A Carrollton man will spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted Monday of murdering an 83-year-old woman on Mother’s Day weekend nearly three years ago.
Andrew James Conard, 40, was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, home invasion, armed robbery and aggravated battery in the shooting of Barbara Gibson at her Carroll County home in May 2020. Coweta Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge John Simpson sentenced Conard to three consecutive life sentences plus 20 years. One of those life sentences will be without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said.
“We pray this will help bring some closure and healing to her family and her community,” the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday after the sentencing.
Gibson was at her home on Burwell Mount Zion Road preparing Mother’s Day gifts for friends and neighbors when Conard and his girlfriend Amanda Sperry, 32, arrived with intentions to rob her, prosecutors said. Conard pulled his vehicle into Gibson’s carport, knocked on her door and shot her multiple times when she answered. The couple left the home before returning to steal her jewelry, wallet and sewing machine, prosecutors added.
“This was a completely random and senseless murder of an innocent 83-year-old woman,” Carroll County Communications Director Ashley Hulsey said.
After the couple fled the scene, an extensive investigation was launched by the sheriff’s office, which identified Conard and Sperry as suspects. Authorities said they chose her home under the belief that she would be an easy target to rob as an elderly woman who lived alone. In the days leading up to the murder, the couple also drove around targeting other elderly people across the county, prosecutors said.
Credit: Carroll County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Carroll County Sheriff's Office
“Their motive was robbery and they sought citizens that might be alone, isolated and unable to fight back” according to District Attorney Herb Cranford. “The evidence at trial showed that they targeted Ms. Gibson for exactly this reason.”
The couple, who lived together, were arrested in August 2020. Investigators found the murder weapon and several items of Gibson’s property inside their residence, according to prosecutors.
Sperry confessed after her arrest and later entered a plea agreement, according to court records. She agreed to testify at the trial in exchange for a 60-year sentence with the first 40 years to be served in prison. Prosecutors noted that she played a “substantial role” in Conard’s conviction.
She will not be eligible for parole for the first 20 years. Her sentencing will take place in a couple of weeks, Cranford said.
Credit: Carroll County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Carroll County Sheriff's Office
Conard and Sperry moved to Carrollton roughly a year before the murder and lived in the same community as Gibson, Sheriff Terry Langley said at the time of their arrest. Sperry had no criminal record and Conard had a few misdemeanor arrests in Wisconsin. The sheriff said the couple had moved around for several years before settling in Carrollton, and that they had been together for six to eight years.
At the time of their arrests, Langley said he felt it was a “death penalty case.” The sheriff knew Gibson, who was a beloved member of the community.
“She was such a good person,” he said during a packed news conference in 2020. “The reason so many people are here is not because she was killed, but because of how she lived.”
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