Joe Owens was considered an odd fellow, but his recent projects seemed particularly strange, even for him. As 1989 began with the Pacific Northwest ground nearly frozen, the seventy-year-old retiree had concrete poured in the back yard of his Seattle home. Throughout the spring and summer, he was seen digging several large holes in the back yard without any visible organization.
All of the odd construction was done in view of his neighbors. Some laughed, joking that Old Joe was digging for gold. No one, however, was laughing when the real purpose of the projects was learned.
Joe Owens
Joe Owens had had a successful career in real estate. After selling other people’s houses for so many years, the relatively wealthy retired realtor turned his attention to his own home.
In retirement, Joe became obsessed with gardening and spent most of his time working in his back yard.
Gardner Joe
Joe and his seventy-eight-year-old wife, Gladys, had no children and appeared to live very separate lives. She taught piano lessons to several children and was loved by her pupils and their parents alike. Most described Gladys as the stereotypical sweet old lady.
Despite Joe’s wealth, Gladys told friends that the income from her piano lessons was the only spending money she was allotted.
Gladys Owens
On March 14, 1989, Gladys gave her regular 4:00 p.m. piano lesson to Gayle Dunham’s daughter, Katie. A lesson was scheduled on the following day for Tammy Decker’s daughter.
Joe, however, phoned Tammy, saying Gladys would be in Kansas for a week, tending to her one-hundred-year-old mother, Girtie. Approximately a week later, Joe phoned Tammy again, saying Gladys would be further delayed as she needed to find nurses for her increasingly ailing mom.
Gayle Dunham Tamara Decker
As the calendar turned to spring, Joe busied himself on his unusual gardening activities. Neighbors noticed he was digging several deep holes and were particularly confused by a compost box dug to an exceptionally deep depth. It appeared too big for a compost bin.
As the spring progressed and more people inquired about Gladys, Joe continued to say she was taking care of her mother. By summer, however, Gladys was not in Kansas anymore.
Joe Keeps Digging
By June, no one had seen Gladys for three months. The parents of her piano students had pre-paid for the lessons and began asking for refunds. When Tammy, the first to ask for her money back, called Joe, he was infuriated, saying his records showed no pre-payments had been made. After arguing for a few minutes, Joe hung up on her.
Several days later, however, Joe came to Tammy’s home in a jovial mood. He apologized for his earlier actions and refunded her money. Tammy again inquired about Gladys; this time, Joe had a different story, saying she was at an arthritis clinic in Canada and that her return home depended on how well her treatments went.
Later that day, Joe went to Gayle Dunham’s home to refund her money. In the version he told her, Gladys was back in Kansas where she and her mother, who had made a miraculous recovery, were joyously cruising the state and buying antique nickelodeons. He told Gayle that Gladys, whenever she returned to Seattle, would no longer be teaching piano.
Joe had a different story for relatives; when they began calling about Gladys, he said she had gone to Vancouver, British Columbia, to study music. Yet another story told to a local jeweler was that she had died of a heart attack.
Different Stories
Over two more months passed with still word from Gladys. In September, when Tammy, Gayle, and the other piano parents compared stories, they found the plethora of differing accounts told by Joe.
On September 5, 1989, the women reported Gladys as missing.
Gladys Is Reported Missing
The following morning, Seattle Police Detective Richard Steiner went to Joe’s home to question him about Gladys. Upon arrival, he found Joe and a contractor in the back yard. When Detective Steiner asked Joe about the concrete being poured into the middle of the yard, Joe said it was for a patio. Like Joe’s neighbors, the detective thought the location was an odd place for a patio.
When Detective Steiner asked Joe about Gladys, he replied she was in British Columbia. Joe said he was tied up with his projects all day but that if Steiner returned tomorrow, he would give him the address and phone number where Gladys could be reached. The detective was suspicious, believing Joe was hiding something and trying to buy time, but he had nothing on which to arrest him.
Detective Richard Steiner
Seattle Police Department
Shortly after the detective left, Joe phoned his nephew, Arden Bradshaw, in Wichita, Kansas. In a distraught tone, he told one final story about Gladys. Joe claimed she had committed suicide in March by overdosing on barbiturates. He said he had kept her death a secret because he feared it would cause embarrassment to the family. Joe said he buried Gladys on family land at Mt. Si, a mountain east of Seattle.
Joe went on to say he would soon be following in his wife’s footsteps; he told Arden he planned to kill himself because he had been diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer. He refused Arden’s pleas to fly to Seattle and hung up. Arden then called the Seattle Police.
Arden Bradshaw
Joe Owens’ Nephew
The following day, September 7, police came to the Owens home but found no sign of either Joe or Gladys. Five days later, Joe’s pickup was found at a masonry yard one mile from Mount Si, where he had told his nephew he had planned to take his life.
The owner had sold Joe a shovel and his secretary had given him a ride to Mount Si in Joe’s own pickup. Upon arrival, Joe told her to keep the vehicle, saying he would be there “indefinitely.” Five separate bloodhounds individually tracked Joe’s scent the same distance up the trail before circling back.
Granted a warrant, police returned to search the Owens home. They found that photographs of Joe as well as his financial records were missing. The two photographs of Joe Owens used in this write-up are the only photos of him known to exist.
Also missing from the home was a .22 caliber gun.
No Joe
In searching the master bedroom, police found the bed sheets had recently been changed but that one pillow case still contained blood spatters. Also, the bedroom door had been scrubbed, but trace amounts of blood were in the crevices. These findings suggested Gladys had been shot to death while sleeping, and the blood resulted from her body being carried through the hallway down the stairs. She was still missing, but investigators had a pretty good idea where her body was buried. Attention shifted to Joe’s unusual back yard projects.
A professional demolition crew excavated the already largely-demolished back yard. On September 14, a body was found in the compost box; tests identified it as that of Gladys Owens. Her head was wrapped in a towel, with a second towel and tape wrapped around her stomach. An autopsy determined she had been dead for approximately six months. She had been shot in her skull with a small .22 caliber handgun.
None of the stories Joe had told about his wife were true: Gladys had not been in Kansas tending to her mother; she was not in Canada receiving medical treatment; she was not on a spending spree; she had not succumbed to a heart attack or committed suicide by a drug overdose. All the while, in the six months since she had been last seen, Gladys likely lay buried in her backyard after being murdered by her husband, most likely while sleeping on March 14, the day she was last seen.
The purpose of the oddly placed and exceptionally deep compost box was finally learned. Joe Owens’ odd gardening project was digging Gladys’s grave.
Gladys Is Found Murdered . . .
Joe Owens had been untruthful about what had happened to Gladys, but seven months after her remains were recovered, he was found to have fulfilled what he said he intended to do in his final phone call to his nephew.
In April 1990, just over a year after Joe is believed to have killed his wife, decomposed remains were found by two hikers at Mount Si. Dental records confirmed they were those of Joe Owens. He was found three miles farther up the mountain from where the bloodhounds had lost his scent.
As he had done to Gladys, Joe had shot himself in the head with the same .22 caliber handgun. As with Gladys, Joe’s autopsy showed he had been dead for several months. Authorities believe he committed suicide on September 7, 1989, after making the phone call to his nephew and being driven up Mount Si by the masonry yard secretary.
I could not find anything specifically stating so, but I doubt Joe Owens was suffering from incurable prostate cancer as he had conveyed to his nephew. Instead, he was likely suffering from a demented mind.
Joe Owens’ motive for murdering his wife is unknown.
. . . And Joe Commits Suicide
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46235568/gladys-elizabeth-owens#
SOURCES:
- Los Angeles Times
- Seattle Times
- Unsolved Mysteries
What an awful thing to happen. It’s sad he didn’t leave a note as to why. He probably thought he was dying & the best way to take care of his wife was this. Happens a lot, usually with the death of children, too.