A 65-year-old man will continue to serve a life prison sentence for murder despite having his initial conviction thrown out.
A Fulton County jury on Thursday found Curtis Tyner guilty of all charges for the 29-year-old murder, kidnapping and attempted rape in April 1984 of IBM executive Martha Ann Mickel.
The verdict comes despite a 2011 appeal Tyner won from the Georgia Supreme Court that reversed his prior conviction on the determination that no one fully informed the then-36-year-old of all the rights he was waiving when he made a guilty plea.
The jury convicted Tyner of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily harm, aggravated assault with the intent to rape, aggravated assault, three counts of felony murder – causing someone’s death through the commission of a felony – and robbery by force.
Tyner, whom Mickel had contracted to paint her Smyrna apartment, stalked her, stole her house key, and in the early morning hours of April 14, 1984, abducted Mickel and tied her around the neck to the headrest of his car before dumping her, unconscious, over a bridge into Bear Creek in south Fulton County, prosecutors said.
He would later confess to police that he didn’t recall how Mickel ended up bound to his passenger seat, her eyes closed and breathing shallow as he drove along I-285, but he responded by throwing her purse over one bridge he passed, then tossing her limp body over the next one and into the water below.
“I believe you saw something you wanted and you decided to take it,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher S. Brasher told Tyner when he sentenced the convicted felon to life, or 30 years by Georgia statute, plus another 20 years for the robbery conviction.
The 6-foot-2-inch Tyner had to be helped to his seat each time he entered and left the courtroom, and walked with crutches and a back brace.
His head slumped when he heard the verdict, and further when Brasher announced the sentence.
Mickel’s body was found floating in the creek on April 15, 1984 by someone fishing.
Fulton’s chief medical examiner Dr. Randy Hanslick, then an associate medical examiner, performed the autopsy.
Thursday he repeated his determination that Mickel’s death was a homicide.
“Her cause of death was a combination of ligature strangulation and drowning,” Hanslick told the jury.
Mickel, 30, was the middle child of five siblings.
Her older brother and sister were on hand for the trial, and both identified Tyner as “evil” when they gave their victim impact statements during sentencing.
“Who would be evil enough to take the life of such a beautiful person?” Mickel’s sister Diana Mickel Austin said. “The power of evil became real to us that day. Evil was a person.”
The day she learned of her sister’s death was her son’s 5th birthday, Austin said.
“He was reminded yearly of the horror,” she said.
Mickel’s brother, Joe Mickel, is a federal prosecutor in the family’s hometown of Monroe, La., and has been a prosecutor on some level for 30 years.
“I’ve been in court with all kinds of criminals,” Joe Mickel told the court. “This may not be the most evil man in the world, but to me, he is the face of evil.”
Witnesses testified that Mickel showed Tyner great kindness when he came over to paint her home, giving him food when he asked and referring him to her neighbors to help him launch his then-fledgling business.
Brasher chastised him for taking advantage of that kindness.
“I find you to be cowardly,” the judge said. “Someone willing to turn the grace from someone like Ms. Mickel into this kind of horror is the epitome of cowardice. You didn’t even have the courage to tell police what you did. And when you did, you tried to take it back.”
Tyner’s attorney Angela Clarke went further, claiming that prosecutors hadn’t proved any intent on her client’s part to kill Mickel.
“The state did not prove malice murder,” Clarke said. “Mr. Tyner is innocent.
But Fulton County assistant district attorney Sheila Ross countered in her closing statements.
“She does not believe the defendant intended to kill Ms. Mickel because he dumped her into a creek?” she asked the jury. “That’s because he already thought he had killed her.”
When Tyner won the appeal of his sentence in June 2011, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard Jr.’s office quickly sought an indictment to keep him from walking free.
Tyner was shipped from the Wilcox State Prison in downstate Abbeville to the Fulton County Jail in August of that year, and a grand jury indicted him the following January.
Howard acknowledged the challenges – and risks – of prosecuting such an old case, and said he was pleased with the outcome.
“Even after much of the evidence was lost and many of the witnesses had died, the evidence (on hand) was still overwhelming,” he said.
Mickel’s family, who were deeply troubled when Tyner won an appeal, said they could now rest.
“The prosecutors’ work in this case is in the finest tradition of their profession,” Joe Mickel said. “I know it doesn’t bring her back, but I’m pleased.”
Austin said the family’s personification of evil was finally banished.
“Goodness has triumphed,” she said.
About the Author
