cook that Glossip’s story keeps changing. At that point Glossip and Deanna Wood are placed in separate police vehicles and taken to the police station where they are questioned separately. Having watched the interrogation tape of Glossip, I have to agree with Bemo- the guy is cocky and unlikable. He’s twitchy and defensive. He comes across as suspicious. However, the prosecution will eventually say that Glossip’s story repeatedly changed, that he kept changing the time he last saw Van Treese, that he had told Everhart and Officer Brown that he saw Van Treese on the night of January 7th. But in a supplemental police report written by Bemo on February 24th, 1997, Glossip states to Brown himself that he did not say with certainty that he had absolutely seen Van Treese at any time after Van Treese had left Oklahoma City for Tulsa on the evening of January 6th. Glossip had stated that he had seen a gray-haired man walking over to the nearby gas station, that COULD have been Van Treese, and that he had said as much to Officer Brown, telling Officer Brown to check with Kayla Purvey, the clerk at the gas station who also lived at the hotel.


However- the one thing that Glossip doesn’t say in his initial interview, becomes a problem. He doesn’t say that on the morning of January 7th, when Sneed woke him up to tell him about the broken glass in room 102- that Sneed finished their conversation by saying “Oh, and I killed Barry.” before walking away. As of this writing- Richard Glossip will be executed in twenty-one days..