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State prosecutors in Virginia charged a professor at Tidewater Community College last week with plotting to murder a departmental colleague who had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.
College officials suspended Jay A. Glosser on Friday, citing his arrest on “serious criminal charges involving another TCC faculty member.” In a statement, college officials said that Glosser, an associate professor of information systems technology at the college’s Norfolk campus, “has been temporarily relieved of all college-related duties and responsibilities pending the outcome of the charges against him.” The statement said that Glosser has been on the Tidewater faculty for 10 years. Tidewater officials declined further comment.
In court records and testimony at a bond hearing Friday, according to reports in The Virginian-Pilot and other local newspapers, prosecutors and the Virginia State Police laid out what appeared to be a well-documented scheme to kill Kimberly Perez, who also teaches information systems technology at Tidewater’s Norfolk campus. According to the college's Web site, the two have collaborated on courses on how to use Blackboard,among other things.
As described by prosecutors, Glosser feared that the sexual harassment complaint could damage his career. “Because he was concerned for his job, he was going to have her killed,” The Virginian-Pilot quoted the prosecutor, David Laird, as saying in court on Friday.
According to police officials, Glosser asked a friend and former neighbor, Raymond Groves, for help in trying to either persuade Perez to drop the complaint or to “take her out.” Glosser allegedly offered Groves as much as $4,000 if the complaint disappeared and up to $15,000 if Perez did, according to the testimony of police officials.
Prosecutors said that Groves solicited a third man, F. Devin Scott, to be the conduit to Perez. According to police, Scott made threatening telephone calls to Perez, who hired a private investigator and eventually contacted the Virginia State Police.
They then set up a sting that resulted in Scott’s arrest. That set off a chain of taped telephone conversations, first between Scott and Groves, and then between Groves and Glosser, in which the men implicated themselves, police officials said. Laird, the prosecutor, told The Virginian-Pilot that the evidence against the men was “very strong” because of the taped conversations.
Neither Glosser nor his lawyer responded to e-mail messages and telephone calls left for them over the weekend. Perez also did not respond to messages.
Tidewater Community College officials said they were cooperating with the police and that they might take “further action” against Glosser as “additional information on the charges and evidence becomes available.”
