Investigators say relatives relayed confessions, a location and a brief explanation before the suspect was arrested in Utah.
WAUTOMA, Wis. — Before police arrested Randy Jenks in Utah, investigators say his own words had already traveled through his family, with relatives telling deputies he admitted stabbing his grandmother, Patricia Mae Glenn, inside her Mount Morris home.
That sequence has become central to the early public account of the case. Prosecutors charged Jenks, 36, with first-degree intentional homicide after Glenn, 75, was found dead during a welfare check. The immediate stakes now are no longer about finding a suspect, but about how prosecutors will turn a series of family reports, text messages and physical evidence into a courtroom case that can survive scrutiny.
The complaint lays out a chain of communication that began before deputies entered the house. A relative told police that Jenks said, “I stabbed grandma in the living room, on the floor.” Another family member reported that he said Glenn had “pushed him too far.” Investigators also said Jenks texted another relative that he had stabbed his grandmother in the neck and ran because he was scared. Those statements, as described in the complaint, did more than accuse him. They supplied a place inside the home, an explanation, and a direction of travel after the killing. In a homicide case, those details can matter because they suggest investigators were not working from a vague tip but from repeated, specific statements tied to the same person.
Only after that did the welfare check become a homicide scene. Deputies went to the Strawberry Circle home in the Town of Mount Morris around 7:45 p.m. March 8 after family members could not reach Glenn. Inside, they found her dead on the floor with dried blood around her. A folding knife covered in blood was found on a table, according to the complaint. Authorities have not publicly said whether testing has linked that knife to the wounds, and they have released little detail about the scene beyond those brief descriptions. But the timeline in the complaint shows how the family’s concern and the reported admissions fit together: first the inability to reach Glenn, then the warnings to police, then the discovery inside the house.
The relatives’ role did not end there. Family members also told officers that Jenks had a history of mental health issues and might have gone to a relative’s home in Ogden, Utah. That tip appears to have narrowed the search quickly. Utah officers located him there on March 8 and arrested him without incident. One local report said a person at the Ogden home told investigators Jenks arrived around 2 p.m. and was overheard saying he had killed his grandmother. Body-camera video later showed him approaching officers calmly with his hands up. The contrast between the violence described in the complaint and the quiet arrest scene gave the case a second, distinct setting far from the rural Wisconsin home where Glenn was found.
Jenks had been living with Glenn for more than a year, according to the complaint, a detail that helps explain why family members were positioned to notice both Glenn’s silence and Jenks’ sudden absence. It also places the alleged killing inside an existing household relationship rather than at a stranger scene. Authorities have not publicly outlined whether there had been prior law enforcement contacts at the address, whether Glenn had reported safety concerns, or whether Jenks had a documented treatment history. Those gaps leave many of the human details unresolved even as the criminal allegations themselves are stark and direct.
The legal track has since become more conventional. Jenks was charged in Waushara County with first-degree intentional homicide, returned to Wisconsin after his Utah arrest, and booked into the county jail. A judge later set cash bond at $2 million and imposed conditions that included not leaving the state and not possessing dangerous weapons. A formal initial appearance was scheduled for early April, according to court records cited in local coverage. Prosecutors have not, at least publicly, expanded on motive beyond the alleged statement that Glenn had pushed him too far, and no public filing has yet filled in what happened in the minutes before the stabbing.
In many homicide cases, the early narrative comes first from investigators. Here, the earliest public record instead rests heavily on what relatives say they heard and read. That does not settle the case. It does, however, explain why the complaint reads less like a mystery than an attempt to preserve a trail of reported admissions before memory fades and messages disappear. As the case moves forward, those early family accounts are likely to remain at the center of how prosecutors tell the story of Glenn’s death.
For now, Jenks remains jailed in Wisconsin, and the next milestone is the continued court process that will determine when prosecutors must spell out more of their evidence in open court.
Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.