Time takes edge off fear in Columbus

Wynnton area's residents breathing 'a collective sigh' after 'strangler' 

conviction

The houses where the victims lived have all been sold, some several times. There are new shrubs and welcome mats and children. The policemen who lived with the cases and the frustration are mostly scattered now to other places or jobs.

At the Wynnton United Methodist Church, a Sunday school class is named for Janet Cofer, the last of the women who died, but just down the street two men in conversation have trouble recalling just who she was.

People in the Wynnton neighborhood of Columbus will never be entirely free from the cold fear of 1977-78 - when seven elderly women were strangled in their homes - any more than they will forget the floods that once washed their river town.

But the passage of nearly a decade has softened the raw emotional edges of the "stocking strangler" cases, and Tuesday's conviction of Carlton Gary for three of the killings closed a chapter of history the city was already learning to forget.

"There was sort of a collective sigh," said the Rev. Tommy Martin, associate pastor at Mrs. Cofer's church. "I think we'd all like to put it behind us."

Bob Flournoy was a young man living in Wynnton when the killings took place, and he remembers the quiet terror people felt, the flickering shadows of floodlights in the dense trees, the police cars drifting down the streets and the neighbors who bought locks and bars and guns. One elderly woman put in an alarm with a buzzer by Flournoy's window.

"A lot of friendships have been forged out of fear," he says.

Flournoy is in the real estate business, and he has seen the subtle changes in Wynnton over the past few decades. Despite the trauma of the strangling cases, the pressure of commerce along the Macon Road, shifting racial patterns and advancing time, Wynnton remains one of the city's most stable neighborhoods. It is a section of solid homes and sidewalks, a place where tradition and loyalties die hard.

"Very few people moved out," Flournoy says. A number of elderly widows who sold their homes simply moved into apartments and condominiums which have thickened along some streets in the neighborhood. Their homes were sold to younger couples who enjoy the quiet and convenience of being a few minutes from work.

At the Wynnton Barber Shop, the air is heavy with hair tonic and aging jokes and Jimmy Carswell is into his fourth generation of customers. Down the row of worn black and white chairs, 81-year-old John White has men who drive from Atlanta and Alabama for a trim and a chat.

Begun in 1927, the shop is an integral part of the landscape. Kathleen Woodruff, the fifth woman to die in the strangler cases, owned the block where the shop resides. She was particular and would not allow a barber pole outside. Mildred Borom's husband was a customer, as were relatives of other victims.

"People talk about the Gary case now, you know - how long the trial will last and that sort of thing," White says. "But not like when the killings were going on."

"It's been 10 years," says Kenneth Henson Jr., a young lawyer whose office is around the corner. "You look back at all that was going on at the time, and it's hard to match that publicity."

Most of those who live in Wynnton have always been reluctant to discuss the cases, either because they knew the victims or their families, or because notoriety in Wynnton was something new and something to be avoided.

"We've learned to live with fear," says a lifelong resident who asks that her name not be used. "Everybody has alarm systems now. I mean everybody." She draws the word out.