Man convicted in Lowcountry woman’s 2013 murder charged with killing SC prison inmate, report says
A Bluffton man, who is already serving a lifetime sentence for murdering a well-known Beaufort County woman in 2013, is charged with killing a fellow inmate at a state prison last month, officials say.
Walter Glass, 47, attacked and strangled his cellmate to death with a bed sheet on Jan. 5 at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Richland County, according to an arrest warrant released Friday by the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
The inmate, Isaac Starke, was found unresponsive in his cell on Jan. 6, a release from the department said.
Glass passed a handwritten note to prison staff confessing to the crime and provided a written statement to police, the warrant said.
Glass began serving a life sentence plus 45 years in 2013 on charges of armed robbery, second degree burglary and murder, according to Beaufort County court documents.
He pleaded guilty in 2015 to killing Melanie Lowther, 60, of Pritchardville, on July 31, 2013, by striking her in the head with a metal nail remover after she caught him burglarizing the septic tank business she ran with her husband, a previous Island Packet article said.
“This is one of the most vicious attacks that I have seen,” 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone said in court the day Glass was sentenced.
A bridge on S.C. 46 between Bluffton and Savannah over the New River was named for Lowther in July.
This story was originally published February 23, 2019 at 10:10 AM.
