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Speaker 5: Plus, you are now listening to True Murder The most
Speaker 5: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 5: have written about them Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous.
Speaker 6: Killers in true crime history.
Speaker 3: True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski,
Speaker 3: Good Evening.
Speaker 6: During an eight month period in nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy eight, the city of Columbus, Georgia, was terrorized
Speaker 6: by a mysterious serial killer who raped and ritualistically strangled
Speaker 6: seven elderly women in one of the community's finer neighborhoods.
Speaker 6: Despite intense of efforts on the part of police, the
Speaker 6: Stocking Strangler, as he came to be known, managed to
Speaker 6: elude capture. After the last murder in April nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 6: the case went cold. In the spring of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 6: a series of fortuitous events connected to an unrelated murder
Speaker 6: and a stolen pistol led to the capture of Carlton Gary,
Speaker 6: who had recently escaped from a South Carolina prison. Following
Speaker 6: a dramatic trial in nineteen eighty six, Gary was convicted
Speaker 6: of three of the seven Columbus murders and sentenced to death,
Speaker 6: a penalty that would not be carried out until twenty
Speaker 6: and eighteen. This convoluted tale of crime and punishment is
Speaker 6: punctuated by dramatic twists and turns, including issues of race,
Speaker 6: alleged conspiracy and misconduct on the part of the police,
Speaker 6: in the judiciary, and errors in DNA analysis. The book
Speaker 6: that we're featuring this evening is The Columbus Stocking Strangler
Speaker 6: with my special guest author will William Rawlings. Welcome back
Speaker 6: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 6: William Rowlings.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure to be here, Dan, thank you so
Speaker 2: inviting me.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this book that
Speaker 6: is to be released September sixth, so by the time
Speaker 6: people hear this interview, it will have been released just recently.
Speaker 6: Congratulations on this book. This is an incredible wild tale.
Speaker 6: As we talked about just before in the introduction, let's
Speaker 6: get right to Columbus, Georgia, and you talk about that
Speaker 6: it really occurs. These crimes really occur in a village
Speaker 6: of Winton about two and a half miles east of Columbus, Georgia.
Speaker 6: So this occurs in the as you talk about a
Speaker 6: crime wave in nineteen seventy seven, tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about Columbus, Georgia and this village of Winton, who
Speaker 6: it comprised, members of society who live there, and a
Speaker 6: little bit about Camp Benning and its relationship to Columbus
Speaker 6: and this story.
Speaker 2: Today, Columbus, Georgia is the state's second largest city. But
Speaker 2: if you back up a good bit, and by that
Speaker 2: I mean to the nineteenth century when it was founded
Speaker 2: in the first the end of the first quarter of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, Columbus was a river town. It was
Speaker 2: the uppermost novel reach of the Chattahoochee River. It's because
Speaker 2: of the river. It's been always been a mill town
Speaker 2: and it's always been a somewhat wealthy city over the years.
Speaker 2: During the Civil War years of the eighteen sixties, it
Speaker 2: was a major town for production of Confederate arma months
Speaker 2: and so forth, and soon in the twentieth century. There
Speaker 2: are still mills there, but the economy is diversified, and
Speaker 2: today it's a fairly wealthy and very cosmopolitan city. It's
Speaker 2: a nice place and I like Columbus a lot. I
Speaker 2: have nothing but positive things to say about the town Winton.
Speaker 2: The district of Winton at one time was a separate
Speaker 2: village a couple of miles inland from the river, but
Speaker 2: today has been engulfed by the city and is basically
Speaker 2: a very upscale neighborhood. But there are some modest homes,
Speaker 2: but some of the finest homes in this city itself
Speaker 2: are located in this area, and a number of people
Speaker 2: with social prominence and a good little bit of wealth
Speaker 2: are there as well. It's an interesting part of town,
Speaker 2: but it's very definitely part of urban Columbus.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about as you describe, as you title crime
Speaker 6: wave September eleventh, nineteen seventy seven, in this predominantly white neighborhood,
Speaker 6: and tell us who is.
Speaker 2: Attacked and how well this is in a chapter of
Speaker 2: the book were titled crime Wave. And I should say
Speaker 2: that that there were a series of violent crimes, perhaps
Speaker 2: no more so, perhaps less so than today, But at
Speaker 2: the time there were several robberies, murders, rapes, and so forth,
Speaker 2: and so on. September eleventh, nineteen seventy seven, elderly white
Speaker 2: female named Gertrude Miller was who ran a kindergarten, was
Speaker 2: attacked in her bedroom by a man. She woke up
Speaker 2: and found this person standing over her. She there was
Speaker 2: a brief period of time when she the light was
Speaker 2: turned on and she recognized him as being a black male.
Speaker 2: He beat her savagely and then raped her. She was
Speaker 2: apparently left for dead, but she did not die, and
Speaker 2: a neighbor discovered her the next morning. And that was
Speaker 2: one more crime that had occurred in a series. And
Speaker 2: yet it was the start of this series of events
Speaker 2: attributed to the Columbus Strangler.
Speaker 6: There was a description made by Gertrude Miller, wasn't there?
Speaker 2: Yes, there was. She described him as being a fairly
Speaker 2: young black male, being handsome, having a short afro, having
Speaker 2: I believe no facial hair at the time, and this
Speaker 2: and that. But she had been she actually had a
Speaker 2: fractureous skull, and there was always some question as to
Speaker 2: whether or not her identification was completely correct, although she
Speaker 2: insisted quite well that she saw the guy, she'd recognize
Speaker 2: him again, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: What did police do with this composite? Was it release
Speaker 6: to the press or the public, well, the police, not
Speaker 6: that moment.
Speaker 2: It was a little bit later on in there in
Speaker 2: the series of events that occurred, the police realized that
Speaker 2: this event was apparently the first of a series of
Speaker 2: events which became known as the Strangler's Reign of Terror.
Speaker 2: They later went back the next month and they interviewed her.
Speaker 2: They got a composite drawing of her which they passed around.
Speaker 2: It was not particularly helpful, but that was a matter
Speaker 2: of some sensitivities that showed a black mail in the
Speaker 2: black community. The African American community was concerned that they
Speaker 2: were trying to pin this on a person of color,
Speaker 2: and that was a soul point there in Columbus for
Speaker 2: the longest time.
Speaker 6: You write that. Six days later, September sixteenth, Miss Mary
Speaker 6: Willis Jackson, known as Fern, didn't show up at work.
Speaker 6: She was a director of education for the Columbus Health Department.
Speaker 6: She's fifty nine years old and she was a widow
Speaker 6: as well. What do her daughter and police find? What's
Speaker 6: her state?
Speaker 2: Well, she was pillar of the community and very prominent
Speaker 2: and very well respected. She simply didn't come to work.
Speaker 2: One day. Someone discovered that her house had been broken
Speaker 2: into her car had been stolen, and they found her body.
Speaker 2: She was naked, the waist down in her her face
Speaker 2: had been covered up like the like Miss Miller. Forgive me,
Speaker 2: I forgot to say that Miss Miller was apparently her attack.
Speaker 2: I apparently attempted to strangle her, apparently with a stocking,
Speaker 2: although that was not exactly clear at that point. But
Speaker 2: Fern was strangled with her stocking, and other than her car,
Speaker 2: her valuables were not taken. It appeared to be a
Speaker 2: very savage murder of the same sort where she was
Speaker 2: savage beaten and then raped and strangled and left dead.
Speaker 2: In this case, so this became the first murder that
Speaker 2: was attributed to the strangler. You have to understand that
Speaker 2: you have to have several people before you understand before
Speaker 2: a trend is happening, And this was the second one,
Speaker 2: and people begin to say, oh, it looks a little
Speaker 2: bit like miss Gertrude millis event.
Speaker 6: In terms of forensic hair samples were gathered, what did
Speaker 6: they find, if anything.
Speaker 2: They found in this case and in several others that
Speaker 2: there were foreign hairs that appeared to be pubic hairs
Speaker 2: that were described as being quote negeroid that is the
Speaker 2: term that was used, not mine. And it was sort
Speaker 2: of assumed that the attacker in this case was a
Speaker 2: black male, similar the same description that had been given
Speaker 2: with Miss Gertrude Miller earlier. This in order to avoid
Speaker 2: inflaming racial sensitivities, the ledged race of the attacker was
Speaker 2: not made a big issue. They simply were looking for somebody.
Speaker 6: Right now, you write soon after we're talking September twenty fourth,
Speaker 6: Jean Dimenstein, seventy one year old, retired cowner of a
Speaker 6: little department store. She was unmarried, and she'd lived in
Speaker 6: her home for twenty three years. There was a break
Speaker 6: and enter attempt the night before. So tell us what
Speaker 6: happens the night before, and then what happens with Jean
Speaker 6: Diaminstein during.
Speaker 2: This period of time. And let me say we're talking
Speaker 2: here between September nineteen seventy seven and the early part
Speaker 2: of say the winner of nineteen seventy eight, there were
Speaker 2: a number of burglaries in this entire in this district.
Speaker 2: Ms Diemenstein's neighbor had an attempted break in at her house.
Speaker 2: The person was unable to get in. It turned out
Speaker 2: the next night the apparent same person returned and broke
Speaker 2: into them Miss Diemenstein's house, and again she was raped
Speaker 2: and murdered, with a crime scene that was very similar
Speaker 2: to the one of Fern Jackson from the sense that
Speaker 2: she'd been strangled with a stocking, her body was covered up,
Speaker 2: and the pattern of the arrangement of the murder scene
Speaker 2: would occur in subsequent murders attributed to the strangler.
Speaker 6: One of the most horrifying things elements of this crime
Speaker 6: was regarding the door tell us about that.
Speaker 2: She had a door to her car poard and was locked,
Speaker 2: of course, but apparently was put on in such a
Speaker 2: way that the hinges were the outside. So someone simply
Speaker 2: put the hinge pins out and removed the door, and
Speaker 2: the lady that discovered her body came up and found
Speaker 2: her door had been removed and realized her her horror
Speaker 2: what might be found, and that's when the police were
Speaker 2: called and her body was subsequently identified.
Speaker 6: Right now, this is raising panic in the community that
Speaker 6: you get headlines from the Ledger inquirer sex killer strike
Speaker 6: second time. Second elderly women in nine days found molested,
Speaker 6: in strangled in their homes. And then there enters someone
Speaker 6: that is an important figure a coroner, Kilgore tell us
Speaker 6: what he has to say and what it sparks.
Speaker 2: Eventually, the corner in Georgia is an elected position. You
Speaker 2: have to understand that, and one does. One needs only
Speaker 2: a modicum of medical background. That's usually done by what
Speaker 2: to call medical examiners in the state. And so basically
Speaker 2: you've got a politician who is elected office and sometimes
Speaker 2: they make statements that are inflammatory. He made a lot
Speaker 2: of a number of statements that said that the killer
Speaker 2: was brutal, that he had he revealed details of the
Speaker 2: crime that the police said should not have been revealed.
Speaker 2: He alleged that the killer was probably black, although the
Speaker 2: police were trying to keep that information confidential, and he
Speaker 2: was a bit of a thorn in the side during
Speaker 2: the entire investigation. According to my opinion from what I.
Speaker 6: Have read right now, the police proceed the look at footprints,
Speaker 6: Layton fingerprints, house success where they are obtaining any of those,
Speaker 6: and you write that soon a suspect with a question
Speaker 6: mark emerges.
Speaker 2: Well after the first two murders and the attack on
Speaker 2: miss Gertrude Miller, the police were under a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of pressure to saw office. He was particularly violent and
Speaker 2: vile crimes and the most innocence of victims to three
Speaker 2: elderly ladies. And so the police were under a lot
Speaker 2: of pressure. And there was a twenty five year old
Speaker 2: African American male named Jerome Lebas. Lebas was to use
Speaker 2: the term at the time. He was of limited intellectual
Speaker 2: abilities and that was from multiple accounts and was sort
Speaker 2: of a pitiful fella, I guess. So he had a
Speaker 2: girlfriend who was about thirty years older than he. She
Speaker 2: was in her fifties, and apparently they've gotten in dispute.
Speaker 2: He alleged that she had quote been with another man
Speaker 2: end quote, and he actually strangled and raped her. She
Speaker 2: was an a middle aged black femail. The mo of
Speaker 2: the two that is, a strangulation and rape and a
Speaker 2: violent attack against a woman was vaguely similar. The police
Speaker 2: knew that they were a police thought that the crimes
Speaker 2: were committed by a blackmail. So they got Jerome to
Speaker 2: confess to the first two murders, right, And it was
Speaker 2: a parable situation because the man was pitiful to the police.
Speaker 2: Chief began to say, well, we've got ourselves a suspect,
Speaker 2: and the mayor said, we've got a suspect and the
Speaker 2: community started to breathe a sigh of relief. And when
Speaker 2: they called up the district attorney at the time and
Speaker 2: presented the evidence to him, no, no, he said, listen,
Speaker 2: you don't have enough evidence to convince this person. And
Speaker 2: despite the fact that he quote unquote confessed, this is
Speaker 2: not legitimate. Number one, he could not read the confession
Speaker 2: that he signed. And number two he signed it one
Speaker 2: evening and he recanted the next morning. So it appeared
Speaker 2: that the police were trying to find this man or
Speaker 2: Pendy's murders on him. Then more happened and it became
Speaker 2: evident that he was not the killer.
Speaker 7: All.
Speaker 2: They remained in jail for the murder of his girlfriend.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, it's interesting and very compelling that evidence that
Speaker 6: he may not be the killer may being an exaggeration
Speaker 6: or understatement. You write about October twenty first, three days
Speaker 6: later after it seems like they have a reasonable suspect,
Speaker 6: a good suspect. The apartment of Florence Scheibel. She's a
Speaker 6: widow living independently, just released from hospital as well from
Speaker 6: with a broken hip, and her son Paul would visit
Speaker 6: every day, checked on her every day, tell us what
Speaker 6: happens what to police and his son find.
Speaker 2: Miss Sabel was perhaps the most pitiful of the case.
Speaker 2: She was eighty nine years old, ten days Shah ninety
Speaker 2: years of age. She had had a host of medical
Speaker 2: problems and was said to be essentially deaf and for
Speaker 2: the most part blind. She saw things with blur, and
Speaker 2: perhaps her only enjoy in life was getting out in
Speaker 2: her front yard with her walker and trying to pick
Speaker 2: things up. She was just really a pitiful thing, and
Speaker 2: there was testimony from neighbors and witnesses that she would
Speaker 2: commonly leave her front door unlocked when she was out
Speaker 2: in the yard. Her apartment building, it was a bit
Speaker 2: of a duplex upstairs and downstairs apartments, and she was
Speaker 2: right on the street, so it appeared it was postulated
Speaker 2: that when she was out of the yard someone slipped
Speaker 2: in her front door, she would not have noticed it. Accordingly,
Speaker 2: when she came back in, she was attacked and again
Speaker 2: brutally raped and murdered. She was strangled with a stocking,
Speaker 2: her neck was broken. She was beat up like the others,
Speaker 2: and it was horrible. Her son and his wife came.
Speaker 2: Her son came to visit her. He found that her
Speaker 2: door was unlocked, he called his wife. He was afraid
Speaker 2: to even go in. It was his wife who've discovered
Speaker 2: her mother in law dead.
Speaker 6: Now you see that any kind of calm that had
Speaker 6: been established with this suspect being arrested was gone.
Speaker 2: It was And you have to understand, now, this is
Speaker 2: the third of the three murder, of the first three murders,
Speaker 2: this is the third murder plus a fourth attack, assuming
Speaker 2: Miss Miller was attacked by the same person. And so
Speaker 2: you had a community that was breathing a sigh of
Speaker 2: relief at the supposedly or a supposed arrest of suspect,
Speaker 2: and long to hold. Here you have another murder, another
Speaker 2: vile murder that it's the same pattern, and this in
Speaker 2: essence sort of frees suspicion from Jerome Levas. He remained
Speaker 2: in jail, of course, for the other murder. And to
Speaker 2: fast forward a little bit, one of the newspaper reporters
Speaker 2: in town, a fellow named Karl Kanton, was suspicious and
Speaker 2: he kind of got an interview with Levas, and Levas
Speaker 2: at the time admitted to being present at the Kennedy
Speaker 2: assassination and then McKinley assassination, and was present when the
Speaker 2: Lindbergh baby was napped, I believe in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: and it was very very clear that almost no matter
Speaker 2: what you said to him, he would agree to it.
Speaker 2: He simply was not mentally capable of this. And it
Speaker 2: became quite evident that the so called confession that he
Speaker 2: had signed and then a candidate, was one that it
Speaker 2: had not been recorded by the police that had written
Speaker 2: it down, and so there was no evidence that he
Speaker 2: actually said what he did, and it pretty clear that
Speaker 2: he was being framed by the police.
Speaker 6: Certainly didn't do anything for police credibility at that point,
Speaker 6: absolutely not. And then Martha Thurmond, the sixty nine year
Speaker 6: old widow, retired school teacher, and this is interesting too.
Speaker 6: The response from residence is that they put burglar bars
Speaker 6: and alarms and did precautions screens on their windows, and
Speaker 6: she had done this. He had installed extra dead bolts.
Speaker 6: What happens to Martha Thurmond.
Speaker 2: She suffers the same fate as the other murders. That
Speaker 2: is to say, she was attacked in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night and bead and strangled and raped in the
Speaker 2: same general pattern as the others. The interesting thing about
Speaker 2: this particular episode was that her son had been there
Speaker 2: and had visited with her over the weekend and actually
Speaker 2: had left a few hours before she was murdered. He
Speaker 2: had installed locks on her door, and apparently one of
Speaker 2: the locks was installed backwards, that is to say, the
Speaker 2: screws for the dead boat lock were exposed to the outside.
Speaker 2: So all it took was a few simple turns of
Speaker 2: a two to take her locks off and get inside,
Speaker 2: and of course that led to her death there.
Speaker 6: And she was another person that was strangled with a nylon.
Speaker 2: Yes, of the seven case murder cases, five were strangled
Speaker 2: with nylon with stockings a presumed nylon, one was strangled
Speaker 2: with a scarf and and the other one was strangled
Speaker 2: with a blind cord, a small cord as you'd use
Speaker 2: to open her clothes curtains.
Speaker 6: You say, press and citizens begin began referring to the
Speaker 6: killer as the stocking strangler. Hence to tell your.
Speaker 2: Book, Well, at this point, you had what four deaths,
Speaker 2: all of which fit a pattern. Actually, if you include you,
Speaker 2: and you include the intact owned miss Miller, you had
Speaker 2: five that were murders or attempted murders where the victim
Speaker 2: was strangled with a stocking and it became and also
Speaker 2: as if you look at the crime scene reports, the
Speaker 2: bodies were positioned in such a way there the face
Speaker 2: was covered up and the rest of the body may
Speaker 2: have been exposed, this kind of thing, And so it
Speaker 2: became evident that apparently one person was committing these crimes,
Speaker 2: and they were all in a very close neighborhood. For example,
Speaker 2: Miss Thurman and Ms. Shiper lived quite close together, as
Speaker 2: did the others.
Speaker 6: Now there's a psychological profile of the killer released. Won't
Speaker 6: fixate on too much. It says blackmail sixteen to twenty one,
Speaker 6: high school graduate, possibly bedwether, fire starter or animal torturer, hunting,
Speaker 6: no anxiety, remorse or guilt, lives near the crime scene, areas,
Speaker 6: sexually inadequate, pathological liar, pretty general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was, and I think I think as
Speaker 2: a I won't say a move of desperation, but as
Speaker 2: an attempt to get some insight on some of the people.
Speaker 2: Check with the FBI profilers, and I think it's been
Speaker 2: pretty well established that profiles are not necessarily accurate. This profile,
Speaker 2: if you read it carefully, was fairly generic. It could
Speaker 2: have been in a number of people. And while there
Speaker 2: were some things that may have fit the eventually identified killer.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of things that didn't. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was helpful at all, but it gave some
Speaker 2: people something to think about.
Speaker 6: An interesting development. Gertrude Miller is again the police. It's
Speaker 6: common in some of at that time for them to
Speaker 6: want to gain further information, potentially from hypnotizing her. So
Speaker 6: a composite and this hypnosis is done, and a composite
Speaker 6: is done. At that time, I believe maybe you can
Speaker 6: tell us about that. But also a task force is
Speaker 6: set up with a person named Ronnie Jones, I believe,
Speaker 6: as the head of the task force. Us to what
Speaker 6: the makeup of his task forces tell us about that development.
Speaker 2: Well, by this time you had what for murders and
Speaker 2: one attack at least you had, and I should should
Speaker 2: say that there were a number of burglaries in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood too, so people attempted to entry into homes. And
Speaker 2: you know, it may have been that there would have
Speaker 2: been more murders, more violent crimes, but everyone was scared
Speaker 2: very much so, and the pressure owned the authorities and
Speaker 2: that on is not only law enforcement but also the
Speaker 2: city government to do something. Everyone says, we can't have
Speaker 2: this happening. I mean, you've got lots and lots of
Speaker 2: police on the street. Everyone is trying to catch this
Speaker 2: mysterious strangler. He became by this time, he became known
Speaker 2: as the Strangler. Everyone was trying to catch the strangler.
Speaker 2: And so we're going to solve the problem in the
Speaker 2: old fashioned American way of setting up a task force.
Speaker 2: And it was mentioned before the start of the year
Speaker 2: and really kind of got off the ground good fashion
Speaker 2: after the New Year of nineteen and January nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: But the idea was that they would exhaust every possible
Speaker 2: manner of solving this problem. And yet it didn't make
Speaker 2: any difference. Nothing really happened. The police were the police.
Speaker 2: Days off were canceled. Everyone was working twelve hour shifts.
Speaker 2: There were assistants brought in from the FBI, the Georgia
Speaker 2: Bureau of Investigation. There were helicopters, helicopters flying around at night,
Speaker 2: shining lights in the neighborhood. There were records, thousands of
Speaker 2: records of people that were pulled over by the police
Speaker 2: and simply questioned. They still exist, by the way, huge
Speaker 2: card files of them. And nothing happened. Despite the efforts.
Speaker 6: December twenty eighth. Tommy Stevens is a maid at the
Speaker 6: home of Miss Kathleen Woodroof. She's worked for her for
Speaker 6: thirty three years, so she finds something out, but not
Speaker 6: right away. She discovers something about Kathleen. Tell us what
Speaker 6: happens what she discovers.
Speaker 2: Miss Woodrooff, Kathleen Woodrooff was a very very prominent citizen.
Speaker 2: She was a member of the very wealthy and very
Speaker 2: prominent Woodruff family. She was the widow of a former
Speaker 2: University of Georgia football coach, I Believe Woodruff Field, and
Speaker 2: one of the building at the University of Georgia and
Speaker 2: Athens is named for him. She was highly respected and
Speaker 2: she lived again in Winton, in a nice part of town,
Speaker 2: and she had a maid who had been with her
Speaker 2: for years. Her maid comes in one morning and discovers
Speaker 2: that she's still in bed sleeping, but it apparently was
Speaker 2: not outside of the fact that sometimes she simply slept
Speaker 2: late in the morning. Her maid had noticed that when
Speaker 2: she left the night before, she had been sitting a desk,
Speaker 2: perhaps writing a check or something like that, And after
Speaker 2: a while, when she didn't wake up, her mate went
Speaker 2: in and looked at her and realized that she had
Speaker 2: blood coming out of her mouth and she was in
Speaker 2: fact dead. She called her son, who identified the body.
Speaker 2: It's interesting in the fact and ironic in the fact
Speaker 2: that instead of she was not strangled with her but
Speaker 2: strangled instead with a University of Georgia's scarf, which was
Speaker 2: ironic in the sense that there was a big relationship
Speaker 2: between her late husband and the University of Georgia. She
Speaker 2: was perhaps the most socially prominent individuals of the strangle
Speaker 2: had murdered up to this point, and of course this
Speaker 2: just stirred the pot further.
Speaker 6: You say there was a reward offered as the panic
Speaker 6: grew twenty thousand dollars now and then some and there
Speaker 6: was patrols in the Winton area, so the police presence,
Speaker 6: some visible, some not so visible. You say, break ins
Speaker 6: were diminished, but not eliminated. And two residential break ins
Speaker 6: of interest occurred in this period of time as well,
Speaker 6: didn't they?
Speaker 2: Yes, which ones were you referring? There was so many
Speaker 2: of them. There was a Missus Swift, Yes, there was
Speaker 2: Swift and who and the other was the ilges Illgiessts Okay,
Speaker 2: the Swiss and the Iligis were both had very large,
Speaker 2: fine homes, and it were persons of substance and wealth.
Speaker 2: The Swift House was a large, white column mansion that
Speaker 2: was broken into. The Ilges's house, which was described as
Speaker 2: being quote the castle quote vaguely resembled an English country house,
Speaker 2: was actually broken into twice. Once was on New Year's
Speaker 2: Eve or January thirty first decent I'm sorry, December thirty one,
Speaker 2: January first of nineteen seventy seven seventy eight during the night,
Speaker 2: and was broken in a second time about a month later.
Speaker 2: I believe in the case of the Swift House, the
Speaker 2: burglary happened when no one was home, but in the
Speaker 2: case of the ils home, the mus Ilgis, who was
Speaker 2: elderly and fit the demographic of the strangler's victims, was there,
Speaker 2: but also her husband, who was in his eighties and
Speaker 2: was medically infirmed, was in another bedroom. And part of
Speaker 2: the pattern, as it would turn out later looking at
Speaker 2: things retrospectively, was that the strangler would not kill a
Speaker 2: woman kill one of his victims unless she was alone
Speaker 2: in the house. The fact that this woman's husband, miss
Speaker 2: Iligs's husband was in a another bedroom of the second floor,
Speaker 2: second or third floor of her home, apparently deterred the
Speaker 2: strangler from harming her.
Speaker 6: Now, while police are investigating, there is a miss Schwab,
Speaker 6: another widow. She had installed alarms like many other women,
Speaker 6: and that alarm was connected to her next door neighbor.
Speaker 2: This was This was another situation where the woman survived
Speaker 2: the attack of the strangler and she was she she
Speaker 2: was quite wealthy. The Schwob I think as Harry pronounce
Speaker 2: her name Schwob was ran a large business that she
Speaker 2: had inherited from her husband. She lived alone. She was
Speaker 2: concerned that she fit the demographics of the strangler's victims,
Speaker 2: so she had talked to her next door neighbor, doctor
Speaker 2: Fred Burdette, and they had each installed alarms such that
Speaker 2: she could press a button at her house and he
Speaker 2: could press a button at his house, and then they
Speaker 2: would check on each other. Well. It so happened that
Speaker 2: had been at least one false alarm, and in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, Dtor Burdett is woken up by
Speaker 2: the buzzard ringing, So rather than call the police immediately
Speaker 2: because there'd been one false alarm before, he calls me
Speaker 2: Schroke next door that she doesn't answer, but and of
Speaker 2: course he immediately calls the police. They both enter her
Speaker 2: house and it turns out that she's alive and sitting
Speaker 2: on the edge of the bed with a stocking wrapped
Speaker 2: around her neck. She had been the strangler's next victim,
Speaker 2: but had managed to fight him off. And the phone
Speaker 2: call when dtor Burdette had called her back to check
Speaker 2: on or apparently terrified the stranger and he left and
Speaker 2: got away that night. But as it were, he went
Speaker 2: on to kill another woman, and there's another victim in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. He simply hid in the bushes until the
Speaker 2: coast was clear, and then apparently early that morning, right
Speaker 2: before daylight, killed another victim just down the street, Mildred Boram,
Speaker 2: Miss Boram right.
Speaker 6: Yes, now, Cad dwell too much on what happens next,
Speaker 6: even though this is incredible development, But the Klan steps
Speaker 6: up and volunteers to assist the police. Of course, the
Speaker 6: police aren't asking for the clan's help, But an even
Speaker 6: more incredible development happens after from a group called Forces
Speaker 6: of Evil. Tell us about both of these bizarre and
Speaker 6: dangerous developments.
Speaker 2: You have to understand that the Klukux Klan, even in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, was considered a bunch of evil racists.
Speaker 2: Nobody seriously supports the Clan in the South, just back
Speaker 2: there allegations to the contrary. I mean, the Klan and
Speaker 2: the Clan is just total outliers. And they since everybody
Speaker 2: had sort of quote unquote you end quote the strangler
Speaker 2: was said to be black, that they were going to
Speaker 2: sort of start doing patrols in the neighborhood, which just
Speaker 2: horrified everyone, most importantly the police. Not much came of it,
Speaker 2: but it was just another twist. Perhaps the most interesting
Speaker 2: thing was that the police chief in January, after the
Speaker 2: first of the year in nineteen seventy eight, began getting
Speaker 2: letters from someone who signed himself as the Chairman of
Speaker 2: the Forces of Evil. This person sent and I believe
Speaker 2: six or seven or eight letters to the police chief.
Speaker 2: During the course of this one sided correspondence, the chairman
Speaker 2: revealed that this was a white supremacist organization and that
Speaker 2: they did not they thought that since the stranger was
Speaker 2: black and killing white women, that they, as white supremacists,
Speaker 2: were going to kidnap and kill black women. And as
Speaker 2: it turned out, two black women were kidnapped and killed. Well.
Speaker 2: It so happened that this so called white supremacist organization
Speaker 2: was in fact a black male named William Henry Hans,
Speaker 2: who was a soldier stationed at Fort Benning. Fort Benning
Speaker 2: is a large military institution that abuts the lower the
Speaker 2: southern border of the city of Columbus. He himself off
Speaker 2: was a serial killer who apparently killed a total of
Speaker 2: four women. There were two in Columbus. He was identified
Speaker 2: through his own stupidity by using US Army paper stationery,
Speaker 2: and his voice was recorded, and eventually someone at Fort
Speaker 2: Vinning recognized that he was apprehended. He eventually came to
Speaker 2: trial and was executed for the murder of two women
Speaker 2: there in Columbus. It was totally bizarre situation that another
Speaker 2: serial killer was using the episodes attributed to the stranger
Speaker 2: to cover up his own murderous intentions.
Speaker 6: Incredible. You write that Mildred Borham was killed February eleventh,
Speaker 6: you talk about you write about April twentieth, Janet T. Koefer,
Speaker 6: a sixty one year old widowed kindergarten teacher. She doesn't
Speaker 6: show up for class. What are some of the same
Speaker 6: characteristics found there?
Speaker 2: She was the one victim who lived a little bit
Speaker 2: further away. She was the strangler's so called last victim,
Speaker 2: and she lived not too far away, but was not
Speaker 2: the first six six victims. First six murder victims lived
Speaker 2: within an area where one could walk from one house
Speaker 2: to the other in less than ten minutes. Right, this
Speaker 2: lady lived perhaps fifteen minutes away, but nearby in the
Speaker 2: same general area. I should say. She simply didn't come
Speaker 2: to work one day. She just when she didn't, someone
Speaker 2: from her school goes by. Notice the screen has been cut.
Speaker 2: They the police are called and entry is made to
Speaker 2: the house. And again her body was like the others,
Speaker 2: the same tragic crime scene with she was strangled in
Speaker 2: her body position and covered up as the others had been.
Speaker 6: There was a chief McClung, and he, as you right,
Speaker 6: he paints a dim picture of the investigation. What does
Speaker 6: he have to conclude at the end of this in
Speaker 6: terms of this dim picture of the investigation?
Speaker 2: Well, you have to understand this is think about this
Speaker 2: for a period of eight months more or less. You
Speaker 2: have seven murders, you have burglaries, you have one or
Speaker 2: two other attacks Ms. Borum and Ms Miller, You have fingerprints,
Speaker 2: you have shoe prints, you have other crime scene evidence,
Speaker 2: you have every possible resource locally plus state and federal resources,
Speaker 2: and you had this guy had managed to elude everything. Gosh,
Speaker 2: what kind of a criminal is this? I mean, he's amazing.
Speaker 2: And despite all as they didn't have a real suspect,
Speaker 2: there was no one and after the April nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight murder, the case went cold. There were a lot
Speaker 2: of scares, there were a lot of investigation continued, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of tips, a lot of people were investigated,
Speaker 2: but nothing substentiative. And so as time went forward, well
Speaker 2: six months, a year, or two years, it looked like
Speaker 2: the strangle had totally disappeared. When never be found. It
Speaker 2: was a code case, notsing more.
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Speaker 6: William we were talking about the case goes cold, But
Speaker 6: March twelfth, nineteen eighty nine, we talked about it for
Speaker 6: two d series of events. The Bombay Bicycle Club a
Speaker 6: restaurant in East Columbus. End of the night, a figure
Speaker 6: in a ski mask orders everybody out of the at gunpoint,
Speaker 6: out of this restaurant. Tell us how it leads to
Speaker 6: Carlton Gary.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most bizarre tales that you
Speaker 2: can possibly imagine. It is secuitous and almost unbelievable. As
Speaker 2: noted in March nineteen eighty four, the police got a
Speaker 2: silent alarm from a place called the Bombay Bicycle Club.
Speaker 2: It was like four between three and four in the morning.
Speaker 2: It was a restaurant that was closing up. The manager
Speaker 2: and two employees were walking out in the back door
Speaker 2: when a fella in a ski mask comes up and
Speaker 2: sticks a gun in the manager's ribs and says go
Speaker 2: back inside. And the first thing the ski mask robber
Speaker 2: does is lock them in the liquor cabinet and the
Speaker 2: liquor closet there was a large locking room where they
Speaker 2: kept their liquor and beer, and so he locks the
Speaker 2: three of them in there. On the three people were
Speaker 2: scared to death, and the first thing they did was
Speaker 2: barricade the door with cases of flicker and beer. And
Speaker 2: after a few minutes the fella comes back to the door,
Speaker 2: apparently not having found whatever he was looking for, and
Speaker 2: demands they opened the door, and he beats on the
Speaker 2: door and tries to get in, but they had he
Speaker 2: had locked him in that they locked him out so
Speaker 2: between After a while he gives up and heads out
Speaker 2: the back door. Well just as he's just as he
Speaker 2: goes out and gets in his car, the police show up.
Speaker 2: The fella named Spanky that was his nickname, Spanky Boy,
Speaker 2: and a twenty six year old patrolman who is patrolling
Speaker 2: who's by himself. He pulls into the parking lot of
Speaker 2: the Bombay Bicycle Club and notices a blue nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: seven Dodge Charger with its lights off screeching out of
Speaker 2: the parking lot at a high rate of speed, So
Speaker 2: he of course flips on his blue lights and gives chase.
Speaker 2: They go up Auburn Avenue, which is of a good
Speaker 2: street there for about three quarters of a mile and
Speaker 2: then it sort of dead ends into edge. I believe
Speaker 2: the name is Edgewood Row which was a residential street.
Speaker 2: The charger took a sharp left, but at a high
Speaker 2: rate of speed lost it. He crashes into several cars
Speaker 2: and ends up in someone jarred with this vehiclerect Bowen
Speaker 2: stops his patrol car and with a flashlight in one
Speaker 2: hand and as radio and his other goes up and
Speaker 2: starts kind of looks in the driver's side window there
Speaker 2: and is shot twice in the forehead and he died
Speaker 2: shortly thereafter. He did not draw his weapon well. He
Speaker 2: had of course called the police to back him up,
Speaker 2: and very shortly thereafter the of the patrolman arrived, but
Speaker 2: by that time the driver of this Dodge charger had left.
Speaker 2: The commotion had attracted someone and a witness there that
Speaker 2: lived in one of the houses had seen a white
Speaker 2: male leave the car and head in one direction, and
Speaker 2: as it turned out, there was a large creek named
Speaker 2: Lindsey Creek, sort of urban waterway, oversized, not big enough
Speaker 2: for Beer river, but bigger than a small little branch.
Speaker 2: He apparently had followed that up the creek well. Obviously,
Speaker 2: with a dead patrolman and this type of crime, the
Speaker 2: police were everywhere, and the investigating offers soon discovered that
Speaker 2: the car that had wrecked belonged to the girlfriend of
Speaker 2: a guy named Lonnie Botts. Botts she said that her
Speaker 2: boyfriend had had the car that night, so he became
Speaker 2: the prime suspect. The police go to his mother's house
Speaker 2: where he nominally lived. She denied knowing much about it,
Speaker 2: but in the hamper they found some soaking wet clothes
Speaker 2: and thought, well, you know, he was at least here,
Speaker 2: and he's somewhere. And also as part of that search
Speaker 2: they discovered a box of for a Ruger twenty two
Speaker 2: caliber automatic pistol. Right now, two things in looking at
Speaker 2: the car. There were two spent cottriages found in the car,
Speaker 2: presumably indicating that Patrolman Bowen was killed without automatic pistol.
Speaker 2: And these were of these were consistent with the ones
Speaker 2: founded the home of Lonnie bots and it was thought
Speaker 2: that they should be looking for a Ruger pistol. Well,
Speaker 2: it occurred to someone that during the Strangler's reign of
Speaker 2: terror some six years earlier are actually longer than that,
Speaker 2: there had been a burglary at Cali East House where
Speaker 2: Ruger Pistol had an automatic Ruger pistol had been stolen,
Speaker 2: so sort of shortened what is long story. The search
Speaker 2: began for this ruger pistol, and Mike Seller, who was
Speaker 2: one of the patrolmen investigating one of the officers rather investigating,
Speaker 2: put out an a bullet into every police force in
Speaker 2: the nation. Very promptly. He gets something back from the Lansing, Michigan,
Speaker 2: the state capitol of Michigan. At the time, Michigan was
Speaker 2: one of three states that required the registration of pistols.
Speaker 2: They said that someone in Kalamazoo, Michigan, had registered a
Speaker 2: gun with the same serial number. They approached this gentleman
Speaker 2: who said that he had gotten this from his mother
Speaker 2: and she lived in Gary, Indiana. So they go to Gary, Indiana,
Speaker 2: and she said that she had gotten the pistol from
Speaker 2: her brother because they had been a break in and
Speaker 2: she felt like she needed some protection. And yes, lo
Speaker 2: and behold, the brother lived in Phoenix City, Alabama. And
Speaker 2: for people that don't know the anatomy of Georgia and Alabama,
Speaker 2: and Phoenix City is directly across the river from Columbus.
Speaker 2: In other word, this led back home to this pistol
Speaker 2: that had been stolen in October nineteen seventy seven. Right,
Speaker 2: So they approached the man that from whom she assumed
Speaker 2: the lady got the pistol. His name was Jim Gary.
Speaker 2: They asked him where to get it. He said he
Speaker 2: got it from his nephew of melananamed Carlton Gary. They said, well,
Speaker 2: where's Carton and he says he's in one of them
Speaker 2: South Carolina prisons, and so they said, but he's been
Speaker 2: out on paroles. So the police started investigating and as
Speaker 2: it turned out, he had not been released from prison.
Speaker 2: That One of the things that seemed to stop the
Speaker 2: wrangle as Reign of Terror back in seventy eight was
Speaker 2: the fact that Carlton Gary had been robbing restaurants in
Speaker 2: South Carolina, had become known as the Steakhouse bandit, and
Speaker 2: had been sentenced to prison. So much of the enterbeing time,
Speaker 2: Carlton Gary had been in prison in South Carolina. After
Speaker 2: a few years in prison, he had convinced people there
Speaker 2: that he had reformed and he had quote unquote seen
Speaker 2: the light end quote. So he was moved from a
Speaker 2: maximum security prison and made a trustee at another low
Speaker 2: security system. He's prison, I'm sorry. He stayed there for
Speaker 2: two weeks and walked, and he'd come back to Columbus,
Speaker 2: and he was not out on parole. He was free,
Speaker 2: and he was in the city of Columbus at that time. So,
Speaker 2: as it would turn out, Carlton Gary had actually been
Speaker 2: interviewed several times by the police. Yes, you have to
Speaker 2: remember this was in the days before extensive use of
Speaker 2: computers and so forth, and some he carried no ID
Speaker 2: and gave police a spurious spurreus and different name every
Speaker 2: time he was picked up. In fact, he had been
Speaker 2: arrested earlier in April smoking marijuana and head there's a
Speaker 2: mug shot in the Columbus police files which I included
Speaker 2: in the book. Well, he had been arrested actually under
Speaker 2: a different name and released on five hundred dollars cash bond.
Speaker 2: So he was there and that is when they finally
Speaker 2: knew the man's name and they started searching. That's a
Speaker 2: long story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you talk about me the nineteen eighty four and
Speaker 6: his arrest and some major characters that come into play
Speaker 6: and question him or there for the questioning Born Rowe
Speaker 6: detective sellers Miller and Warren talk about they think he's
Speaker 6: pretty bright guy. He's got a one hundred and fourteen IQ.
Speaker 6: I believe how do they proceed with them and what
Speaker 6: are the results of question? Does he ask for a lawyer?
Speaker 6: What happens?
Speaker 2: Well, you have to have to back up and look
Speaker 2: at this man's entire history. First of all, let me
Speaker 2: say that the police were looking for him in Columbus,
Speaker 2: but actually he at the time where he was in Albany, Georgia.
Speaker 2: He was down there dealing drugs and he was at
Speaker 2: a holiday inn. The all Many police arrested him on
Speaker 2: the on the night I believe my second or third
Speaker 2: and he was police from Columbus came down, picked him up,
Speaker 2: and we're taking him back to Columbus from Albany. Now,
Speaker 2: Gary said, what have I been arrested for? Well, technically
Speaker 2: he was arrested because of the stealing the pistol in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven. That was what his arrest warrants said.
Speaker 2: But the police, they didn't try to question him. They
Speaker 2: didn't do anything untoward, particularly after the Jerome Levis case.
Speaker 2: But Gary had a long history of trying to blame
Speaker 2: things on other people. Whenever he was called he would say, well,
Speaker 2: I was there, but I didn't do it, so and
Speaker 2: so did it. And there was a huge pattern of
Speaker 2: this came into came to playing his trial. So he
Speaker 2: started talking to the police and says they ask him, well,
Speaker 2: you need an attorney. He says, no, I don't need an attorney.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to tell you the truth. And so
Speaker 2: when he starts telling the truth, he starts spinning tales,
Speaker 2: trying to to defer blame to someone else. I think
Speaker 2: Gary had no idea what evidence police were holding, where
Speaker 2: his fingerprints may or may not have been, or how
Speaker 2: much they had own him. So they got back to
Speaker 2: Columbus and he insisted on taking the police out and
Speaker 2: showing them things. And he said, yeah, I was there
Speaker 2: in that house, but I was with someone who actually
Speaker 2: harmed the old ladies. His name was Malvin Alamichael Cridenden.
Speaker 2: And Mike Sellers, who was one of the officers there, said,
Speaker 2: you know, he might have called the guy Joe Blow
Speaker 2: or John Smith, but Malvin Alamichael Cridenden, he said, it's
Speaker 2: a very realistic sounding name. And indeed, Malvin Criddenden was
Speaker 2: a friend of Carlton Gary's, and he was trying to
Speaker 2: dump in on his friend. And during the course of
Speaker 2: writing around that evening he showed them the houses of
Speaker 2: six of the seven murder victims. So he obviously had
Speaker 2: a lot of knowledge, and he told police things that
Speaker 2: no one else would have known that even the police
Speaker 2: had known. In some cases been describing the crime scenes.
Speaker 2: But his idea was, yeah, I was there, you know,
Speaker 2: in case you got my fingerprints, that that accounts for that.
Speaker 2: But I didn't do it. Someone else did it, and
Speaker 2: that became an issue later that would sort of muddy
Speaker 2: the water during his trial. But Crendon actually testified later.
Speaker 6: You write that eventually the grand jury invites indites him
Speaker 6: Gary in the Three Stocking Stranglers, and there's a photo
Speaker 6: of him smiling.
Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 6: Now, as I mentioned, he's liking the attention. You righte
Speaker 6: that he's liking the attention, and he is a really
Speaker 6: good suspect in the three Stocking stranglings by virtue of
Speaker 6: what he has said. Now enters his defense team and
Speaker 6: what they want to do with this case, what this
Speaker 6: case represents to them. Let's fast forward to the attempt
Speaker 6: at bringing him to trial.
Speaker 2: Gary was arrested one die in and died is the
Speaker 2: next day in May nineteen ninety four, and it was
Speaker 2: thought that his trial would proceed in the near future
Speaker 2: at that point, right, But as it turned out, there
Speaker 2: were multiple delays on the part of his defense attorneys.
Speaker 2: He had several defense attorneys. This was a complicated bit
Speaker 2: of taiale. But make a long story short, a guy
Speaker 2: named Bud Seamen ended up doing being his primary defense
Speaker 2: attorney during the course of his trial, which would take place.
Speaker 2: As I said in August nineteen eighty six, there were
Speaker 2: a number of motions, a number of efforts to get
Speaker 2: evidence thrown out. The allegations of the defense team was
Speaker 2: basically that number one, he was innocent. Number two, he
Speaker 2: was being mistreated by the police. Number three he was
Speaker 2: profiled because he was black and so forth. And so
Speaker 2: I think the real situation was that the defense team
Speaker 2: knew that prosecution had a good case and they were
Speaker 2: doing anything they could do in order to lessen the blow.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with the defense attorneys, that's their job,
Speaker 2: but it certainly put off on his trial for more
Speaker 2: than two years after his arrest. I should say, I
Speaker 2: should comment that he was indicted only on three of
Speaker 2: the seven murders attributed to the stranger I asked Bill Smith,
Speaker 2: who was the prosecuting attorney, why he was indicted only
Speaker 2: on three of the seven cases, and the response, appropriately
Speaker 2: was they were the strongest cases we have and how
Speaker 2: many times do you need to convict someone of a
Speaker 2: capital crime?
Speaker 6: You were talking about the trial seemingly going to go
Speaker 6: to be in February eighty six, but a couple of
Speaker 6: months before December twenty ninth, what do the jailers discover
Speaker 6: about Carlton Gary.
Speaker 2: Gary tried to escape. He had cut a hole in
Speaker 2: the wall of his cell and had was hoped to
Speaker 2: get out. He had a history of escape from In fact,
Speaker 2: he had escaped from prison in New York to get
Speaker 2: back to Georgia that started the Strangler's murders, and had
Speaker 2: other similar attempts of escaping. And so there were a
Speaker 2: number of things that were done to delay or obstacate
Speaker 2: the case. One was there was whether or not he
Speaker 2: should have a mental status exam. He acted out a
Speaker 2: little bit I think as a bress word and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to be objective about this, as that he might
Speaker 2: not be mentally fit. They sent him to the State Hospital,
Speaker 2: Central State Hospital in Milligeville, and when he was there,
Speaker 2: he apparently refused to cooperate, and so the idea that
Speaker 2: he might somehow be mentally impaired was dropped. That was
Speaker 2: not there were other issues the defense still aged. But
Speaker 2: he should be understood that his appeals, based on the
Speaker 2: vast majority of the motions made by defense attorneys, ran
Speaker 2: the entire gamut of the American judicial system, from local
Speaker 2: to the U. Supreme Court on a total of four
Speaker 2: separate occasions.
Speaker 6: And also what you talk about, it's not so uncommon,
Speaker 6: but this was unrelenting and real concerted at by these attorneys.
Speaker 6: They didn't believe in the death penalty. And that's what
Speaker 6: this case would potentially be, is that that they did
Speaker 6: a lot of filing motions. They did everything in their
Speaker 6: in their power to be able to file motions, to
Speaker 6: be able to delay this case as long as possible,
Speaker 6: and to try to have each judge and we went,
Speaker 6: having gone into this recused themselves from the case.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think for most people that are
Speaker 2: not attorneys, and I'm not an attorney. If you think
Speaker 2: about it, you have someone who is a prosecuting attorney
Speaker 2: whose whose job and goal is to produce justice, that
Speaker 2: is to bring criminals to whatever the state finds is
Speaker 2: appropriate for them. And you have other people called defense
Speaker 2: attorneys whose job is to stop that process. They will
Speaker 2: we speak of legal technicalities, and we speak of things
Speaker 2: that were not done correctly by by one side of
Speaker 2: the case or the other. The in the book, I say,
Speaker 2: the old adage of justice delayed is justice denied. I
Speaker 2: think that's a common legal adage, but it's the exact
Speaker 2: opposite of what happens if it looks like your client,
Speaker 2: if you're a defense attorney and you're a client has
Speaker 2: a pretty bad case against him, and you want to
Speaker 2: put things off as long as you can. And in
Speaker 2: some ways it was successful. In fact, most of many
Speaker 2: of the people who would have testified a trial if
Speaker 2: it had taken place shortly after the murders were dead
Speaker 2: by the time these during the thirty two odd years
Speaker 2: of after this man's eventual trial and appeals that he had,
Speaker 2: so in other words, evidence gets older and older people's
Speaker 2: memories fades, the importance of the case seems less to jurors,
Speaker 2: and so forth, and soon it's what defense attorneys do.
Speaker 6: Absolutely so, despite their efforts, eventually tell us how long
Speaker 6: it takes to eventually get to trial date. Some of
Speaker 6: the features at trial, and you say that the defense
Speaker 6: didn't have much of a presentation, not very long in
Speaker 6: comparison to the prosecution. Tell us about some of the
Speaker 6: goings on before we talk about what happens the verdict
Speaker 6: in that trial.
Speaker 2: The trial eventually took place in August of nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: and during during that period of time it lasted approximate
Speaker 2: a month, including jury selection. The trial had been moved
Speaker 2: from Columbus Muscogee County to a nearby county. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: the trial the jurors had been chosen from a nearby
Speaker 2: county because of the possible issue of bias and the
Speaker 2: news media in Columbus, so people were brought in from
Speaker 2: another county to hear the case. In Columbus, the trial
Speaker 2: was in many ways over There was overwhelming of evidence,
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence and physical evidence against Gary, and much of
Speaker 2: the defense's case rested on asking someone to prove a
Speaker 2: negative and by that question is how do you know
Speaker 2: this this didn't happen, And if that had happened, then
Speaker 2: maybe there's another killer that we don't know about her,
Speaker 2: maybe this or maybe that. But the case against Gary
Speaker 2: was quite strong based on circumstantial and physical evidence, and
Speaker 2: essentially nothing the defense said really changed many people's minds
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 6: Gertrude Miller was one of the key witnesses at this
Speaker 6: trial as well, and you talk about the quick deliberation
Speaker 6: at the end of this.
Speaker 2: Mss Miller was one of the witnesses who identified Gary.
Speaker 2: Would there was another lady who had also been living
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood who identified Gary, And I think you
Speaker 2: need to say that these were pretty definitive identifications in court.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, the fact that eyewitness identifications
Speaker 2: are notoriously suspect, although in Miss Miller's case she had
Speaker 2: seen him close up and personal, as it were, the
Speaker 2: case eventually reached the jew the defense in the In
Speaker 2: the closing arguments, the defense tried to say that perhaps
Speaker 2: there had been police mouth mouthfeaslens, that perhaps there was
Speaker 2: another killer that we didn't know about, that the police
Speaker 2: had not focused on. Jerome Levas, the unfortunate black man
Speaker 2: who was accused of the killings, was also was brought
Speaker 2: to trial, but his testimony was not particularly important in
Speaker 2: one way or the other opinion, and after and after
Speaker 2: a while, it didn't take. It took the jury about
Speaker 2: one hour to convict him of all three murders and
Speaker 2: rapes and burglaries with which he was charged. Now I
Speaker 2: should say that Georgia and the penalty phase of a
Speaker 2: capital a capital murder trial is separate. That is to say,
Speaker 2: the jury makes the decision guilty versus not guilty. If
Speaker 2: it is a guilty verdict, and if he and if
Speaker 2: the state is seeking the death penalty, then a separate
Speaker 2: trial with the same jurors is held. And then this
Speaker 2: is when both sides can produce mitigating factors, mitigating factors
Speaker 2: and so forth. And so I know that a sense
Speaker 2: in this case referred to killing killing Gary rather than
Speaker 2: simply putting him to death. I think the use of
Speaker 2: words and the trial transcript is absolutely fascinating, and this
Speaker 2: is a bit of an a side. In total, there
Speaker 2: were perhaps twenty thousand pages of trial transcript, and reading
Speaker 2: trial transcript is very much like reading a script for play.
Speaker 2: You know, you just you read the words. But I
Speaker 2: was fortunate enough to have a video of the trial,
Speaker 2: so I would read a dramatic section of the trial
Speaker 2: transcript and then I would turn on the video and
Speaker 2: watch it. That totally changed the experience. You know, you
Speaker 2: saw what people were saying, and you felt the emotion
Speaker 2: and their voice.
Speaker 6: What we didn't talk about is in the trial that
Speaker 6: the what was deemed dismissible was similar behavior, all right,
Speaker 6: similar crimes in other jurisdictions, and so that was allowed
Speaker 6: to be read in and improved prior acts of burglary
Speaker 6: and rape and assault.
Speaker 2: Well, explain that a little bit back off and not
Speaker 2: talking about Gary, but talking about the concept in general.
Speaker 2: Let's just say, for example, that someone is arrested for
Speaker 2: own trial for murder, and if the state were to
Speaker 2: come in and say, well, you know, this is a
Speaker 2: bad person anyway. You know, he's killed people in the
Speaker 2: past and gotten away with it, and he's stolen, he's
Speaker 2: been a robber and done this and that, and he's
Speaker 2: generally a bad person. So the jury might get the impression, well,
Speaker 2: he's a bad person and we should treat him for
Speaker 2: all the evil things he's done. Right, Well, that's not
Speaker 2: fair to the defendant. In other words, if someone is
Speaker 2: own trial for a particular offense, they should be tried
Speaker 2: for that particular offense, not for something else they may
Speaker 2: or may not have done. At some point in the past.
Speaker 2: And that's an important legal concept in Georgia, at least
Speaker 2: based on case law. If a crime for which one
Speaker 2: is own trial for fits a pattern of other crimes
Speaker 2: that the defendant can reasonably be thought to have committed,
Speaker 2: then the other crimes can be committed can be presented
Speaker 2: not to prove that the defendant is an evil person
Speaker 2: or does bad things, but rather to show that the
Speaker 2: trial crimes for which he's accused and untrump for are
Speaker 2: part of a larger pattern. Okay, and that's that became
Speaker 2: an important important case law based on the Atlanta child
Speaker 2: murders cases of about the same of a few years earlier.
Speaker 6: Right now you talk about that, then obviously there's the
Speaker 6: obvious automatic appeals or mandatory appeals, and then they can
Speaker 6: go allway all the way up to the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: after the state courts or those appeals have exhausted. So
Speaker 6: the same people essentially are involved in the defense or
Speaker 6: want to be involved in defense, explain, explain this and
Speaker 6: their fervor for to continue with this case.
Speaker 2: Well, this was a death penalty case. And what I
Speaker 2: didn't say just now was that Gary was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: And there are automatic appeals in Georgia and I think
Speaker 2: in most other jurisdictions in this country, for that kind
Speaker 2: of sentence. But you also have a group of people
Speaker 2: who are charged, the defense attorneys a charge with if
Speaker 2: not getting him completely off the hook, mitigating the sentence
Speaker 2: to which he's been given.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So the hope was they could get a new trial,
Speaker 2: and for example, as I said a moment ago, if
Speaker 2: if some of the witnesses are dead and no longer
Speaker 2: can testify, if the fervor to punish this man is
Speaker 2: somewhat cool down, then perhaps they can get the death
Speaker 2: sentence commuted to life without parole or even life with parole.
Speaker 2: This went on for a long period of time. The
Speaker 2: other thing, other factors here were there were people who
Speaker 2: there were people who were very aggressive death penalty death
Speaker 2: penalty opponents. One. There were people who believe that Gary,
Speaker 2: because he was a black man, was treated wrongly simply
Speaker 2: on the basis of race, although there's no evidence at
Speaker 2: all that this occurred, and there were a lot of
Speaker 2: emotional factors that came into play. This caused his appeals
Speaker 2: to span a total of thirty two years before his
Speaker 2: eventual execution in March twenty eighteen right.
Speaker 6: This this, this as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
Speaker 6: Now he was scheduled to die. It took that many years,
Speaker 6: but in the interim his lawyers fought tooth and nail
Speaker 6: to have that stay of proceedings, to have this overturned
Speaker 6: to but they were not successful. Tell us about the
Speaker 6: end of this saga.
Speaker 2: In the end, Gary had, as I said, exhausted all
Speaker 2: of his appeals and totally in it. To repeat myself,
Speaker 2: this case went to the US Supreme Court on four
Speaker 2: separate occasions, and it exhausted the state and federal appeal system.
Speaker 2: And while the defense alleged multiple things, multiple things that
Speaker 2: the prosecution may have done wrong, or multiple bits of
Speaker 2: evidence it might change the sentence, none of these were validated,
Speaker 2: and he eventually was executed without much fanfare in marsh.
Speaker 2: There are people now who still believe that he is innocent.
Speaker 2: If I can bring in a personal note here, I
Speaker 2: was doing a book signing the other day and I
Speaker 2: ran to someone who told me that she didn't need
Speaker 2: to read the book because she knew what the truth was. Sure,
Speaker 2: the implication, the inflication, whatever I wrote was not worth
Speaker 2: reading because she already knew the truth, and I said,
Speaker 2: that's fine, fascinating study and the human emotion and human
Speaker 2: belief and so forth.
Speaker 6: When I mentioned the fervor of the defense team right
Speaker 6: to the very end, they did ask daringly for DNA
Speaker 6: evidence to see if they could get of any kind
Speaker 6: of change at whatsoever. It was granted. But there were
Speaker 6: some interesting developments with that DNA tech thing, wasn't there?
Speaker 2: There was quite interesting, And the DNA testing was not
Speaker 2: done to two thousand and nine. And I'm sure your
Speaker 2: listeners who say, well, gee, you know, why did they
Speaker 2: not do DNA testing in two thousand and nine? Sure
Speaker 2: they defense had had the opportunity and it had been
Speaker 2: offered to them, But according to prosecutors, I should say
Speaker 2: court to prosecutors, the defense attorneys had had the opportunity,
Speaker 2: and it had been offered to do DNA testing earlier
Speaker 2: on whatever evidence was available, and they had turned it down.
Speaker 2: And as one person said, the getting DNA testing done
Speaker 2: was a hail Mary pass. There was Pascal's wage of
Speaker 2: what they had. They had nothing to lose and much
Speaker 2: to gain if if the DNA testing showed that he
Speaker 2: was in fact one of the Columbus strangler. Then he
Speaker 2: had already been convicted of that, but the possibility that
Speaker 2: it might somehow free him or somehow throw a wrench
Speaker 2: into everything was worth trying. Well. Understand that the specimens
Speaker 2: that they were looking at were collected in the in
Speaker 2: late nineteen seventies, seventy seven and seventy eight, and here
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, which thirty something forty years later.
Speaker 2: You know, the specimens were not of great quality. They
Speaker 2: had three specimens, one of which was not didn't have
Speaker 2: any didn't have any seamen in it. Apparently another specimen
Speaker 2: was another specimen of Mss Diamondstein, showed in fact that
Speaker 2: Gary apparently had raped her. His DNA matched her the
Speaker 2: seamen vachelal secretions from her crime scene. But he was
Speaker 2: not charged with Miss Diamondstein's murder. She was one of
Speaker 2: the one that he was his murder who was not
Speaker 2: charged with it. And then the third case was absolutely
Speaker 2: fascinating because in this case it showed that in Miss
Speaker 2: Sherman's case that there was a DNA from another man,
Speaker 2: and this is a lady who should not have She
Speaker 2: was a widow and her family had been there, and
Speaker 2: there should not be other male DNA in her specimens,
Speaker 2: and it turned out that the State Crime Level of
Speaker 2: Georgia had made era. They had been using control DNA
Speaker 2: specimen WOW, which apparently had been contributed either by one
Speaker 2: of the husbands of the people that worked there or
Speaker 2: one of the workers. They are male workers, and it
Speaker 2: had their workspace had become contamidated and this showed up
Speaker 2: positive for him with this unknown DNA. This was eventually
Speaker 2: sorted out and led to a great revision and what
Speaker 2: the state crime Lab did, how they did their testing,
Speaker 2: but it was quite embarrassing to the Strike Crime Lab.
Speaker 2: It looked for a while like like this there was
Speaker 2: another unknown person, but it turned out to be so
Speaker 2: they eventually sorted it out, to the great embarrassment of
Speaker 2: the state of Georgia.
Speaker 6: Right, you talked about the media and its rule in
Speaker 6: this story, and you mentioned the lady that thought she
Speaker 6: knew everything about this case despite having not read your
Speaker 6: really definitive book about this case. Let's talk about David
Speaker 6: Rose because, as I found it very interesting, the being
Speaker 6: accepted with working with a law firm that was trying
Speaker 6: to defend Carlton Gary and then the publishing of this
Speaker 6: book and the sentiments that he espoused in this book
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 2: Well, let me say that David Rose is an excellent writer.
Speaker 2: He's very good style, and I think he's a great
Speaker 2: writer in terms of technical skills. David Rose is also
Speaker 2: a death penalty opponent, and he came to interview Carlton
Speaker 2: Gary with the idea, with the idea that in the
Speaker 2: American South, a person of color, black man cannot get
Speaker 2: a fair trial, and that perhaps that Carlton Gary had
Speaker 2: been was innocent, and so forth and so on, and
Speaker 2: he wrote a rather best selling book of this. It
Speaker 2: was published in two thousand and seven in both the
Speaker 2: United Kingdom and the United States, and the US it
Speaker 2: was sold under the name of the Big Eddy Club.
Speaker 2: And this was really the only supposedly definitive book on
Speaker 2: on this case. There are some others that have sort
Speaker 2: of touched on it, but nothing that really had no
Speaker 2: serious work otherwise. Problem with Rose's book is not his
Speaker 2: style or anything, but the fact that he wrote the
Speaker 2: book in in order to demonstrate his belief that Gary
Speaker 2: was not culpable for some or all of what he
Speaker 2: was charged with. And when you write a book with
Speaker 2: an agenda as opposed to telling the truth, you end
Speaker 2: up giving large large amounts of what I don't think
Speaker 2: are particularly verifiable. The book has many examples of what
Speaker 2: I believe refer to his narrative fallacy and confirmation bias.
Speaker 2: For example, he would say that's one of the judicial
Speaker 2: member's grandfather back in the eighteen sixties or the latter
Speaker 2: part of the nineteenth century had done something racist. Therefore
Speaker 2: the great grandson a great grandson must also be racist
Speaker 2: as well. This kind of thing. And since it's the
Speaker 2: only book written, it was, it's all people had to
Speaker 2: go on. And I hope this tried scrupulously to be
Speaker 2: non noncommittal in terms of making judgments in this book.
Speaker 2: I've simply tried to report the facts. I will say
Speaker 2: one further thing about gross which I think is important.
Speaker 2: The first book came out in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and an addition came out revised second edition came out
Speaker 2: in softcover in twenty ten. Now, in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: unrelated to anything in Columbus, cold case detectives in New
Speaker 2: York were following up on the death of a lady
Speaker 2: named Marian Fisher. She was a lady in her forties
Speaker 2: who was married, went out with her husband to celebrate
Speaker 2: the anniversary. She and her husband got drinking. She got mad,
Speaker 2: walk said I'm going to walk home. He'd been drinking
Speaker 2: pretty heavily, went home and went to bed. The next
Speaker 2: day they found her body. She had been raped and murdered, strangled,
Speaker 2: and the husband was a prime suspect. He apparently knew
Speaker 2: been drinking enough to where he didn't remember part of
Speaker 2: the evening before. And so between nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, all those years, those thirty odd years,
Speaker 2: he was the suspect in his wife's death. But as
Speaker 2: one policeman said, there wasn't enough to really accuse him
Speaker 2: officially or convict him of it. Well, cocase detectives went
Speaker 2: back and looked at that, and lo and behold, they
Speaker 2: found Carlton Gary's DNA on the woman's on some evidence
Speaker 2: from the crime scene. And they actually interviewed Carlton Gary
Speaker 2: about it, and he said that he had gone out
Speaker 2: with a woman and had sex with her, but you know,
Speaker 2: nothing like this happened. Okay, right, Well, this was a
Speaker 2: blockbuster of a thing because this is a guy who's
Speaker 2: on death row in Georgia, who's been strongly implicated and
Speaker 2: in a murder that occurred decades before, but during the
Speaker 2: same general timeframe, and the people in New York chose
Speaker 2: not to prosecute it because Gary was already on death row.
Speaker 2: But the thing is that Rose, in updating his book,
Speaker 2: goes into great detail about what's been happening with Gary's appeals,
Speaker 2: but fails to mention the fact that he's been strongly
Speaker 2: implicated in another murder.
Speaker 6: Sure interesting, very very interesting. In closing, you think a
Speaker 6: lot of people, but you especially think Detective Seller's daughter.
Speaker 6: I believe Sally Sellers was his wife. Life tell us
Speaker 6: about her contribution.
Speaker 2: There are two people that worked on the case. One
Speaker 2: is Mike Seller's the other is Bill Smith, and I'll
Speaker 2: mention both of them. But whenever you look at something
Speaker 2: that's happened historically, you need to find people who were there,
Speaker 2: who could feel the emotion, you know, who actually saw
Speaker 2: it for themselves. Reading dry accounts is not adequate, and
Speaker 2: Mike Seller's was one of the ones. He was the
Speaker 2: policeman who had much to do with discovering the missing
Speaker 2: pistol that led sorry following up on the missing pistol
Speaker 2: that led to Gary's arrest, and was also involved in
Speaker 2: as a as an investigator of the during the prosecution period,
Speaker 2: he has an encyclopedic knowledge of what happened. The same
Speaker 2: thing I should say for Bill Smith that William J. Smith,
Speaker 2: the prosecutor in the case who later became his spirit
Speaker 2: court judge, he too has a encyclopedic knowledge and talking
Speaker 2: with them and asking them about the details and saying,
Speaker 2: explain this to me, how did this happen? It was
Speaker 2: quite valuable. Mike Seller's wife had kept a wonderful scrap
Speaker 2: book which they shared with me, So there were a
Speaker 2: lot of papers and information that I used and write
Speaker 2: this book that I have to give her credit for.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 6: on and talking about the Columbus Stocking Strangler. William, is
Speaker 6: there a website that people might want to take a
Speaker 6: look at and tell us when this book is released?
Speaker 6: I had mentioned it before. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: how people might might find out about this book.
Speaker 2: First of all, my website is my name with the
Speaker 2: www dot com before and after respectively. It's www dot
Speaker 2: William Rawlings w I l l I A m R
Speaker 2: A w l I nngs dot com that has lots
Speaker 2: information on this book and other books. Interestingly, on the
Speaker 2: website up at the top, there's a thing called Calton
Speaker 2: Gary Timeline. If you want to know Gary's complete criminal history.
Speaker 2: You can click on this and get some additional information
Speaker 2: that's not included in the book. The book can be
Speaker 2: bought from your local bookseller. I always urge people to
Speaker 2: support your local bookstore. Yes, own the possibility that you
Speaker 2: don't live where there's a local bookstore. You can order
Speaker 2: it from any number of outlets, including on Barnes and
Speaker 2: Noble Amazon. There is a digital version available, and soon
Speaker 2: a couple of months there should be an audio version available.
Speaker 2: The official release date of the book is September sixth, However,
Speaker 2: it is available now in both digital and print versions.
Speaker 2: It's out in hardcover, and at some point I think
Speaker 2: it'll prey in the distant future, it may come out
Speaker 2: in softcover as well.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, William Rawlings, the Columbus Stocking Strangler.
Speaker 6: You have a great evening. Thank you so much for
Speaker 6: this interview. Good night, Thank you Dan, thank you