Posted on 09/07/2002 4:31:57 PM PDT by What Is Ain't
Affidavit says ex-con told postal officials he was just trying to get money to buy a ring before his wedding the next day
Willie James Glover told federal agents he just wanted to do right by the woman he was about to marry.
That's why he tried to rob a mailman.
A federal grand jury in Mobile last week indicted Glover, 46, on a single charge of assaulting a postal employee. Glover's rap sheet dates back 25 years and includes arrests for robbery and assault.
As of Thursday night, he was in Mobile County Metro Jail on a possible parole violation. Glover, of Mobile, had no lawyer on record for the pending federal case and had not yet been arraigned.
A federal affidavit in that case, however, summarizes the events -- including Glover's apparent confession -- surrounding the unsuccessful stickup:
It was July 19, the Friday before his wedding, and Glover, an ex-con who'd been released a few months earlier, had just gotten paid.
"Glover said since he was getting married Sunday, he went out on a 'last fling' Friday night. He said he got drunk, and the next morning, he discovered he had no money left to buy a wedding ring for his fiancee," U.S. Postal Inspector Mike Willis wrote in the affidavit.
So Glover hopped in his blue Toyota Corolla and went looking for someone to loan him some cash. After striking out at several places, he ran into "a guy he had seen before, but whose name he did not know," Willis wrote.
Around that time, mail carrier Edward Goss was making his way down Bunche Road, a short street near the University of South Alabama Medical Center. Glover spotted him and figured a mailman would probably have money. So he asked the acquaintance to take the Corolla around the corner and wait for him.
Glover went up to Goss, made some conversation, then pinned the mailman against the seat of his truck and pulled out a knife. Glover repeatedly demanded cash, and Goss kept telling him he had none. Glover reached around to pat the mailman on the rump, "apparently to get his wallet," Willis wrote.
Problem was, Goss never carries a wallet. Glover gave up and took off.
Goss saw the Corolla pull up alongside Glover as he ran down the street.
"The suspect continued to run but seemed to be trying to distance himself from the Corolla," Willis wrote.
Goss jotted down the license plate number onto his left palm, about an inch from his own wedding band.
Postal inspectors traced the Corolla to Glover and tried to reach him several times over the next couple of days. That Tuesday, he called them and came in for an interview, where he confessed with his pastor by his side, Willis wrote.
"Glover said he was sorry he tried to rob the postman and would not do it again," the affidavit states.
"He's kind of a bumbling robber," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Vicki Davis, who is prosecuting the case.
Mail carriers in the Mobile area generally cover their routes unmolested, Willis said. Four postal workers in the region have been assaulted in the past year, but prior to that, there were no reported assaults for about five years, he said.
In at least one of the recent incidents, the robber had a bit more success -- albeit short-lived. Demetrius Andrew Snead, a.k.a. "Meat," was sentenced this summer to a nearly six-year prison term for robbing a mail carrier in Prichard last December.
Snead -- like Glover, an ex-con on parole -- pleaded guilty to ordering $200 worth of clothes from a catalog, having them delivered C.O.D. to an unwitting neighbor and sticking up the mailman who brought them. Snead's weapon was a dual-gripped hand exerciser wrapped in a white cloth.
Snead escaped with the loot, but postal inspectors caught up with him a short time later.
As for Glover, by statute, he could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Court records indicate that Glover paid $40 for a marriage license on July 15, but he never returned the signed original required to legalize the union.
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