Glenn Childress: The Janitor Who Became a Serial Killer

Overview

Glenn Childress is the primary antagonist of Ronald Malfi’s novel Come with Me. A custodian who transforms into a prolific serial killer, Childress murders teenage girls under a twisted belief that he is saving them from spiritual corruption. His method—using a spotlight affixed to his car and electrical wire—and his delusional justification make him a complex and chilling figure. Childress’s presence haunts the investigation of Allison Decker, who was tracking him before her own death, and forces her husband Aaron to confront the limits of grief and justice.

Plot Role

Childress operates as the hidden threat that Aaron Decker uncovers after his wife Allison’s murder. Early in the story, Aaron learns that Allison had been investigating a series of unsolved killings. Through his travels to Woodvine, Pennsylvania, and Chester, North Carolina, Aaron pieces together clues that point to Childress. In the novel’s climax, Aaron confronts Childress in a motel room and kills him in a struggle that blurs self‑defense and vengeance. Childress’s capture (and later death) solves the cold cases but leaves Aaron grappling with his own transformation into a killer.

Motivations and Traits

Delusion of purification
Childress believes he is purging poison from young girls. He tells Aaron, “I didn’t hurt these girls, I saved them. … I squeezed every ounce of poison from their bodies and left behind something pure and wholesome.” This mindset is a rationalization for murder, rooted in a hallucinated voice he calls “Glenn the Friend,” which he claims speaks to him from inside his head.

Paranoid vigilance
During his time as a janitor at Elk Head High School, Childress patrolled parking lots and schoolyards in his Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, shining a door‑mounted spotlight on teenagers. Residents recall him as a “creep” who would follow people home. This behavior foreshadows his later stalking and abducting of victims.

Chronic physical pain
Childress suffers from severe headaches that lead him to consult neurologists in Philadelphia. Although no physical cause is found, the pain may have contributed to his psychological deterioration. After moving to Chester and buying the motel, his headaches reportedly improved, possibly because isolation fed his delusional calm.

Calculated patience
He waits months, sometimes years, between murders, and he carefully collects victims’ names and addresses from camp letters. He buys the Valentine Motel and campsite to gain proximity to potential targets, blending into a quiet, remote community.

Chronological Arc

• Early career: Childress works as a custodial engineer at the AstroOil refinery in Woodvine, Pennsylvania. He starts having debilitating headaches. The refinery closes amid health concerns, and he takes a janitor job at Elk Head High School.
• First murder: In summer 2004, he murders Carol Thompson, a teenage girl from Woodvine. This killing awakens his “calling.”
• Move to Chester: After Carol’s death, Childress leaves Woodvine and eventually lands in Chester, North Carolina, where he helps an elderly couple run a motel and campsite.
• Expansion of killings: In 2006, he kills Margot Idelson (a camper from Norfolk, Virginia). In 2007 he buys the motel. Over the next decade he murders at least seven more girls, including Shelby Davenport (2008), Lauren Chastain (2012), Megan Pollock (2013), Gabrielle Colson‑Howe (2016), and Holly Renfrow (2018). The final confirmed victim count is eleven.
• Marriage to Sheila: In 2011, he marries Sheila Longbaugh, a laundromat worker who knew the Davenport family. Sheila becomes his wife and helps run the motel, apparently unaware of his crimes.
• Confrontation: In fall 2018, Holly Renfrow escapes his attack but drowns. Allison Decker traces him to the motel, but disappears before she can act. Months later, Aaron Decker arrives, discovers Childress’s shed with a spotlight and electrical wire, and ultimately shoots Childress dead.
• Aftermath: FBI and local police confirm Childress’s guilt through his car, gloves, wire, and fake police credentials. Aaron is cleared with a self‑defense claim, though forensics suggest Childress was shot while on the floor.

Relationships

With Sheila Childress
Sheila is a “mousy, skittish woman” who marries Glenn after a short courtship. She suffers three miscarriages and falls into depression. There is no evidence she participated in or knew about the murders; she is later questioned and released. After Glenn’s death, she shoots and kills Aaron in an act of vengeance, suggesting a deep, misplaced loyalty.

With victims
Childress does not form personal bonds with his victims. He selects them from a distance—often campers whose addresses he collects from letters—and murders them in their home towns weeks or months later. He uses the pretext of being a police officer to lure them into his car.

With Aaron Decker
Aaron becomes Childress’s adversary. Childress respects Aaron’s persistence but also mocks his decision to investigate alone. In their final scene, Childress holds a gun on Aaron, recounting his philosophy. After Aaron strikes him with an oar, Childress still reaches for his revolver, forcing Aaron to shoot him.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Theme and Symbol Connections

The Cost of Obsession – Childress’s compulsive need to “purify” mirrors Aaron’s obsessive quest for truth. Both characters lose themselves in their fixations.

Small‑Town Corruption – Woodvine’s shuttered refinery and the “Gas Head” legend create an atmosphere of decay. Childress embodies the poison that seeps into the community; his job at the refinery and his headaches link him symbolically to industrial contamination.

Legacy of Violence – Childress’s murders echo the violence that Allison witnessed as a child (her sister Carol’s death) and that Aaron later enacts. The cycle continues when Sheila kills Aaron.

Grief and Loss – Aaron’s grief drives him toward Childress, but the killer’s worldview offers a perverse mirror: Childress claims to be mourning the corruption he sees in girls. Both men are haunted by loss, but one turns it into destruction.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Glenn Childress call himself “Glenn the Friend”?
   He tells Aaron that “Glenn the Friend” is the name high‑school kids gave him, but that it actually refers to a voice inside his head that guides him to his victims. He views it as an alternate consciousness.

2. How did Childress choose his victims?
   He targeted girls attending the church‑affiliated summer camp at his motel. He collected their names and home addresses from letters they wrote home, then murdered them later in their own towns.

3. What was Childress’s motive for killing?
   He believed the girls were becoming “poisoned” or “rotten” and that by strangling them he was purifying them. He saw their deaths as salvation, not murder.

4. Was Sheila Childress aware of her husband’s crimes?
   The novel states she was questioned and released; no evidence suggests she knew. However, after Glenn’s death she kills Aaron, indicating she held him responsible.

5. How does Childress’s background connect to the “Gas Head” legend?
   Childress worked at the refinery linked to the Gas Head story—a monster said to be born from toxic emissions. The author uses this parallel to suggest that Childress is a human incarnation of the town’s environmental and psychological poison.

For more context, see the main book summary, explore themes of grief and loss, or read the ending explained.