Execution set for Columbus ‘stocking strangler’

ATLANTA – The state of Georgia has set a March 15 execution date for Carlton Michael Gary, was convicted of three of the “stocking strangler” murders that terrorized the Wynnton neighborhood of Columbus in 1977-78.

On Friday, a judge with Muscogee County Superior Court filed an order establishing a seven-day period in which Gary’s execution could be conducted. The period begins at noon Mach 15 and expires at noon March 22. State officials have set the execution for March 15.

Gary, who was born in 1950, would be the 49th death-row inmate to be killed by lethal injection.

According to a news release from Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a U.S. District Court summary of the facts of the case says the stocking strangler targeted elderly white women, sexually assaulting nine victims and killing seven of them, leaving stockings around their necks as his calling card. The attacks suddenly stopped in spring 1978.

The case broke in 1984 when a pistol stolen from a home in the Wynnton area was traced to Gary, who was arrested May 3 of that year. He confessed he was either at or knew about eight of the Wynnton area rapes and murders, saying he burglarized the residences while a man named Malvin A. Crittendon committed the rapes and murders. No evidence was found to link Crittendon to any of the crimes.

Gary’s fingerprints were found at four of the crime scenes, but blood and hair samples were inconclusive. Authorities linked Gary to similar rapes and murders, one in 1970 in Albany, N.Y., and one in 1977 in Syracuse, N.Y. Gary confessed to being at the scene in those cases, but said two other individuals committed the rapes and murders. Neither of the men he named was convicted for the crimes.

In Columbus, Gary was was indicted for raping, murdering and burglarizing the homes of three of the nine victims — Ruth Schieble, 89; Martha Thurmond, and Kathleen Woodruff, 74. Each had been raped and strangled. At trial, the prosecution introduced evidence of the attacks on the other “stocking strangler” victims, claiming that they showed a similar pattern and also were committed by the strangler. Prosecutors showed similar pattern of all of the victims being white women ages 55-89 who lived alone. In each crime, the assailant broke into the woman’s home and burglarized her residence.

The Georgia Department of Corrections website shows Gary was convicted and sentenced on three counts each of murder and burglary. His incarceration began Sept. 3, 1986 and he is currently being held in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.