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http://www.findjohnglasgow.com/index.shtml

banked a $300,000 annual bonus just days before he was reported missing

As an outside auditor, Glasgow was assigned to a new construction company formed in 1987 as a 50-50 partnership between Bill Clark and Dillard’s Inc., primarily to build stores for the Little Rock retailer.

Glasgow was, by all accounts, very well compensated, but his brother said the $300,000 bonus he received in January was unusually large. The money, like his regular paychecks, was direct-deposited into a joint checking account he shared with Melinda, Roger Glasgow said.

A plan to disburse Clark’s share of the company was in the works when John vanished; in fact, Arkansas Business published a “Whisper” about it in the issue dated Jan. 28, the day Glasgow went missing.

John was deeply involved in CDI’s routine year-end audit as well as the valuation of the company, according to his brother, and he represented his fellow executives in talks with Simmons First National Bank for loans to buy shares from the Clark estate. (William Clark was named to the board of directors of Simmons First National Corp. in early January.)

John fully intended to spend the rest of his working life with CDI, Melinda said. But on “the worst day of his life,” they took comfort in the knowledge that they would be fine even if his job there ended.

“We talked about that. We’re young; we’re smart; we have money in the bank. I have a good job; he gets headhunter calls a couple of times a year. We have options,” she said. “He was committed to that company, but he knew on an intellectual level that he didn’t have to be. And he knew that I was with him no matter what. He knew that too.”

Dillard’s and CDI, in their joint response, said it was “simply not true” that Glasgow’s position as CFO was threatened by the change in ownership structure.

On Jan. 26, the Saturday before he disappeared, John Glasgow spent much of the day at the CDI office. According to Roger, he used an electronic key to enter the building, leave for lunch, then come back to work the rest of the afternoon before going home.

John was also at the office much of the day on Sunday, but he entered and left several times - sometimes for a minute or two, possibly to smoke the cigarettes he had found impossible to quit for good. No surveillance camera was trained on the employee entrance he used.

That evening, he and Melinda went across the street for a dinner party hosted by John’s older cousin, Richard “Dick” Norton. When he got back home, John fell asleep in front of the television with his favorite cat on a blanket on his lap.

Melinda went to bed upstairs and hasn’t seen him since.

Brian Rosenthal, an attorney with the Rose Law Firm, set multiple alarm clocks so that he would wake up early on Monday, Jan. 28. He and a client were heading out of town.

While he was making sure that he had turned off all the alarms, Rosenthal heard a car outside.

“I thought that was pretty unusual,” he said, but then again, “I’m not up that early all that often, so I couldn’t say for sure.” It was 5:10 or maybe as late as 5:15 a.m.

He thought maybe a neighbor was being picked up for an early-morning trip to the gym, but when he looked out he saw John Glasgow driving east on South Lookout toward Point Circle, the way he generally headed for work.

At least he assumed it was John. When the family started looking for John later that day, Rosenthal realized that he hadn’t actually seen the driver and he hadn’t studied the car carefully enough to say without a doubt that it was Glasgow’s.

“I saw the car leaving from in front of John’s house. I didn’t think about it being John’s car, but it was a Volvo type. ... I only saw the car. I assumed it was John, yes. When someone asked me later if I had seen John, my answer would have been, yes, I saw him drive off.”

A ping from John’s cell phone was recorded on an Alltel tower in Little Rock at 5:15 that morning, Roger Glasgow said, so the family doesn’t doubt that Rosenthal saw John leaving home. But he never entered the CDI offices that day, and his car hasn’t been spotted on surveillance videos along the route to the office.

When Melinda got up, her husband and the Volvo were gone. Since his bathroom was downstairs and he took care of his own wardrobe, she wasn’t at all surprised that he could have gotten ready for work and left without waking her.

She went to her own job, which she has since resigned, in the public relations department at Heifer International’s headquarters in downtown Little Rock.

About 2:30 that afternoon, Christy Clark, whom John Glasgow had hired as an accountant at CDI and who later married William Clark, called Melinda to ask where John was. He hadn’t come to the office that day and no one was able to reach him on his cell phone.

Because CDI is so close to the Glasgows’ home, Christy Clark dispatched a search party to his house, but no one was home. Melinda Glasgow called her brother-in-law Roger and John’s best friend, PR executive Mitch Chandler, and had them meet her at their house.

“I knew that if he wasn’t at work, something was wrong. That’s just not John. He’s the most responsible person I have known in my entire life,” Melinda said.

After the three called in vain anyone who might know where he went, Chandler called the Little Rock Police Department. The responding officer was persuaded to make a missing person report even though John had been missing only for about 12 hours. The report bears the time 5:54 p.m.

The police report sounded ominous: “J. Glasgow had recently been stressed over events occurring at work but he never made any statements about harming himself. ... M. Glasgow advised that J. Glasgow wrote a bank account number and the code to their personal safe on a pad of paper and left it on the table along with some checks to be mailed. M. Glasgow also advised that a 22 rifle was missing from the residence.”

The last part irritates Melinda. It was Chandler, she said, who told the police about the only firearm John owned, a single-shot antique that was later found in an armoire in the Glasgow home.

“It was ridiculous of Mitch to even mention it,” Melinda said. “It was never a concern for me.”

And the significance of the account number and safe code is unclear. Roger Glasgow said they were written in John’s handwriting on the second page of a notepad on which Melinda kept her “to-do list,” but it’s not known when he wrote them. They weren’t left in a conspicuous location, Melinda said.

“There wasn’t one single thing that alarmed me at all. Nothing,” she said, not even with the benefit of hindsight. “I’ve retraced it a hundred times - well, should I have looked here or noticed that? - and nothing.”

The account was the joint account with Melinda, and the number wasn’t secret - it was printed on their checks. The combination to the safe was also kept elsewhere in the house.

“Really, I guess we kind of hyped the significance of those items to expedite the missing-persons report,” Roger said. “Except for the rifle. That did concern me.”

“Either [Glasgow] accomplished his plan to disappear or something went completely wrong on him clearing his head and he’s up on the mountain. But I just don’t think that.”

Searchers quickly considered whether Glasgow might have flown away; there is an uncontrolled private airstrip on Petit Jean. But Stowe-Rains said, “We really didn’t put any validity into that because if he was going to fly out of there, he would have parked closer to the strip.”

There’s no evidence to suggest that anyone beside John Glasgow drove his car to Mather Lodge. “Nothing leads us to believe that, with his personal items in it. And that’s another thing - if you are wanting to dump a car, why would you dump the car in the fricking parking lot?”

Nor is there any reason to think Glasgow was suicidal, Stowe-Rains said. And both Melinda Glasgow and her brother-in-law Roger do not entertain the idea that John could have killed himself.

“No. Absolutely not. I know that without a doubt. No,” Melinda said.

And there are several more theories she dismisses out of hand.

“There is zero doubt in my mind that there’s another woman. There is zero doubt in my mind that there was any money thing. ... Our house is paid for; our cars are paid for; we have zero debt. We don’t have money problems, and would he take money that wasn’t his? Absolutely not.”

The week after John Glasgow disappeared, his name was removed from the list of officers on CDI’s company Web site. The acting CFO is Chris Johnson, formerly of the Dillard’s finance staff.

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article.aspx?aID=103412.48591.115557&view=all