Detective in 1984 bush-ax slaying finds solace

The first detective to investigate the 1984 bush-ax slaying of Ann Johnson Curry and her children was pleased to see the Wednesday arrest of Curry’s husband Michael Lee Curry.

“It feels good when you can bring a case to conclusion,” Columbus Police Chief Ricky Boren said Thursday morning.

“This is right up there at the top of my list of satisfying closures.”

On Aug. 29, 1985, Boren, then a homicide detective, was assigned to a murder case of unimaginable proportion.

A pregnant Ann Johnson Curry, her 4-year-old daughter, Erika, and her 20-month-old son Ryan had all been hacked to death at their home just eight miles from downtown Columbus.

Boren said he arrived to find long-time police aghast.

“I saw the look on all these seasoned officers’ faces who were standing outside the house and could barely talk about the scene inside,” he said.

Boren said he entered and saw Ann Curry with severe injuries to her throat, and “a head that was almost severed.”

Lying nearby, he found Ryan’s body lying nearby with skull fractures and Erika’s similarly injured body in the kitchen.

On the floor of the den near Ann, Boren said he saw the bush ax, covered in blood.

A frantic Michael Lee Curry, who was 27 at the time, told police that he had come home to find the scene.

But 24 years later, he is being charged with the crime, indicted on Tuesday with six counts of homicide, three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of feticide for killing the unborn child his wife was carrying.

Curry, 51, was arrested Wednesday morning at his job in Dalton, where he’d lived for the last 10 years.

Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Julia Slater was given the case last year. With the help of the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and investigators from her office, she was able to get a Grand Jury to indict Curry.

“I am eternally grateful to the police department for their expertise and diligence in bringing this case to indictment,” Slater said Thursday morning at a press conference outside her office.

Authorities will not say what new evidence led to the indictment.

Boren thanked the cold case homicide investigators, Det. Randy Long and Sgt. Harvey Hatcher.

It was a case Boren said the department refused to let go, and have always kept tabs on Curry.

“We’ve always had detectives on the case.” Boren said. “Any old case we have on the books, we keep investigating.”