Carlton Gary

What the record shows

Carlton Gary was convicted in 1986 by a Muscogee County jury of murdering three elderly women in Columbus, Georgia, in 1977: Florence Scheible, 89, Martha Thurmond, 69, and Kathleen Woodruff, 74. Known in the press as the "Stocking Strangler," he was found guilty on three counts each of malice murder, rape and burglary and sentenced to death on August 27, 1986. Prosecutors said he was responsible for a total of nine attacks on elderly women in Columbus in 1977 and 1978, seven of them fatal. After more than three decades of appeals, Georgia executed him by lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson on March 15, 2018.

Gary was born in Columbus on September 24, 1950, and, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, moved to Florida as a young child. Between September 1977 and April 1978 a series of attacks struck women who lived alone in Columbus's Wynnton neighborhood. According to the 2012 opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the uncharged deaths introduced at trial as similar crimes were those of Fern Jackson on September 16, 1977, Jean Dimenstein on September 24, 1977, Mildred Borom on February 12, 1978, and Janet Cofer on April 19, 1978. Two women survived: Gertrude Miller, who was raped and beaten on September 11, 1977, and Ruth Schwob, who was attacked on February 11, 1978. The AJC reported that Schwob, 74, survived by pressing a panic button. CBS News reported that most of the victims were choked, often with their own stockings.

The case went unsolved for six years. The Eleventh Circuit opinion says police had no viable suspect until 1984, when a gun stolen in a 1977 burglary in the area was found in Michigan in the possession of Gary's cousin, a discovery made through Michigan's gun registration laws. Gary was arrested for burglary on May 3, 1984, and was indicted the next day, according to an Associated Press chronology published by WTVC. His fingerprints matched latent prints from four of the crime scenes. In statements to officers, according to the court, Gary said he had been present at seven of the scenes as a burglar but blamed the rapes and murders on a boyhood friend, Malvin Crittenden; the AP reported that investigators found nothing to corroborate that claim.

Before Columbus, Gary had a record in several states. The AJC reported that his fingerprints were found in 1970 at the Albany, New York, home of Nellie Farmer, 85, who was raped and strangled, but that he was convicted only of robbery. In 1975 Marion Fisher, 40, was raped and strangled near Syracuse, New York, and evidence from her case was later linked to Gary's DNA; according to the Wikipedia article, the Onondaga County district attorney declined to charge him because he was already on Georgia's death row. He was never tried for either death. The AJC reported that Gary escaped from a New York county jail in 1977 and was later imprisoned in South Carolina for a string of restaurant armed robberies.

The Georgia Supreme Court sent the case back in 1987 for a hearing on whether Gary had effective counsel, then affirmed the convictions and death sentences on March 6, 1990. State habeas relief was denied between 1995 and 1997, and federal habeas relief was denied by the district court in 2004 and by the Eleventh Circuit in February 2009. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined review in November 2009, the state set an execution date of December 16, 2009. The Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency, but the Georgia Supreme Court stayed the execution hours before it was due so that DNA evidence could be tested.

The DNA testing gave mixed results. The AP reported that testing showed a match between Gary and Jean Dimenstein, one of the uncharged deaths. His lawyers pointed to semen on clothing worn by Gertrude Miller, who had identified him at trial, that did not match him, and argued that other samples from the convicted cases were contaminated at the state crime lab. They also cited a shoeprint from a size 10 shoe, disclosed years after trial, although Gary wore a 13 and a half, and a bite-mark exemplar that defense experts said did not match his teeth. The state disputed these claims. A Muscogee County judge denied his extraordinary motion for a new trial on September 1, 2017, finding the evidence unlikely to have changed the verdict, and the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in December 2017.

Gary, 67, was put to death on the night of March 15, 2018, the first execution in Georgia that year. He declined to make a final statement and was pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m.