A Macon minister’s alleged killer eluded cops for nearly 17 years — until last week
In the days after the March 29, 2004, shooting death of a Macon outreach minister in the carport of his Anthony Road home, the police here seemed confident they would track down the killer.
“We feel that it’s a solvable case,” a veteran detective said at the time. “Information is coming in very slowly, but we think there is someone out there who has the right information.”
That someone, as it turns out now nearly 17 years to the day of Michael Troy Glover’s slaying, may be the killer himself.
Earlier this month, a trace of DNA evidence recovered from the shooting scene apparently matched the DNA of a convicted armed robber who has spent all but about a year of the time since Glover’s death behind bars.
The suspect, Terrance Bryant Dean, 39, was released from prison last year on Sept. 19 after serving a decade and a half in prison after pleading guilty to a pair of stickups, one in 2003 and another in September 2004, six months after Glover’s death.
In mid-November of last year, a couple of months after Dean was released from prison, Bibb County sheriff’s investigator Malcolm Bryant was assigned to review the cold-case file in Glover’s death.
On March 8, the investigator learned that alleged evidence collected at or possibly linked to the crime scene matched Dean’s DNA.
A sample of Dean’s DNA had been taken at some point during his incarceration — likely more recently — and included in a nationwide offender database.
Dean was arrested Friday at a house at 533 Nelson St., which runs east of Houston Avenue about a block south of a sheriff’s precinct.
Investigators have declined to divulge details about the alleged DNA evidence that led them to Dean, who now has also been arrested in connection with a Macon rape.
“Due to the nature of the (alleged) rape, details about the incident are confidential,” sheriff’s officials said in a statement earlier this week.
Details of Glover’s 2004 death
Glover, who had four children, lived just over half a mile east of Henderson Stadium, about a block from the well-traveled intersection at Pio Nono Avenue.
Detectives early on wondered if Glover’s killing might have ties to his fledgling ministry.
Glover, who had been a pastor at an area Baptist church, founded P.U.S.H. Ministry — which stood for Pray Until Something Happens — a few years before he was slain.
The ministry had an office Annette’s Learning Center near Interstate 75 on Mercer University Drive, according to published reports back then.
Glover’s wife, Dollie, who co-founded the ministry, said soon after her husband’s death that he sometimes opened his home to people in need, addicts included, at their house on the south side of Unionville.
Dollie Glover said at the time that she thought her husband’s killer may have been someone that her husband was helping.
Police reports, which were noted in The Telegraph at the time, said Dollie Glover had been inside the house in a bedroom on the phone when her husband was shot shortly before 11 p.m.
Michael Glover died of a single, small-caliber gunshot wound to the head. He died in his carport. Afterward, his assailant was thought to have gone into the house.
“A skinny, light-skinned black man with a gun grabbed (Dollie Glover) and told her to shut up,” a police report said, adding that the man threatened to “come back and kill her” if she spoke to the cops.
An incident report said that Dollie Glover apparently locked herself in a bathroom until the police arrived.
‘A deranged person’
A Telegraph article published a couple of days after the shooting mentioned how acquaintances described the Glovers as “friendly” and “perfect neighbors.”
“They were very quiet and kept their yard perfect,” a woman who lived near them said. “They just never seemed to have any conflict with anybody.”
A police description of the assailant soon after the killing estimated that he was 5-foot-8 and that he had a “small build” and a tattoo or birthmark under one of his eyes.
Dean, according to his booking information at the Bibb jail, stands 6 feet tall and weighs 160 pounds.
In the 2004 Telegraph write-up about Michael Glover’s shooting, his wife’s daughter said the pair had been married for about 18 months.
The stepdaughter, according to the article, said Michael Glover had been “an upbeat man who tried to help drug addicts get jobs and was always giving advice. ... He always knew what to say.”
In a statement at the time, the newspaper reported that Dollie Glover described her husband’s killer as “a deranged person.”
Meanwhile, she spoke of her husband as “a true man of God who not only preached the gospel but lived it and led by example.”
“While trying to help someone,” she said, “Pastor Glover sacrificed his life for Christ.”
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.