The state Board of Pardons and Paroles denied serial killer Carlton Gary's request for mercy Wednesday evening despite his unrelenting insistence that he is not the Columbus "Stocking Strangler."
Now Gary’s only hope to avoid death Thursday night lies with the courts, where appeals are pending.
Gary, 67, was condemned for raping and strangling three elderly women with their own stockings 40 years ago. If he dies by lethal injection as scheduled, he will be the first person Georgia has executed this year.
The decision came less than 1 ½hours after the board heard from law enforcement officials who said it is time for Gary’s death sentence to be carried out.
The board also first met for three hours with Gary’s lawyers and one of the jurors from his 1986 trial.
Gary’s lawyers have warned that Georgia is about to execute an innocent man, insisting that his trial was not fair because crucial evidence was either withheld or not available until years later.
District Attorney Julia Salter said after a three-plus-hour meeting with the Parole Board she remained certain of that “Carlton Gary is the Stocking Strangler.”
A few hours earlier, juror, Jack Pickel, told the state Board of Pardons and Paroles he would not have voted in favor of a death sentence for Gary if forensic evidence being used in Gary’s appeals had been available during his 1986 trial.
Gary’s lawyer Jack Martin, said Pickel, who did not speak with reporters, is troubled that he and other jurors did not see DNA and additional evidence gathered since the conviction.
Gary has admitted he was at the Stocking Strangler’s victims’ homes, but he has insisted that someone else killed them.
His lawyers said the evidence suggests that there was another killer.
“Mr. Gary never got a fair trial and now the question is whether we will use this bogus trial to execute an innocent man,” Martin said.
One of Georgia's most notorious serial killers, Gary was convicted of raping and strangling Florence Scheible, 89; Martha Thurmond, 70; and Kathleen Woodruff, 74. He was also blamed with raping and strangling four other women who lived in the same Columbus neighborhood but he was not charged with their murders. Instead, their cases were used at trial to show a pattern.
The crimes took place between September 1977 and April 1978.
Prosecutors only charged Gary with the three murders because his fingerprints were recovered at the victims’ homes and he admitted he was in their houses. Gary said he was there but someone else killed them.
The stranglings that terrorized this city on the Georgia-Alabama state line began shortly after Gary escaped from a prison in New York where he was serving time for burglary. Eventually, he was linked to the murder of an 85-year-old woman in Albany, N.Y., and the rape and attempted strangulation of a 55-year-old woman in Syracuse, N.Y.
Credit: Georgia Department of Correction
Credit: Georgia Department of Correction
Gary came within four hours of execution in December 2009 but was spared because the Georgia Supreme Court wanted the court in Muscogee County to consider DNA evidence that had not been available at the time of his trial in 1986.
Years later, four samples were tested — evidence gathered at the murder scenes of the three women he was convicted of killing and the fourth from another of the women used at trial to show a pattern.
Three of the samples either did not match Gary’s DNA or were too damaged or destroyed to yield a result. But the fourth sample, taken from 71-year-old Jean Dimenstein, matched Gary’s DNA; he was never charged with killing Dimenstein.
In addition to questions about the DNA, Gary's lawyers are also focused on a shoe print found at the scene that was several sizes smaller than what Gary wears.
“Last minute appeals to the United States Supreme Court, the Eleventh (U.S.) Circuit Court of Appeals and the Georgia Parole Board are pending,” Martin said.
“But unless some court or board takes action, a person who never got a fair trial and whose guilt has been seriously questioned by hard physical and scientific evidence suppressed by the state and not revealed until long after trial will be executed.”
Martin said such an execution will be “a stain on the State of Georgia.”
Gary did not request a special last meal, opting instead for the “institutional tray” of a hamburger, hot dog, slaw and grape beverage that will be served to all the other inmates at the prison that is home to Death Row.
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