In the early hours of September 13, 1986, Michael Devern Terry and George Willingham were walking together near Boulevard in Atlanta, arguing about money. According to the facts the Supreme Court of Georgia later set out from the trial record, Terry had given Willingham money that night to buy marijuana, and Willingham had spent it on cocaine instead. When he would not give the money back, Terry shot him with a .38 and stabbed him. Willingham's body was found at about five that afternoon in a field near Boulevard, his shirt open and his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles. He had been shot three times in the head, once in the back of the skull, which killed him, and his chest had been cut with a series of long, straight incisions.
Willingham was one of six men whose deaths Atlanta police were investigating as a series that year. The court described the victims as Black men in their mid-twenties whose bodies had been found in the same part of northwest Atlanta. Every one of the six was found with his pants pulled down or opened. Two lay in the same area as Willingham, two near the house where Terry lived. Three others, like Willingham, had been shot in the back of the head, and two had stab wounds like his. Ballistics tied the cases together: a .38 bullet from Willingham's body and a bullet from another victim came from the same gun, and the bullets recovered from two more victims had been fired from another .38. When the police released the names, United Press International listed them with their ages: Richard Williams, 25; Curtis Brown, 22; Alvin George, 32; Jason McColley, 18; Daryl Williams, 20; and George Willingham, 30. Some later accounts make the first three a year younger.
Terry was born in 1960. Michael Newton's encyclopedia of serial killers says he lived in a rooming house, weighed around three hundred pounds and was known as Big Mike, and that detectives first heard of him when staff at a neighborhood tavern remembered Curtis Brown leaving with a customer by that name in December 1985. The police arrested him on Wednesday, November 26, 1986. Two days later Detective Marcellus Head told reporters that Terry had confessed to all six killings, which had happened in abandoned houses and empty lots after he had sex with the men. In the police telling, the victims had propositioned him: he would stand on a city street, a lieutenant said, and wait for someone to come along and make him an offer. Atlanta's gay community had been living with the killings for most of a year, and the head of the Atlanta Gay Center said he hoped the police would pair the arrest with a promise that crimes against gays and lesbians would not be tolerated. Co-workers at a tire company where Terry had worked told Head he was a loner who kept to himself, and that they had called him Mr. T, because of his build. After being read his rights he gave the police an oral statement, repeated it on tape, then wrote and signed a statement. He said he owned three handguns, two of which he had used in all six killings, one of them a .38 Smith & Wesson; that he had shot Willingham with two guns, which matched the .38 and .32 bullets taken from the body; and that he had killed all six men after having sex with them, when he became angry. Newton records that he also claimed the men had threatened him and that he had acted in self-defense.
A Fulton County grand jury indicted him on December 5, 1986, on six counts of murder, for killings on December 6 and 14, 1985, and March 20, April 6, September 13 and October 20, 1986, under the name Michael Devern Terry, also known as James Potts. The court granted his request to try the counts separately. In February 1987 he was tried on the first two, the 1985 killings, which published accounts identify as those of Richard Williams and Curtis Brown, and was convicted and given two consecutive life sentences.
The state then took Willingham's murder to trial and announced that it would seek the death penalty, a step the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled in 1987 that it was entitled to take. The trial opened on April 11, 1988. At it, Terry said his statements to the police had been lies that the state had induced, though he did not claim he had been threatened or forced. The jury convicted him on April 14 but deadlocked on death, and on April 15 he received a third consecutive life sentence. On April 6, 1989, the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the conviction. The prosecutors who answered his appeal included Assistant District Attorney Nancy A. Grace. The court's opinions mention no trial on the remaining three counts.
1960: Michael Devern Terry is born.
December 6 and 14, 1985: the first two killings later charged against Terry, which published accounts identify as those of Richard Williams and Curtis Brown.
March 20 and April 6, 1986: two more of the killings later charged against him.
September 13, 1986: by the facts the Supreme Court of Georgia set out, Terry shoots and stabs George Willingham after an argument over money.
October 20, 1986: the last of the six killings later charged against him.
November 26, 1986: Terry is arrested; two days later Detective Marcellus Head says he has confessed to all six killings.
December 5, 1986: a Fulton County grand jury indicts him on six counts of murder.
February 1987: tried on the first two counts, he is convicted and given two consecutive life sentences.
1987: the Supreme Court of Georgia rules that the state may seek the death penalty for Willingham's murder.
April 11, 1988: the trial for Willingham's murder opens.
April 14, 1988: the jury convicts him but deadlocks on death.
April 15, 1988: he receives a third consecutive life sentence.
April 6, 1989: the Supreme Court of Georgia affirms the conviction.