Georgia has put to death a man known as the “stocking strangler,” who was convicted of raping and killing older women in attacks that terrorized a small city decades ago.
The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said 67-year-old Carlton Gary was pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Jackson. He was the first inmate executed this year by Georgia, and the state Department of Corrections says he was the 48th inmate in the state to be put to death by lethal injection.
The department says in a statement that Gary did not give a final statement.
He was convicted in 1986 on three counts each of malice murder, rape and burglary for the 1977 deaths of 89-year-old Florence Scheible, 69-year-old Martha Thurmond and 74-year-old Kathleen Woodruff.
Though Gary was charged only in those deaths, prosecutors say he attacked nine elderly women in the west Georgia city of Columbus in 1977 and 1978. Most were choked with stockings, and seven of them died.