Gloria Costello

"Shouldn't you be helping me in the restaurant? You're always just fooling around!"

- Gloria Costello to Ermes

Gloria Costello (グローリア・コステロ) is a posthumous tertiary character featured in the sixth part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, Stone Ocean.

Gloria was Ermes Costello's older sister who ran their family restaurant. Three years before the events of Stone Ocean, she was murdered on Sports Maxx's orders. Her death drives Ermes to exact revenge by intentionally becoming incarcerated at Green Dolphin Street Prison to find and kill Sports Maxx.

Appearance
Gloria Costello was a woman of average height with light hair she kept slicked back, except for two short locks in front. She wore a cropped turtleneck sweater and patterned skirt.

In the anime, she wears a silver locket necklace. Inside is a picture of her, Ermes, and their father.

Personality
Based on the newspaper article that F.F recalled, Gloria was a strong-willed woman who inherited her father's restaurant and worked with a steady number of customers. Gloria was apparently more of a mother figure than a sister to Ermes, who she would regularly lecture and nag to work. Gloria had no intention of marrying anyone.

In a tragic series of events, Gloria witnessed a murder committed by Sports Maxx and, while she initially planned to avoid calling the police, Gloria reports the murder in order to protect her sister, who was walking by the scene of the crime.

History
Gloria Costello was Ermes Costello's older sister, ten years older than her specifically.

In the anime, it is made explicit that Gloria and Ermes lost their mother when they were at a young age. Gloria decided to take on the responsibility of being the "mother" of the family, even telling her sister to consider her as such. Gloria would then work tirelessly to support her family, notably working in the family restaurant. Ermes' thoughts at the times suggest that she always put the family's interest above her own.

When Gloria turned twenty, she inherited her Mexican immigrant father's small restaurant in the slums of Florida. Despite being a small restaurant, she had a steady flow of customers.

One day, in 2008, when the restaurant was closed, Gloria was giving her usual speech to Ermes, lecturing her about not helping out in the restaurant and acting like a delinquent. Being seventeen at the time, Ermes had no interest in helping the restaurant and wanted to get a scholarship in cross-country to go to college. Knowing that mentioning this to Gloria would cause a fight, Ermes decided to run out of the house.

At that moment, in an abandoned back alley behind the restaurant, Gloria heard the groaning of someone near a luxurious car. Upon further inspection, Gloria sees a man tied up on the ground with a gang leader named Sports Maxx standing next to him. Sports Maxx asks the man to bite down on a wooden stick nearby, making sure to prop the stick so it was vertically inserted into his mouth. Sports Maxx then stomps on the man's head, causing the stick to impale his skull, killing him. Gloria reacts in shock, but manages to hide behind a wall before Sports Maxx sees her. She hadn't intended to spy on them, and decided she wouldn't report them either. She felt the best course of action would be to just let whatever happened there handle itself, in order to keep her restaurant safe. Unfortunately, Ermes was still running down the street at the time, where Sports Maxx noticed her, and assumed that she was going to tell someone about the murder.

Gloria ended up calling the police in order to protect her sister. However, the police messed up. They claimed that the state of Florida had instituted capital punishment and, because Sports Maxx was an infamous criminal they had been chasing for a few years, they could use her testimony to get him arrested and protect her family. In order to combat the police, Sports Maxx sent a lesser-known criminal to kill Gloria. After the murder, her body was found in a gutter, and her case became a major news story. After the death of the only eyewitness to Sports Maxx's crimes, the only charges the police could convict him of were tax evasion and inflicting bodily harm, which carried a sentence of only five years in prison. Soon after Sports Maxx's trial, Gloria and Ermes's father died, and Ermes lost everything: the restaurant, and her family.

While Sports Maxx is in Green Dolphin Street Prison, Ermes decides to commit a crime so she can get arrested and exact revenge, killing him in prison when his gang isn't with him and he is completely defenseless.

In prison, Ermes shows a photo of Gloria to Sports Maxx to make him remember her. Ermes first drowns Sports Maxx in a sewer pipe, but he remains active as an invisible zombie. After a battle in the prison crypt, Ermes beats Sports Maxx to death, and finally avenges her sister.

In the anime, Gloria's spirit briefly appears to hug her sister Ermes. This is used to justify Ermes' sudden urge to cry after defeating Sports Maxx for good, which was left ambiguous in the original manga.