‘Stocking Strangler’ attorneys say he didn’t kill three elderly women

Lawyers for Carlton Gary began a last-ditch bid to save his life, arguing he is not the so-called Stocking Strangler who raped and strangled elderly women in Columbus four decades ago.

Gary is scheduled to be executed next Thursday, which would make him the first man in Georgia to die by lethal injection this year.

In separate pleas to state superior court and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, Gary’s lawyers say DNA and other forensic evidence not available at his 1986 trial casts doubt on his guilt.

“Simply put, this evidence shows that the state’s theory that Mr. Gary was a serial killer who had committed seven different rape/murders was not in fact true,” said the clemency petition filed with the state pardon board.

Attorneys Jack Martin and Michael McIntyre on Friday asked a superior court judge to order a new trial or sentencing for their client so the additional evidence can be considered. Gary’s clemency bid makes the same argument and asks that officials commute his death sentence.

Gary was convicted of killing three women — Florence Scheible, 89; Martha Thurmond, 70; and Kathleen Woodruff, 74 — by strangling them with their own stockings.

Prosecutors argue he was also responsible for the deaths of four other women between the ages of 59 and 89. The women lived in or near the Wynnton neighborhood in Columbus. All were killed the same way over seven months in 1977 and 1978.
Gary was arrested in 1984 after police matched his finger prints to those found at some of the murder scenes.

But Martin and McIntyre said the new evidence not only creates reasonable doubt that Gary was the notorious Stocking Strangler, it clears him of those murders and four others linked to him.

The parole board is meeting Wednesday with Gary’s lawyers and supporters. Later in the day the board will hear from those who want his death sentence to be carried out.

Credit: Georgia Department of Correction

Credit: Georgia Department of Correction

Clemency petitions in Georgia typically focus on a Death Row inmate’s difficult upbringing or good deeds in prison after the killing, which they argue should have a bearing on his sentence.

But in their petition filed Thursday, Gary’s legal team adopted a completely different strategy, keying in on forensic evidence.

The petition argues that Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime scene investigators mishandled or destroyed evidence, prosecutors withheld information and authorities ignored things that implicated someone else in the murders. They also argue Gary’s legal team at trial wasn’t given funds to hire experts.

“There is a host of physical evidence not available at the time of trial, either because the defense was denied expert assistance to challenge the state’s expert testimony, the type of testing now available did not exist at the time of trial or because the evidence was not disclosed to the defense at the time of trial, which raise serious doubts as to Mr. Gary’s guilt, much less lingering doubt as to a death sentence,” the clemency petition said.

But one of the two men who prosecuted Gary, Doug Pullen, said the issues raised in Gary's petition had already been reviewed by appellate courts. Pullen said Gary's fingerprints were found at the homes of the three women he was convicted of murdering and that he admitted to being there.

Pullen said there is no doubt Gary did all three crimes “unless somebody stole his fingers” to leave prints behind.

Gary also admitted to being present at some of the crime scenes but claims someone else killed the women, Pullen said.

“This case has been examined by courts, every detail, every jot and tiddle,” Pullen said.

Not true, said Martin.

Martin said questions about DNA that either did not match Gary’s or was damaged or destroyed by the state crime lab have not been reviewed by a federal court.

“Although a significant amount of forensic material was obtained from the charged and uncharged crime scenes and victims, none of this evidence implicated Mr. Gary as the perpetrator,” the lawyers wrote in Gary’s clemency petition. “Indeed, if anything, it tended to exclude Mr. Gary.”

The science of DNA testing had not been developed when Gary was tried. It has, however, been one of the central issues of his appeals.

And the state courts have weighed in.

Last September, Superior Court Judge Frank J. Jordan Jr. in Columbus denied Gary’s request for a new trial based on the argument that DNA and other forensic evidence showed someone else was the “Stocking Strangler.”

The clemency petition also focuses on other forensic evidence:

"The jury would probably have had a reasonable doubt as to his guilt and would have not convicted Mr. Gary of the three murder/rape/burglaries for which he was convicted," the petition said. "There is even a greater probability that at least one juror would not have returned a death sentence due to lingering doubts as to guilt in light of this powerful and persuasive physical evidence undermining guilt.

Gary came close to dying by lethal injection once before. In December 2009, four hours before he was scheduled to die, the Georgia Supreme Court stopped his execution so newly-discovered DNA evidence could be tested.