The man she was allegedly cheating with was so concerned by what she purportedly confessed to him the day after the shooting death of her husband that police say he recorded a follow-up phone call, where he told her he was afraid of her.
Shocking new details have come to light in the case against Jennifer Gledhill, a mother of three accused of shooting her National Guardsman husband amid a contentious divorce and custody battle after he purportedly discovered that she’d been cheating on him. And those details are coming from the other man.
Arrested in October 2024, Jennifer Gledhill, 41, is facing nine felonies, according to an October 24, 2024 press release from the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office, including first-degree murder, five counts of second-degree obstruction of justice, one count of second-degree possession with the intent to distribute, one count of third-degree desecration of a human body, and one count of third-degree witness tampering. She has pleaded not guilty.
On September 28, Gledhill reported her husband, Matthew Johnson, 51, missing to the Cottonwood Heights Police Department. Through the course of their investigation, though, detectives came to suspect that Gledhill may have killed her husband days before reaching out to them to report him missing.
The motive? Police believe it happened as a result of Johnson discovering that the mother of his children was having an affair. They’d previously revealed at the time of her arrest that a confidential informant helped to put the pieces of their working theory together, leading to Gledhill’s arrest.
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The Informant’s Recorded Call
That informant was none other than the man she was having the affair with, as detailed by Law&Crime and People, who told authorities he became afraid after she allegedly confessed all to him in person the day after the alleged murder.
After getting spooked by what she allegedly said in-person, the woman’s lover told police he decided to record his next phone call with Gledhill, during which he reportedly told her directly that he was afraid of her.
“Wow, if you think I could even hurt a fly,” Gledhill said on the recorded line, according to law enforcement. “Like he just– he is, he’s not a person. He wasn’t a person anymore. He wasn’t Matt.”
The paramour proceeded to continue collecting evidence of Gledhill’s alleged crime, including screenshots and the audio of the aforementioned phone call, per prosecutors. He turned it all over to the police, which they say helped to facilitate Gledhill’s eventual arrest on October 2 on suspicion of murder.
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Gledhill’s Alleged In-Person Confession
According to the informant, Gledhill had come to his house just before midnight on September 22 and told him that her husband had confronted her on September 20 and “yelled at her because he knew she had been sleeping with someone else,” per prosecutors. He said that she then told him she shot and killed her husband after midnight that night, on September 21, while he was sleeping in their bed. She allegedly shot her husband with a 9mm pistol in the head.
Gledhill then told her lover, per his statement, “that she put Mr. Johnson’s body into a rooftop storage container, slid him down the stairs of their home, and loaded his body into the back of their minivan,” according to a press release from prosecutors at the time of her arrest.
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She then allegedly “smashed” his phone, hiding his truck in a nearby neighborhood, according to the release. From there, she drove his body some distance north and buried him in a shallow grave.
The informant told police that he noticed bruises on her body during their in-person conversation on the 22nd, and she told them she’d gotten them while burying her husband and cleaning the house of evidence.
Gledhill had previously told police about the September 20 fight, but had said that she’d not seen or spoken to Johnson since then. At the time, per police, she said he told her he’d be gone for a week and to not call him.
Gledhill’s Parents Also Arrested
Then, on October 24, Gledhill’s parents — Thomas Gledhill, 71, and Rosalie Gledhill, 67 — were arrested on suspicion of obstructing justice. Per arrest affidavits, via KSL, the two are accused of helping their daughter clean up after Matthew’s murder and disposing of evidence, facing four counts of first-degree obstruction of justice.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill previously spoke about Gledhill’s parents while announcing the charges against her in a press release on October 15, 2024, saying that a neighbor told police he saw the pair at their daughter’s home cleaning, saying they didn’t leave the home until 11pm; more than five hours.
“When police confronted the defendants’ parents about them being at the defendant’s home on September 24, 2024, her mother said she was only there for an hour. She also told police she had purchased a mattress from Amazon at the request of the defendant,” said the press release.
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“The defendant’s father said he didn’t remember details of the day except that he had been at the defendant’s house for a short period of time,” the release continued. “Detectives confronted the defendant’s father about how long he was at the house and if he went into the master bedroom, and he responded, ‘I did not go in where the incident happened.'”
Per the affidavit, Rosalie’s phone had been reset with all the data erased, while records allegedly showed Jennifer called her father before and after her phone was turned off while, as police put it, “she was up north disposing of the victim’s body in a shallow grave.”
As for why the mattress detail is important, per the DA, detectives noticed the mattress in the main bedroom of Gledhill’s home was new, while a stain on the carpet below the bed tested positive for human blood. “There were several reddish-brown spots on the wall, bed frame, and blinds of the master bedroom,” added the DA, who said the wall behind the bed was also “covered in bleach.”
While executing a search warrant at the parents’ home, police say they also found a plastic tote near the bedroom where Jennifer allegedly slept while staying there. In it, they found a Glock 19x gun box wrapped in a child’s onesie. The container, per the DA, is “consistent with the gun model and color which she had shown to the informant, loaded, on September 19, 2024.”
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GPS Evidence of Gledhill’s Movements
In the same release, the DA said GPS data from her phone showed that on the day she allegedly said she killed her husband, she “traveled to where her husband’s truck was later found at around 6 am.”
“That afternoon, GPS data put her in Davis County until her phone was turned off at around 2:37 p.m.; the phone was turned on around 5 p.m. as she was traveling eastbound on the West Davis Corridor,” the release continued, adding that her vehicle was caught on camera at a Holiday Oil in Salt Lake County, where she allegedly cleaned the car.
She then allegedly went to the informant’s home.
Domestic Violence Allegations
Prior to her arrest for allegedly murdering her husband, Gledhill had filed for divorce from Johnson in July, as reported by KSL. On August 21, she filed for a temporary protective order, which was rejected.
After a hearing on the matter, 3rd District Commissioner Russell Minas concluded there was no “abuse,” per court documents seen by the outlet. “There has been no intentional causing or attempting to cause physical harm,” he ruled.
“While (Johnson’s) conduct in some instances approaches the line of placing (Gledhill) in reasonable fear of imminent physical harm, from the evidence presented he does not cross that line,” continued the September 16 document.
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He determined that Gledhil appeared “unafraid” in submitted videos as evidence, as well as stating she appeared to be “equally confrontational toward him.” The ruling also states that text messages from Gledhill to Johnson were “repeatedly berating, belittling and demeaning … if not outright attempting to goad him into a violent response.”
“The conduct of the parties over the past several months is representative of a highly dysfunctional marriage bringing out the worst in the parties,” Minas stated in his ruling, “clearly suggestive that an action for divorce should have been filed long before reaching the current state of affairs.”
People notes that in one instance where Gledhill attempted to get a protective order, the court determined she was the primary “instigator,” per a probable cause affidavit. The outlet also says that out of concern for her “erratic behavior,” Johnson spent the last few weeks of his life often sleeping at the National Guard facility out of “concerns about his safety.”
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Gledhill and Johnson are the parents of three children, ages 11, 7, and 5 at the time of her arrest, per police. Since her arrest for murder, she has been temporarily barred from speaking with her kids.
Johnson’s body still hasn’t been located. On February 28 at a court hearing, Paulos said, “Matthew Johnson is not missing. Matthew Johnson was murdered by the defendant.”
More than 100 of Johnson’s fellow soldiers have been searching the area GPS data reportedly placed Gledhill after his alleged murder, in hopes of finding his body. Retired Utah National Guardsman Kevin Thompson, a longtime friend of Johnson’s, told People.
“We’re all combat veterans. We’ve seen a lot. But we don’t want to leave a friend behind,” he added, “so it’s on your mind all the time.”
Gledhill is being held at the Salt Lake County Jail without bail. Her murder trial is set to begin in December 2025.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages; Calls are confidential and toll-free.
