109. Glennon Engleman: The Serial Killer Dentist
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It's January 14th, 1980. Sophie Marie Barrera is in her office trying to wrap up a long day of work. She has no idea, but earlier that day, a strange man approached her car, a 1975 white Ford Pinto, as it was sitting in the parking lot of her office. He tinkered with it for a few moments and then he disappeared before anyone saw him.

Sophie gathers up the last of her paperwork on her desk and slides it into her briefcase. And she's out the door by a quarter to five, taking the back stairs down to the building parking lot. Sophie pops the trunk of the car, stashes her briefcase. There's no sign that the man was ever there. No sign that anything had been tampered with. Then she gets into the driver's seat, buckles her seatbelt, and turns the key.

Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. Today, I have a tale of a serial killer I want to share with you. One who was killing his victims in between doing dental cleanings for his patients. And maybe you're thinking to yourself, wow, Kaylin, two evil dentist tales already this year. And...

Yes, going to the dentist is one of my biggest fears, okay? I spend a lot of time reading stories about the bad ones to scare myself. Which is why in this episode, I actually want to shout out the listener who reached out to me to let me know that their dentist was James Craig.

So we talked about his case and how he poisoned his wife with arsenic he bought on Amazon in episode 104, Lovesick. But this listener told me he was actually nicer than you would expect, except for one day when it was like a switch flipped and he was really mean to her when he was extracting a tooth.

So mean that the office manager gave her a full refund for the extraction. And that was actually the same office manager that intercepted the cyanide package at the office and told police about what James was doing. So someone needs to get that girl a raise. Anyways, thank you guys so much for the messages and thank you for joining me here every single week. Okay, let's get back to it.

- Someone had placed a bomb in Sophie Barrera's Ford Pinto, but who and why? Both the St. Louis Bomb and Arson Squad and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were on the scene within an hour, led by Special Agent William J. McGarvey.

He surveyed the twisted metal wreckage in front of him. There was only one word to describe this murder, and that was overkill. Based on how giant the blast radius was, the unknown bomber had rigged at least 20 sticks of dynamite under her car, like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The explosion ripped apart the Ford Pinto, launching the steering wheel onto the roof of a six-story apartment complex,

And the shockwave blew out the windows of the other cars in the lot and shattered several windows in the adjacent buildings, which rained glass pebbles all over the sidewalk. It sent so much glass flying, actually, that the cars parked on the side of the street looked like they had been in a shootout. It was honestly a miracle that no one else had been injured.

"Sophie had died immediately," they said. I'll spare you the grisly details of what the scene looked like, but investigators did find part of her 30 yards away. Whoever did this to Sophie had only one aim,

Total obliteration. That was Agent McGarvey's first lead. The rage that the bomber must have been feeling towards Sophie. They didn't just want her dead. They wanted to blast her from the face of the earth, totally vaporize her. So McGarvey decided he needed a list of Sophie's enemies. ♪

But honestly, he didn't expect that she would have many. She was almost 60 years old. She was the owner of a dental lab business. It wasn't like she was in the mob. People didn't just blow up women like Sophie. But as McGarvey started talking to Sophie's ex-husband, her son, her daughter, neighbors, and close friends, he notices that the same name keeps coming up. Glenn Engelman.

Glenn was a local dentist and a client of Sophie's dental lab business. The two were in the middle of a lawsuit. Glenn owed her $15,000 in unpaid bills and adjusted for inflation that's about $60,000 today.

Sophie had initially filed the lawsuit about a year ago in early 1979. Glenn tried to get her to settle for just $5,000, but she refused. Services had been rendered and the price was the price. And Sophie's family revealed to the authorities that this was actually not the first time a bomb had been planted near Sophie.

In March, a dozen sticks of dynamite wired to an electric detonator were found outside of her house. Thankfully, it had rained overnight, so the dynamite was soaked, but it still went off and the explosion left scorch marks on the wall of her garage.

At the time, Sophie told the police about the lawsuit, suspecting that Glenn was responsible. And they assigned protective surveillance for 30 days while they investigated. But they didn't find any evidence pointing to Glenn. Even still, Sophie dropped the lawsuit just to be safe. She figured her life was worth a lot more than the $15,000.

But then in January, something happened and Sophie changed her mind. She told her lawyers she wanted to refile the lawsuit. A hearing had been set for Monday the 21st.

exactly a week after the bombing. Arson investigators ended up comparing the bomb that blew up Sophie's car to the one that was left at her house. And the components and the wiring were really similar. They were probably made by the same person. And it was enough for McGarvey to want to talk to Glenn Engelman. So the police brought the dentist in for questioning that night.

Glenn Engelman was a pillar of his community. He was a local dentist who was beloved for his kindness to patients and his care. He was born in St. Louis in 1927, and he had served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and he got his degree in dentistry from the University of Washington in St. Louis on the GI Bill. McGarvey was surprised that a guy like Glenn was even on their radar for a crime as heinous as this.

But Glenn wasn't the least bit surprised that the police wanted to talk to him. His manner was cordial, but completely nonchalant. No, he didn't consent to a polygraph test. No, they couldn't test his hands for explosive residue. In a soft, formal voice, he asked, "'This is about the lawsuit, I'm assuming.'"

He then handed the officers a list of the appointments that he had the day that the bomb went off, and he encouraged them to call any of his patients to verify. Heck, call all of them.

And his alibi did check out. He was with patients the day of Sophie's murder. But there was something about this guy that McGarvey just couldn't shake. There was literally no one else who had any ill will against Sophie except for Glenn. So he wanted to look into the dentist a little bit more.

Glenn offered low-cost or sometimes even free dental work to his working-class neighbors. He was the scoutmaster of his son's troop. He had a pale, doughy baby face with a receding hairline and a high-pitched voice. Everything about him said dentist, not killer.

But McGarvey also discovered as he was going through Glenn's file that this wasn't the first time that Glenn Engelman had been questioned by the St. Louis detectives. He found a file on another murder that happened in the area 20 years earlier, one in which Glenn was one of the prime suspects. This episode is brought to you by Hero Bread.

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It was the night of December 17th, 1958. 27-year-old James Bullock left his house around 7:00 PM to attend a night class at St. Louis University. It should have taken no more than 15 minutes for him to get there, but when class started at 7:30 PM, James was absent.

Instead, he was spotted roughly four miles away outside of an art museum. Around 7:40 PM, a man was driving past the museum when two people suddenly ran out into the street in front of his car. He had to swerve to avoid hitting them. But when he turned around to see the two people he almost killed, he saw that one of the men had collapsed to the ground and the other stood over him holding a gun.

Before he could get out of his car, the gunman fled. The driver didn't really get a good look at his face, but he said that he was wearing a brown hat and a dark coat.

The man on the ground was James Bullock. He had been shot four times. The driver called 911, but James died from his injuries as he was loaded into the ambulance. The police found James's car parked on a service road behind the museum with the engine still running, and they found blood spatter in the car. So it appeared that he had been shot the first time while he was sitting in the driver's seat.

And then there was a trail of blood as he fled the attacker. The shooter had chased after James and shot him three more times with a .22 caliber pistol.

Initially, this seemed like a crime of passion. So in 1958, the area behind the art museum, which was known as Art Hill, was a lover's lane and a pickup spot for gay men. James had missed six classes in the past two months with no explanation. So police just assumed he had a habit of coming to the Hill for secret affairs, even though he was married to a woman named Edna.

It seemed like on this night, the night of the 17th, something happened, like he trusted the wrong guy and wound up dead. Given the attitude of homophobia of the era, the fact that James was even in Art Hill at night meant that he must have been living a secret gay life.

The police spoke with James' wife Edna to get a better picture of their relationship, but she described them as newlyweds who were married six months and had quote, "an absolutely happy life." James was the love of her life and they were already trying for a family. This was supposed to be their first Christmas together. James had even taken the time to string up the lights in the front yard before he left for class.

But Edna got really nervous when the police asked her a simple question. How did she meet James? Well, she claimed that a friend gave her James's number to set up a date, a woman that she was in a social club with. But she couldn't remember certain details about this friend, like her last name, and she refused to put the police in touch with any other members of the club.

And the next question they had for Edna made her even more nervous. Had she been married before? "Yes, briefly," she said. She had been married to another man, but they had gotten divorced about two years before she started dating James. "What was the man's name?" the police asked. "Glenn Engelman," she replied.

It wasn't long before investigators discovered that Edna stood to inherit $65,000 from James' company life insurance policy. Today, that would be almost 700 grand. I mean, that wasn't too strange, ultimately. Many spouses get life insurance checks when their husband or wife dies. That's kind of the point of life insurance. But the situation kept looking weirder and weirder.

Because they then realized that Glenn was a part-time staff dentist at the company where James worked, and James had gotten dental work done from him. That kind of put Edna's memory lapse in a whole new light. She hadn't gotten his number from a friend at a social club.

Glenn had given it to her. And as a part-time staffer, Glenn was aware of the company's life insurance benefits. So the police started to think that Glenn and Edna had planned an elaborate honey trap scheme. Edna seduced James Bullock so that Glenn could kill him and they could share the insurance payout.

Both Glen and Edna were brought into the police for questioning. When the police tried to give Edna a polygraph, she fainted, and then she asked for a lawyer, refusing to answer any more questions.

Glenn, on the other hand, was inflappable. He just sauntered past the throngs of reporters outside the police station. An article the next day noted that his dark coat and brown hat that he wore walking into the police station fit the exact description of the shooter. And when questioned, Glenn had a ready answer for everything. He asked the officers in an unassuming tone,

"This is about my ex-wife, I'm assuming?" And then, just like he had done during the investigation into Sophie's murder, he handed the officers a list of patients he saw the day James was murdered. And there, at the bottom, was Tom Johnson, a last-minute appointment that he had taken at the exact time of James' murder. "Any other questions?" he asked the police.

Agent McGarvey was reading through the police file with so much frustration, he was white knuckling the Manila envelope. Police never found any physical evidence ever that tied Glen to James's murder. And he was eventually released and the case was still technically unsolved.

But when Edna was formally cleared of any wrongdoing, the insurance company cut her a check of $65,000 and Glenn received a payment of $20,000. So it makes sense why McGarvey was getting so mad. What do you mean a guy fitting the description of the murderer walked into the police station, received money from the insurance payment of the deceased, and then was let go?

But just because James was maybe gay and Glenn had a piece of paper that said he saw a patient that night, he was okay to leave.

McGarvey ended up looking into what the patients Glenn saw that night reported, and he found that there was a patient who was at his office at 6 p.m., but it wasn't Tom, like he said. No, Tom was a good friend of his that would have said whatever Glenn wanted him to say. It was actually a woman who reported that Glenn never showed up to their appointment. So now it was really starting to look to McGarvey like Glenn got away with murder.

But at the end of the day, now he was in the exact same predicament. There was no physical evidence that Glenn had killed Sophie and Glenn had an alibi that he had seen patients that night. And that's when McGarvey got this horrible sinking feeling in his stomach. If Glenn had killed someone 20 years ago and also killed someone today,

Is there a chance that he was killing people during that 20-year period? Well, the answer to that question was a lot more shocking than McGarvey could have ever anticipated. Two days after Sophie Barrera's murder, Special Agent William McGarvey knocked on the door of a modest townhouse. The petite woman who answered was Ruth Engelman, Glenn's third wife. Well,

Ex-wife. They had been divorced for over a year. McGarvey introduced himself and Ruth invited him inside, showing him the living room. She was very nervous, he noticed, fidgeting on the couch, tugging at the helm of her dress. She yanked a tissue out of the box and twisted it in her hands until it disintegrated. So McGarvey wondered what had her so wound up. Was this a sign of a guilty conscience?

And McGarvey decided to take a softer approach. He had some questions about Glenn, but she didn't have to say anything she didn't want to. Ruth squirmed and recrossed her legs. She wasn't sure if she could help. She didn't really know anything. But then she asked in a really quiet voice, "'If I tell you, will you help me and my son?'

And then this all clicked for McGarvey. Ruth was actually terrified of Glenn because she knew what he was capable of. McGarvey said he could only help her if she told him what she knew, but he promised she could trust him.

Ruth explained that she had been trying to get away from Glenn for years, ever since her son was born. She tried to divorce him several times before the last one finally stuck. She described him as a master manipulator. He knew when to apologize, when to make a big romantic gesture, when to make threats, but

But she also said that even though they were divorced, Glenn was still a fixture in her life because of their custody agreement. He would come over to the townhouse two or three nights a week to spend some time with their son.

But Ruth wasn't worried that Glenn might kill her. She was positive he would eventually do it. He told her he would, actually, repeatedly. He said that once their son turned 14, he was going to be able to teach him how to be a man, and that Ruth's soft motherly instincts would interfere with that, so she would have to go. He saw no value in keeping her around.

But then she told McGarvey the exact thing that McGarvey thought was true. She said, quote, "'Glenn's done it before. Killed people. More than Sophie.'"

For starters, Ruth was positive that Glenn had killed James Bullock. He had told her about the murder a few months before their wedding. He thought it set him apart from ordinary men, just like his education. He wanted her to know that he was a rarity, an alpha male who was capable of murder.

But it seemed like Glenn had an MO because after James Bullock, Glenn repeated the honey trap ploy at least three times that Ruth knew of.

His go-to method looked like this. He would convince a woman, usually one that he was somewhat close to, to marry a target that he had preselected. This was always some man that Glenn thought would be an easy kill, and then Glenn would kill the man for the insurance payout. That's what he had done to his first wife, Edna, in the past. After they divorced, he selected James for her to marry with the promise that his death would make them both rich.

But his problem was that it was kind of getting harder to convince women to be part of his scheme. Not everyone was willing to conspire on a plot to kill their spouse. But lucky for him, he had this huge pool of young, impressional women kind of at his disposal. His patients and his employees. At least, that is how he saw them.

Carmen Miranda was one of those women. She had known Glenn her whole life. He had really taken in the entire Miranda family, Carmen's mom and her seven siblings. He made sure that there was money for groceries, the utilities stayed on, and that there were presents under the tree on Christmas morning. For Carmen's entire life, Glenn was someone who fixed problems.

Like I said, on paper, he looked like a great guy. Carmen saw Glenn as someone who genuinely wanted the best for her. In 1973, Carmen was a high school dropout with really no plan for the future. And once again, Glenn came to the rescue. He hired Carmen as an office assistant, promising to train her to be a dental technician. He said that once she had real marketable skills, all kinds of doors would open for her.

And Carmen really liked working for Glenn. He was an easy boss, he was a good teacher, and he was never too busy to listen to her problems. She would tell him about how much it bothered her that she couldn't move forward in life. She felt like she was just existing. And I want to say here that I've been there too. I'm sure many of us have. When you feel lost, that can actually be the time when you're the most easily influenced. And Glenn

took advantage of that with Carmen. He said that he had a solution for her. Carmen should get married and he would help her find the right man. And then she wouldn't have to work at all. He knew that Carmen had an on again, off again relationship with her high school boyfriend, Peter Holm. She had told him all about Peter. He was kind, he was smart. He had a good job working for Southwestern Bell.

Glenn enthusiastically supported the relationship. He told her that Peter was "the one" and he made it seem like he was really committed to Carmen's happiness. So he started coaching her on how to do things to get Peter to marry her. Like, he would give Carmen these books to read and he bought her new clothes.

But he also started teaching Carmen how to physically be a good wife to Peter. He was already twisting their relationship through manipulation to get Carmen to do things that she really wasn't comfortable with. But at the end of the day, she thought it worked because Peter and Carmen were married within a year. And that's when Glenn reveals the next step of his plan. He was going to kill Peter for her.

He told her that he needed to wait at least six months to avoid suspicion, but there was plenty for Carmen to do in the meantime. First, she needed to make sure that she was listed as the beneficiary on all of Peter's assets and policies, and then she should convince him to buy more life insurance.

And this was really overwhelming for Carmen, who was a young newlywed. She didn't want the money. She didn't want to kill Peter. The plan was so outrageous though, she actually didn't believe that Glenn was serious. Glenn was kind of known to be a motor mouth, always talking as if like a moment of silence would kill him.

He would go on diatribes about freeloaders and describe the plot of novels, and he would monologue on the proper way to change a tire or jump a car battery. And Carmen knew by now that almost half of what Glenn said was just noise.

Until it wasn't, though. And the summer after her wedding, Glenn asked Carmen to come to his office over the weekend. She hadn't really been able to stop working like Glenn had promised her. Peter didn't make enough money for her to quit her job. But Glenn had helped her get a new job at a different office where she made more money. And she went to his office that Saturday afternoon. Glenn asked her if she had done what he told her and filed the paperwork. And

And she nodded, thinking that this was just Glenn talking out loud about his ridiculous plan that would never be seen through. She didn't really file the life insurance policy, but he didn't need to know that. But then Glenn walked Carmen through every detail of his plan to murder Peter. This was no longer hypothetical. Glenn was actually going to do this.

He wanted Carmen to meet him again the following weekend so they could drive out to the murder site together. He needed to show her exactly where to go to avoid any mistakes, like a dress rehearsal. And Carmen felt like she was breathing through a straw. And she got really lightheaded. She didn't want Peter to die. Their marriage had some problems, like anyone else's, but this was crazy. She told Glenn she didn't think she could go through with it.

And for once, Glenn went totally silent. It was terrifying. He looked at Carmen with his black beady eyes and his face turned red. She could feel the rage boiling up inside of him, poised to explode in violence. And he hissed, I'm very disappointed in you, Carmen. After all I've done for you, and you won't do this for me? Are you that ungrateful? And I mean...

Think about it. Glenn had been like a father figure to Carmen for almost her whole life, and he had already manipulated her so he could take advantage of her sexually. It sounds outrageous to hear that Carmen agreed to go ahead with Glenn's plan,

But she really thought that he knew what was best. On September 5th, 1976, Carmen and Peter drove down I-44 towards the state forest. They were on their way to Six Flags, but first, Carmen wanted to take Peter on a quick hike. It was her favorite trail because it ended in a group of natural caves and it was less than 10 minutes away from Six Flags. She promised the detour would be worth it.

Carmen parked in the dirt lot at the end of the trailhead and led the way down the sandy path. Peter didn't notice, but there were markings on the path that Glen had left so Carmen knew which way to lead Peter. Even as she was checking for these markings, there was part of her that still didn't really believe that Glen was going to go through with this plan. It just seemed so outrageous.

Carmen tried to scan through the trees for any sign of Glenn. Maybe he wasn't there, and this was all just a test, like she kind of thought it was. She hoped that he would eventually...

A rifle shot cracked through the trees. Carmen whirled around and watched as Peter collapsed to his knees. He mumbled, "Get help," and then pitched forward into the dirt, bleeding everywhere. Carmen screamed in horror, in disbelief, but Peter's wounds were too much, and she watched as he bled out in front of her. Glenn had been hiding in the trees, waiting for the newlyweds.

Peter's death sent Carmen down a dark spiral of paralyzing guilt and depression. She completely disassociated from the world. When she told her family that all she could see was blackness and threatened to take her own life, they admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. But the entire time, she wouldn't give up Glenn. Maybe she was just that brainwashed. I really don't know. The police determined that Peter's death was an accident.

Someone must have been shooting at targets in the trees next to the hiking trail. And based on the number of empty bottles police found, they were probably intoxicated. Peter must have been hit by a stray bullet. Which, why they also wouldn't try to hunt down the drunk person who accidentally shot and killed a man, I'll never understand. But apparently that was fine for them.

Carmen was released from treatment after three months and moved to California to live with her older brother. Glenn called her constantly to badger her about the insurance money. Had she filed the claim? Did they send her the check? Eventually, she was sent the check for Peter's life insurance. It was only $10,000 though, far less than what Glenn had expected. Carmen never changed the beneficiary on Peter's policy, so most of the money had gone to his parents.

But she preferred it that way. She didn't want a dime, not after what had happened. So she sent Glenn the entire check, $10,000, which is almost $50,000 today, and vowed that she would never see or speak to him again. Ruth Engelman finished telling all of this to Agent McGarvey, who could not believe what he was hearing. There's others too, she told him.

Ruth claimed that Glenn had used his honeypot ploy at least four times. In addition to James Bullock and Peter Holm was a man named Ronald Gooswell, and his widow, Barbara, was Glenn's most lucrative co-conspirator. Years earlier, Glenn and Barbara started dating. He eventually set her up with a colleague, another dentist, delivering on his promise to give her a better life. But

But he didn't dare try to cash in on Barbara's first husband, a white-collar professional. People organized fundraisers and tip hotlines for those murders, and those murders were actually solved. For 10 years, Barbara enjoyed the perks of being a doctor's wife and a stay-at-home mother.

But then he cheated on her. Barbara filed for divorce, expecting that she'd get half of her husband's assets to maintain her lifestyle. But the alimony didn't shake out that way. And Barbara found herself living in a one-bedroom apartment with three kids and bills piling up. It was time to reconnect with Glenn and find a new man. This episode is brought to you by Zola.

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Barbara met Ronald Gooswell at a laundromat, and they hit it off over stale coffee served in styrofoam cups. Six weeks later, they were married, and Ronald eagerly took on the role of stepdad, and Barbara adjusted to his small hometown.

The courtship was so fast that Barbara actually didn't learn much about Ronald's family until after they were married. And it turned out his parents' estate was worth close to a million dollars, and Ronald would inherit half of that when they died. And adjusted for inflation, that's $2.6 million today. Barbara relayed all of this to Glenn with a twinkle in her eye. They were about to make a killing.

On November 3rd, 1977, Ronald's parents, Arthur and Vernita, were attacked in their house by an unknown intruder. Vernita died instantly from a point-blank gunshot wound. Arthur had laid still, bleeding from his own wounds, waiting for the intruder to leave. And then he crawled out and called 911. When the paramedics arrived, Arthur was already in critical condition, and all he could say was the word,

"Two," which he repeated several times. And investigators thought that that must have meant there were two intruders, but it was just a guess. Arthur later died at the hospital. And initially, it looked like the Gooswells were killed by burglars. The whole house had been tossed. Drawers were rifled through, cabinets were opened, but Vernita's purse, which had cash inside, was completely untouched.

They also had left behind her wedding ring and her other jewelry. Was this robbery just staged? The murders shocked the close-knit community. Everything about them felt senseless. And the police had no leads, so the case quickly went cold. The whole ordeal caused a huge schism between Ronald and his brothers as they were left to divide their parents' estate. But at least Barbara and the kids were there for Ronald to lean on.

But then, almost two years later, on March 31st, 1979, Ronald pulled into his driveway after a late shift at work. The garage door opener was busted, so he put the car in park and yanked on the metal handle, opening it manually. But there was someone inside, waiting for him, a silhouette in the beams of his headlights.

Ronald looked to the back door, thinking about his wife and kids inside, but then bang, he was shot in the chest directly through his heart. And then another figure emerged from the dark and slammed a hammer into his temple. Ronald immediately crumpled, dead. Barbara appeared at the back door and looked at her husband bleeding out on the floor of the garage.

And then she looked up to the two other men standing in the dark garage. It was Glenn and his best friend, a man named Bob Handy. Barbara told them to move Ronald's body quickly, and then she went into the house to get something to mop up the blood with.

Glenn and his henchmen shoved Ronald into the backseat of his Camaro, which broke one of his legs in the process, and then they drove off into the blackness of St. Louis. They parked Ronald's car in the parking lot of a former Holiday Inn. It was one of those pay-by-the-hour places now, with a clientele of mostly drug users and sex workers. Then Glenn slipped a few condoms into Ronald's pocket to make it look like he had gone there to solicit sex.

Then they walked the next block where Glenn's friend Bob had parked his car and they drove home. It took five days for someone to actually look in the backseat of the Camaro and find Ronald's body. And then just as Glenn had intended, the police assumed that Ronald had been murdered by a sex worker. It was a tragic but clear-cut investigation, they said.

Ronald's best friends and neighbors didn't know how to handle the news. Not just about how he died, but how it happened so soon after his parents died. It was unimaginable. And no one blamed Barbara, the grieving widow, when she sold the house, packed up the kids, and moved away from the small town. There were apparently too many bad memories there. But they probably didn't realize that Barbara had walked away from the whole ordeal with half a million dollars.

Agent McGarvey didn't know what to make of all of this. This story was becoming bigger than he ever imagined.

So now what he needed to do was verify as many details as he could. If what Ruth was saying was true, his car bombing case was now a serial killer investigation, and that was a really big leap. Ruth also told McGarvey that there was a man at a drag racing venue that Glenn frequented who was pushed down a well and then was blown up with dynamite.

That murder had been long unsolved, but after hearing about how Glenn blew up Sophie, Ruth was sure it was him.

Ruth's stories all checked out. She knew details that had never been released to the public, things that only the killer would know. But that was both good news and bad news for McGarvey. Glenn had told Ruth most of these things while they were still married, and any skillful defense attorney could keep Ruth from testifying at trial because of spousal privilege.

So he offered Ruth a deal. He would place her and her son in the witness protection program if she agreed to wear a wire with the hopes of catching Glenn talking about Sophie's murder or really any of the murders. Both McGarvey and Ruth knew that there was risk involved in this. Glenn was a suspicious person by nature, and if anything tipped him off and he discovered the wire, he would kill her on the spot.

But Ruth was already waiting for Glenn to finally kill her. And if the wire worked, she would finally be free. So she agreed to the plan. And she called up Glenn, who agreed to meet with her. Ruth asked about Sophie's case while they were meeting. And he mentioned that Sophie got exactly what she deserved.

And Ruth kind of used that as an opening. Wasn't there anything else Glenn could have done to stop the lawsuit? Did he really have to kill her? Glenn was taken aback by that question. And for a second, Ruth figured she was found out. She gripped the cold ceramic handle of her coffee cup and held her breath, waiting for Glenn to just lunge at her. But he didn't.

No, he said that he couldn't have handled it any other way. He had to kill her. And if that wasn't enough of a confession, 10 minutes later, Glenn admitted to making the car bomb and planting the first bomb at Sophie's house. And it was all Ruth could really do to stay composed until Glenn left for the night. She immediately called McGarvey. Did he hear what Glenn said? They had him.

It was a good start, McGarvey told her. But the more Glenn said, the stronger the case against him would be. And if they were really lucky, he would admit to being a serial killer. This was really hard for Ruth.

Talking to Glenn more would give him more opportunity to find her out, but she went back. After Ruth's early success, steering Glenn towards conversations about the other murders was a challenge because there wasn't a lot of organic reason for Ruth to bring them up. She tried bringing up Peter's name, but Glenn shot her a look and she walked it back.

And this went on for weeks until finally something in her broke and she asked him just point blank, why do you have to kill people?

He tried to laugh it off and change the subject, but Ruth wouldn't drop it. She asked him three more times. She really, really wanted to know why does he keep killing people? And her persistence tripped Glenn's spidey senses. So he told her, "I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in a bugged house, Ruth. You're no longer my wife. You can testify against me. There are plenty of guys in prison because of their ex-wives."

And with that, he stormed out of the house and Ruth was totally dejected. Like she just had missed her chance. But then Glenn agreed to have dinner with her on Valentine's Day.

And right before their dinner, an article actually had been published about Peter's murder. And in that article, it listed Glenn as a person of interest, which gave Ruth the exact opening she needed. She asked him about the article while they were at dinner. And Glenn could not stop himself from complaining about how little money he had gotten out of the whole affair. It had hardly been worth it, he said.

So Ruth prodded, softly suggesting that Carmen and her brother lied about the amount. How did he know that she didn't keep more for herself? And Glenn scoffed at that.

He said, Carmen was incapable of lying to him because he quote, "trained that out of her." And her brother, well, he knew how Glen operated and what he would do if they tried to screw him. He said, "Plus we've got a third person very much in the background who does simple little killings for a thousand bucks."

And that detail genuinely shocked Ruth. She asked Glenn, "What kind of person would do that? Is he that desperate for money?" Glenn weighed her question and then shrugged. The money was part of it, but killing probably made the guy feel confident too.

And seeing the odd look on Ruth's face, he quickly added, "I do know one thing, babe. There's no driving urgency on my part to keep getting rid of my fellow man. That's the last thing I'm interested in now. I just want to settle down quietly and practice a little dentistry." And McGarvey was listening to all of this from the surveillance van, and he actually smiled. Jackpot. That was exactly what he needed to hear.

So five days later, McGarvey drove Ruth and her son to the airport to enter witness protection. It took another five days for Glenn to realize that they were gone. And then he was finally arrested and charged with the murders of Sophie Barrera and Peter Holm. And thanks to the wiretap and testimony from Ruth and Carmen, Glenn was convicted and sentenced to 60 years without the possibility of parole.

And then, in 1984, the Illinois prosecutor called a grand jury regarding the Gooswell murders, the family that Glenn supposedly killed so that his ex-wife Barbara could inherit the estate. Agent McGarvey had uncovered some new evidence. There was blood spatter in the garage that matched Barbara's husband Ronald's DNA.

And then, a few days after that, Glenn's co-conspirator, Barbara, paid for an expedited passport and booked a one-way ticket to Switzerland. But the police were able to track her down and arrest her in Florida before she even made it to Europe. Barbara was extradited back to Illinois and a bail was set at $6 million.

She actually used most of the money that she lied, schemed, and killed for to hire veteran defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who was part of OJ Simpson's dream team, but even he couldn't save her, and she was convicted for murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

And with the new evidence that McGarvey uncovered, Glenn Engelman was also charged for Ronald, Arthur, and Vernita's murders. After maintaining his innocence and taking the stand to defend himself during the previous trials, Glenn surprised everyone by deciding to finally shut up for once. He accepted a deal, pleading guilty on all three counts,

and foregoing a trial. He was already destined to spend the rest of his life in prison, so perhaps the thrill of the courtroom had lost its shine. He died in prison in March of 1999 at 72 years old.

Glenn was never formally charged for James Bullock's murder, allegedly the first murder he committed, which still to this day remains an open, unsolved case. However, it is commonly accepted that Glenn killed James based on the testimony of Ruth and others. Glenn has also been connected with the death of Eric Frey in 1963, the man who was pushed down a well and then blown up, but again, he was never charged.

At the time, police ruled Eric's death as accidental. He was helping Glenn demolish an old well with explosives at one of his properties. And the detonator misfired when James was inside the well, burying him alive. You know, when someone accidentally dies on a serial killer's property and it's not suspicious. But...

But in a familiar twist, Eric's young widow had collected $25,000 in life insurance after his death, which is almost $300,000 today, and they had been married for less than a year. Glenn had introduced Eric to his future wife. She was actually Glenn's step-niece. And given the similarities to Glenn's other murders, it's not that far of a leap to suggest that Eric's death was anything but an accident.

But if Glenn was indeed responsible for James Bullock and Eric Frey's deaths, it means that there are still two women who never faced justice for their actions. The women that seduced these men, at Glenn's request, and said nothing to stop their murders and then profited. So while Glenn served his time and passed away in prison, true justice wasn't served.

Okay, that's all I have for you today. I cannot stress this enough, but your dentist is probably not going to kill you. I know I just wrote two stories that makes it seem like they might, but they probably won't. But maybe they will. No, they won't.

But they might. No, they won't. I'm just kidding. Or am I? But meet me here next week when we take another trip into the backwoods, this time the backwoods of the Alaskan Triangle, for strange disappearances and other horrors. And until next time, stay curious.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Amanda Olson. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlop, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart-pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. You can listen to Heart Starts Pounding anywhere you get your podcasts, including the free Odyssey app.

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