Georgia Executes Carlton Gary, the Columbus Stocking Strangler
Gary was put to death for the 1977 rapes and murders of three elderly women, after a decade-long fight over DNA evidence ended in the courts.
Published
Georgia put Carlton Gary to death at 10:33 p.m. on Thursday, March 15, 2018, at its prison in Jackson, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay the execution. He was executed for the 1977 rapes and murders of three women in Columbus, Florence Scheible, Martha Thurmond and Kathleen Woodruff, and his death closed a case that had begun with a wave of terror more than forty years before.
Between the fall of 1977 and the spring of 1978, someone broke into the homes of elderly white women in Columbus's historic Wynnton neighborhood, sexually assaulted nine of them and killed seven, leaving stockings around their necks. The press called him the Stocking Strangler. Florence Scheible was 89, legally blind and able to walk only with a walker when she was raped, beaten and strangled with a stocking on October 21, 1977; her son and daughter-in-law found her body. Martha Thurmond was found four days later, strangled with a stocking, her body covered by a pillow and bedding. Kathleen Woodruff, 74, was found on December 28, raped and strangled with a scarf.
The attacks stopped, and the case stayed cold for six years. In 1984 a pistol stolen from a Wynnton home in October 1977 was traced to Gary, and he was arrested for that burglary on May 3. He admitted being present at, or knowing about, eight of the nine attacks, but he blamed another man for the rapes and murders; investigators found nothing to support that. His fingerprints matched prints from four of the crime scenes. He was indicted on May 4, 1984, for the three murders, rapes and burglaries, convicted, and sentenced to death on August 27, 1986. At trial prosecutors also presented the other Wynnton attacks as his work, though he was never tried for them.
The appeals ran for three decades. Days before a December 2009 execution date, Gary sought DNA testing, and the Georgia Supreme Court halted the execution so it could be done. The state said the testing produced a match between Gary and another of the victims, Jean Dimenstein, 71. A trial court denied his motion for a new trial in September 2017, and the Georgia Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal that December.
What this story covers. It draws on two releases from the Georgia Attorney General's Office: the announcement of the execution on March 15, 2018, and its February 23 case summary, which quotes a federal court's account of the crimes. That summary spells the first victim's name as Ruth Schieble; the execution release uses Florence Scheible, the name used here. Gary was convicted of three murders; the other Wynnton killings were attributed to him by prosecutors.
Sources
- Carlton Michael Gary Executed This Evening for Murder, Georgia Attorney General's Office
- Execution Date Set for Carlton Michael Gary, Convicted of Murder, Georgia Attorney General's Office