‘Stocking Strangler’ Carlton Gary executed after over 30 years of trials, appeals

Condemned Stocking Strangler Carlton Gary was executed at 10:33 p.m. and he did not accept a final prayer or make a final statement, according to a spokeswoman with the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The announcement was made 5 minutes after Gary’s death.

Gary, 67, was scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

In 1986 he was convicted in three of the seven Columbus ritual serial killings that were dubbed the “Stocking Stranglings” because the killer usually strangled women with their stockings, knotting the hosiery to tighten his grip. He beat and raped each woman as she died, then left her body covered.

Gary contends that his innocence has been proven by the recent DNA testing results and other evidence, including a footprint at one of the crime scenes and a bite mark on one of the victims, according to the news release from the state Supreme Court.

He has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to stay his execution while the U.S. Supreme Court considers his claims But with today’s order, the Georgia Supreme Court has dismissed Gary’s motion for a stay of execution. The high court has determined that procedurally, Gary should have brought an application for a discretionary appeal to the Court. Instead, he brought what is deemed an “original motion” – one that originates in this Court rather than coming to this Court as an appeal of a decision by a lower court.

“We conclude that Gary has failed to show why this Court must exercise its original jurisdiction in his case, something that this Court will do only in ‘extremely rare’ cases, which this case is not because the relevant recent decision in the trial court could be raised before this Court through an application for discretionary appeal,” today’s order says.

About a dozen protesters have gathered outside of the prison. They are part of a group called Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Mary Catherine Johnson of Atlanta said the group gathers for every execution.

“We would be here no matter who it is,” she said. “We are opposed to all executions.”

The execution was scheduled to start at 7 p.m., but the prison spokespeople have not given an official word on the status.

He was convicted in these three murders:

• The Oct. 21, 1977, rape and strangling of Florence Scheible, 89, in her 1941 Dimon St. home. Gary’s right thumbprint was found on a door frame leading into Scheible’s bedroom.

• The Oct. 25, 1977, rape and strangling of Martha Thurmond, 70, in her 2614 Marion St. home. Police said Gary’s fingerprint was found on the frame of a rear bedroom window.

• The Dec. 28, 1977, rape and strangling of Kathleen Woodruff, 74, in her 1811 Buena Vista Road home, which since has been demolished. Gary’s fingerprints were found on a rear window.

Convicted and sentenced to death in August 1986, Gary’s appeals went on for 30 years through state and federal courts, as his defense attorneys found exculpatory evidence not presented at his trial.

Failing to win him a new trial last year after a series of hearings before Superior Court Judge Frank Jordan Jr., the defense in the end argued Gary should not be executed because the evidence casting doubt on his guilt meant Georgia could be killing an innocent man.

Jordan ruled such evidence was not sufficiently “material” to have altered the outcome. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld his decision.

Lingering doubts about Gary’s guilt have spawned conspiracy theories naming other suspects in the stranglings, but those suspicions were not cited in his appeals.

Gary last was scheduled to be executed Dec. 16, 2009, but the Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay, and sent the case back to Muscogee Superior Court for DNA testing.

The mixed results in 2010 and 2011 spawned more suspicion: Gary was matched to one case, but not another, and he was convicted of neither.

Both were cases the prosecution used to show the serial killer’s pattern. Then-District Attorney Bill Smith in 1986 picked the best evidence to seek convictions in three murders, but used all seven stranglings and other cases in which Gary was implicated to show the Stocking Strangler’s pattern.

One was the Sept. 11, 1977, attack on Gertrude Miller, 64, who was beaten with a board and raped in her 2703 Hood St. home. Her assailant left behind knotted stockings he took from her dresser.

Prosecutors claimed this was a precursor to the seven stranglings. Miller lived long enough to identify Gary during his 1986 trial, but she since has died.

A 2011 DNA test on semen found on the bloody nightclothes police collected that night yielded a profile that did not match Gary.

But a DNA test matched him to the second Stocking Strangling: the Sept. 24, 1977, murder of Jean Dimenstein, 71, found raped and strangled with a stocking in her home at 3027 21st St., where her body was left covered with sheets and a pillow.

Gary’s defense team has maintained that because the prosecution in 1986 used all the rapes and murders in which Gary was accused to prove a lone killer committed each, then any evidence from any one that doesn’t fit Gary casts doubt on his guilt.

Gary’s attorneys said the most promising semen sample from the seven Columbus rapes was found on Martha Thurmond, one of the three cases in which Gary was convicted.

The lawyers were shocked when state authorities announced the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab had tainted and destroyed the Thurmond evidence with a “control sample,” a known DNA profile used to test equipment.

In Gary’s appeals, they argued this not only was recklessly negligent, but also cast doubt on the GBI lab’s claimed Dimenstein match.

So, having stayed Gary’s 2009 execution for DNA testing, the Georgia Supreme Court nine years later was left with no more conclusive evidence than it had before. This year it rejected Gary’s appeal.

In the evidence against Gary in 1986, prosecutors cited this litany of other assaults and murders in which he was implicated, two from when Gary lived in New York in the 1970s, before he escaped from prison there and returned to Columbus:

• The April 14, 1970, murder of Nellie Farmer, 85, raped, strangled and left covered in her home in the Wellington Hotel, Albany, N.Y. Gary’s fingerprint was found at the scene. Gary claimed another man killed Farmer.
• The Jan. 2, 1977, assault on Jean Frost, 55, raped and nearly choked to death in her home in Syracuse, N.Y. Gary had a watch taken from Frost’s home when police arrested him two days later. Again he blamed another man.
• The Sept. 16, 1977, murder of Mary Willis “Fern” Jackson, 59, of 2505 17th St., found beaten, raped and strangled with a stocking and sash, her body left covered. This is considered the first of the seven “Stocking Stranglings.”
• The Feb. 11, 1978, attack on Ruth Schwob, 74, of 1800 Carter Ave., who nearly was strangled to death by an intruder she fought off, pressing a panic alarm by her bed. Police found her sitting on the edge of her bed, gasping, a stocking wrapped around her neck.

• The Feb. 12, 1978, murder of Mildred Borom, 78, 1612 Forest Ave., about two blocks from Schwob’s home. She was found raped and strangled with a cord cut from her window blinds. Her body was covered with a garment. This is considered the sixth “Stocking Strangling.”

• The April 20, 1978, murder of Janet Cofer, 61, of 3783 Steam Mill Road, found raped and strangled with a stocking, a pillow over her face. This is the seventh and last “Stocking Strangling.”

In 2007, New York authorities announced a DNA test on cold-case evidence matched Gary to another 1970s homicide there: the June 27, 1975, rape and strangling of Marion Fisher, 40, whose body was found on a road just outside Syracuse, her face covered. Her homicide is not in evidence in Gary’s appeals.

Syracuse is in Onondaga County, where authorities elected not to pursue charges against Gary, as he already was sentenced to death in Georgia, and he would be a “flight risk” were he transported to another state for trial.

Gary has escaped from Onondaga County before, on Aug. 23, 1977, when he jumped from a third-floor prison window. That’s when he came home to Columbus, moving to 1027 Fisk Ave., about two blocks from Gertrude Miller’s home.

If Gary did all authorities say, he had a remarkable criminal career, not only as a burglar and ritual serial killer, but an armed robber who targeted restaurants.

Investigators say that when the Columbus stranglings stopped, Gary in 1978 embarked on a spree of armed robberies that began at fast-food restaurants here and then continued when he moved to South Carolina, where he earned the nickname “Steakhouse Bandit.”

He was arrested Feb. 16, 1979, the day after he robbed a Po’ Folks restaurant in Gafney, S.C. He was convicted of armed robbery Feb. 22, 1979, in Greenville County, S.C., and convicted on that same charge March 29, 1979, in Cherokee County, S.C.

On March 15, 1984, he escaped from prison in Columbia, S.C., and returned to Columbus. Authorities here believe he then committed another set of armed robberies, one in Phenix City, where he is alleged to have raped a restaurant worker; another in Montgomery, Ala.; and two more in Gainesville, Fla., where Gary lived when he was a teenager.

On April 30, 1984, Columbus detectives looking for a gun stolen during the stranglings traced the weapon to Gary and got copies of his fingerprints, which they matched to the Woodruff strangling.

They arrested Gary in Albany, Ga., on May 3, 1984, and brought him back to Columbus for trial.

During his trial, prosecutors cited spans of time when Gary otherwise was occupied – whether working nights at a local foundry, confined to prison, living elsewhere or robbing restaurants – to show no killings in the evidence against him happened then: When he was otherwise engaged, he was linked to no case in which an older woman was raped and strangled nearby, and her body left covered.

His having been tied to so many assaults and murders with the same pattern is too remarkable a correlation to be a credible coincidence, authorities said.

This story was originally published March 15, 2018 at 10:39 PM with the headline "‘Stocking Strangler’ Carlton Gary executed after over 30 years of trials, appeals."