As police worked to piece together the last days of two women allegedly murdered by the same man, more details emerged on Tuesday.
Aaron Glee Jr., the suspect in the killings of 75-year-old Virginia Sims and 19-year-old Oluwatoyin Salau, already had assault charges pending from a previous arrest when he allegedly took the lives of the women whose bodies were found on his property.
On Tuesday the Tallahassee Police Department doled out a few more details of the dual cases as they tried to piece events together, from Salau’s initial call on June 6 to report she had been molested, to the gruesome discovery of the two bodies.
Soon after Salau’s first call, police said in a media release, her friends had reported her missing, and police intensified their efforts to find her. From reaching out to those who knew her and to victim advocacy groups she had been referred to, to checking locations where she was known to hang out, to sending out a missing-person flier, “a team of more than a dozen TPD investigators worked tirelessly to find Salau,” police said.
In the days before her death, she had been protesting racism and police brutality in the name of George Floyd at rallies around the city, involved with an activist group known as Movement 850. She told friends she had been trafficked, and they were worried about her, they told the Tallahassee Democrat.
While all this was happening, Sims, too, was reported missing by her family.
“Responding officers found that her residence had been ransacked and burglarized and her vehicle was missing,” police said of Sims. Friends and family told police she sometimes gave rides to a man named Aaron, the Tallahassee Democrat said.
Running a trace on her cellphone led them to Glee’s home, where they found her white Toyota stuck in mud, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, citing newly released court records.
“It appeared as though the driver was attempting to drive north of the stopping location, but was unsuccessful,” court documents said, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. “There was a white sheet covering the rear of the vehicle, including the license plate. The license plate was bent upward, as though attempting to conceal the vehicle’s identity.”
They knocked on the door, the newspaper said, but when no one answered, they broke in, only to find Sims’s body in a bedroom, covered with a white, blood-soaked blanket, her wrists and ankles bound behind her back.
Salau’s body was in the woods behind the home, found by a police dog. She was covered in leaves, the affidavit said, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Glee was nowhere to be found. He had grabbed a bus to Orlando, where police, alerted by Tallahassee authorities, apprehended him.
He was charged with murder and kidnapping. He does not seem to be responsible for the assault that Salau had reported earlier, police said, because the information she gave didn’t match Glee’s description.
The department extended “our deepest condolences” to those who knew and loved the women.
“Each woman was passionate about improving the lives of others,” the police said. “With Salau protesting for justice and policy change with Movement 850 and Sims serving the elderly with AARP, TPD is committed to upholding the legacies of their service on behalf of others by bringing the person responsible for their murders to justice. Our hearts are with the victims’ families as they grieve.”
