5-year-old Lucas Hernandez's dad tells Nancy Grace about the night Emily Glass died
The gun found next to Emily Glass' body was "a short assault rifle" that belonged to her boyfriend, according to the father of 5-year-old Lucas Hernandez, the boy who went missing in February and was later discovered dead.
Jonathan Hernandez, in his latest interview with former prosecutor and legal commentator Nancy Grace, described the night he came home to the rental house he shared with Glass, Lucas and the couple's young daughter to find her shot to death. He told Grace the rifle that Wichita police have said publicly was at her feet was his AR-15 assault rifle. He kept the gun in a case in his closet at the home, 655 S. Edgemoor, he said in the interview.
“The lights were on and the TV was on and it looked like somebody was there. And I go to the bedroom and she’s not there,” he told Grace. He said he went to the garage and saw Glass' car there, so he went back into the house and did “a more thorough room-by-room search" for her.
“That’s when I found her in the back room," he said in the interview. She was dead with a bullet wound to her head, dressed in what Hernandez said looked like pajamas.
Police, in announcing Glass' death on June 8, said investigators also found three suicide notes in the home. Police haven't officially called her death a suicide because they are waiting on autopsy results.
She was the sole person of interest in Lucas' death and disappearance and led a private investigator to where the boy's body was hidden beneath a Harvey County bridge three months after she reported him missing. She had been released from jail about a week before her death. Police arrested her on suspicion of interfering with law enforcement after Lucas' body was found but prosecutors didn't immediately file charges so she was let go.
Exactly how Lucas Hernandez died remains a mystery. His autopsy report hasn't been released yet. There have been allegations that Glass abused the boy when she was upset with his father.
Jonathan Hernandez himself is charged with harming one of Glass' sons by a previous relationship. Earlier, he told Grace that he didn't suspect Glass in Lucas' disappearance.
One of the suicide notes found in the rental home, Hernandez told Grace, was rolled up and tucked into Glass' engagement ring.
It asked that the ring be given to the couple's 1-year-old daughter when she was older, Jonathan Hernandez said he was told. He said he doesn't know what the other two said or where police found them.
Hernandez told Grace when he first saw Glass' body, he "thought it was a dream" and he "wasn't sure what was happening at first."
He said he went outside of the room where she lay to collect himself then stepped back inside. Immediately he ran outside and called 911, he told Grace.
"The way everything look, it looked like she had thought about it," Hernandez told Grace.
Emergency dispatchers received his call around 1:40 a.m. June 8, Wichita police spokesman Charley Davidson has said.
Hernandez told Grace he last talked to Glass by text around 7:30 p.m. on June 7 and she sounded "pretty normal."
The full 51-minute "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace" podcast that includes the interview with Jonathan Hernandez is posted on www.crimeonline.com.
This story was originally published June 22, 2018 at 6:08 PM with the headline "5-year-old Lucas Hernandez's dad tells Nancy Grace about the night Emily Glass died."