Utah Mom Accused of Killing Husband amid Bitter Divorce Allegedly Made a Chilling Confession to Her Lover: Police

Just before midnight on Sept. 22, 2024, authorities say, Jennifer Gledhill, a mother of three, showed up at the home of the man she was having an affair with — and made a shocking confession. She said that two days earlier, her husband, Matthew Johnson, a Utah National Guardsman, had confronted her angrily after finding out she was cheating.

According to prosecutors, Gledhill told her lover that later that night, after Johnson fell asleep in their bed, she shot him in the head with his 9-mm handgun. She then packed his body into a rooftop storage container, loaded it into her minivan, and buried him in a shallow grave north of their home in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

When her lover later told her during a phone call that he was scared by her confession, Gledhill’s response — which he recorded — was chilling. “Wow, if you think I could even hurt a fly,” she said. “Like he just, he is, he’s not a person. He wasn’t a person anymore. He wasn’t Matt.”

Her lover couldn’t forget what she said. On Oct. 2, after giving police screenshots of texts and audio recordings of their phone calls, Gledhill, 42, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. Authorities say she killed her husband, 51, during their bitter divorce. His body has still not been found.

“Matthew Johnson is not missing,” Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney Emily Paulos said during a Feb. 28, 2025, court hearing. “Matthew Johnson was murdered by the defendant.”

Gledhill has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail in the Salt Lake County Jail. Her trial is set for December 2025.

The couple’s friends are still struggling to understand what happened. Johnson and Gledhill shared three children, all under the age of 13.

“I thought she was nice, kind of a homebody,” said Johnson’s friend John Hash, who served with him in the Utah Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group. But according to another friend, the relationship had become “rocky” in recent years.

Gledhill had tried several times to get protective orders against her husband, who previously served in the Marines before joining the National Guard. She was unsuccessful. In one case, a court even ruled she was the “instigator” of their problems, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The stress wore heavily on Johnson, friends say. He was so unsettled by Gledhill’s behavior that he spent much of his last few weeks sleeping at a National Guard facility because he feared for his safety.

In one of his final conversations with his longtime friend Kevin Thompson, a retired Utah National Guardsman, Johnson said he was ready to move forward with a divorce. “It is time to move on,” Thompson recalled him saying.

Johnson never got that chance. After Gledhill’s lover reported what she told him, police searched the couple’s home. Investigators said they found Johnson’s blood under the bed carpet and evidence that a wall had been cleaned with bleach.

Police also arrested Gledhill’s parents, Thomas, 71, and Rosalie, 68, accusing them of helping cover up the crime. They face charges of obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, more than 100 of Johnson’s fellow soldiers have joined the search for his body in an area where GPS data reportedly placed Gledhill after the alleged killing. “We’re all combat veterans,” Thompson said. “We’ve seen a lot. But we don’t want to leave a friend behind, so it’s on your mind all the time.”