A man with a violent history and a “big knife” was arrested early Wednesday morning in the same gated community where an elderly couple was killed 16 months ago.
Though nothing links Ryan Oliver Glenn, 34, to the deaths of Russell and Shirley Dermond, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said there’s several questions still unanswered, namely, his whereabouts on the day of the fatal stabbings.
“We’re going to scrutinize him in great detail,” Sills told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
On May 5, 2014, neighbors discovered 88-year-old Russell Dermond’s decapitated body inside the garage of the couple’s home in Reynolds Plantation, a gated community located on Lake Oconee, about 80 miles southeast of Atlanta.
Ten days later, fishermen recovered the body of his 87-year-old wife near a dam on the lake. Her husband’s head remains missing.
Glenn had moved in with his father, who lives less than a mile away from the Dermonds’ home, after his release from prison in July, Sills said. He has served two stints in prison for battery and aggravated assault.
Deputies received a call from the neighborhood complaining someone was walking around, in his underwear, slashing tires.
Sills said Glenn cut tires on 21 cars and busted out a few windows. He resisted arrest then, once handcuffed, threatened to kill the deputy’s wife and family. Glenn was charged with multiple felonies, including criminal damage and making terroristic threats.
At a court hearing Thursday Glenn blamed his behavior on alcohol, Sills said.
The investigation into the Dermonds’ death has turned up few leads thus far and, while it’s too soon to tell whether Glenn’s arrest will qualify as one, Sills said he doubts the troubled 34-year-old was involved.
He’s long believed the killers were driven by personal animus, or acted on behalf of someone else with a deep grudge against the retired couple.
“I am convinced that the people who killed the Dermonds knew the Dermonds,” Sills said in May. “They knew the house to some extent. They’d been there before.”
Glenn is being held without bond in Putnam County Jail.
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