‘Stocking Strangler’ co-prosecutor, retired Superior Court Judge Doug Pullen dies at 75
Retired Columbus Superior Court Judge Douglas Pullen died Tuesday in hospice care after a long illness. He was 75.
His funeral will be 11 a.m. Friday at Columbus’ First Baptist Church, 212 12th St., with Pastor Jimmy Elder officiating. Masks and social distancing will be required, and the service will be streamed live online at www.firstbaptistcolumbusga.com.
Colleagues remembered Pullen as a mentor who was always willing to help those new to his profession.
“He never really forgot he was a lawyer,” said Gil McBride, chief judge of the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that Pullen served for nearly 40 years as prosecutor or judge. Pullen always took time to mentor new attorneys, and influenced many careers, McBride said.
“His door was always open to young lawyers,” McBride added. “You didn’t have to be special for him to make you feel special.”
Among those Pullen mentored were Columbus attorney Stacey Jackson, who clerked for Pullen after graduating law school.
“He and I were very close,” Jackson said Tuesday, recalling that Pullen often advised him back in the 1990s when Jackson was just getting started, having passed the bar, married and had his first child.
“A good deal of us owe a lot to him,” Jackson said, adding Pullen continued to pressure attorneys as they gained experience in court. “There was always that push to be better.”
Pullen’s impact
Pullen got his law degree from Mercer University in 1970, and joined the district attorney’s office in 1972, after two years in private practice.
He and Senior Judge Bill Smith both were assistant district attorneys back then, with a lot still ahead of them.
“He was a friend, a very good and close friend,” Smith said Tuesday evening. “He was unique. He was an excellent prosecutor.”
When Smith became district attorney, Pullen served as his chief assistant, a job he held from 1978 to 1988. In 1986, the pair prosecuted Columbus serial killer Carlton Gary, called the “Stocking Strangler” for the ritual rapes and murders of seven older Columbus women in 1977 and 1978.
The stranglings investigation turned cold before Gary finally was captured in 1984. In March 2018, he was executed by lethal injection after decades of appeals.
If not for Pullen’s hard work and dedication, the prosecution might not have secured that conviction, nor the case repeatedly upheld on appeal, Smith said.
“I’ll miss him,” the judge added. “He just had a unique personality many, many people loved. He had a way with words. They broke the mold when they made Doug Pullen.”
Current District Attorney Julia Slater said Pullen hired her twice, once as a law clerk and later as a prosecutor.
“I learned much of what I know about running an office from him,” she said. “In the DA’s office, if someone did something well, he would go into the hallway and loudly proclaim our accomplishment for everyone to hear. He loved sharing good news. That thought still makes me smile…. We didn’t agree on everything, but I will miss him terribly.”
‘A perfectionist’
Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters said he’d known Pullen since the early 1970s, when Peters was in law enforcement, and Pullen a prosecutor.
“He was a perfectionist,” Peters said: Pullen often handled cases personally, without an assistant, and wanted police reports delivered directly to him. He also valued punctuality.
Peters recalled once keeping his home phone in the refrigerator, so it wouldn’t wake him, and Pullen became miffed that Peters wouldn’t answer.
Pullen never forgot that, Peters said: “Make sure you don’t put your phone in the refrigerator,” Pullen would tell him later.
When Bill Smith became a judge, Pullen succeeded him as district attorney, serving from 1989 until he was appointed a Superior Court judge in 1995. He repeatedly was re-elected to the bench, until he retired in September 2011.
The circumstances of his retirement cast a shadow over his long legal career, as he left amid inquiries into the case of a convicted child molester sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2002.
Pullen allowed the man to remain free on bond for a psychological evaluation, and the case was forgotten for years, until the oversight came to light and the man again was jailed.
As he announced his retirement, Pullen expressed deep regrets for that, calling it his “biggest mistake.”
“I have made some mistakes — some I know about and some I don’t — but that one truly tears me up,” he told the Ledger-Enquirer in August 2011. “I can work another 40 years, and it will not change the fact that I did that.”
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 7:21 PM.