COLUMBUS, Ga. — Columbus’ infamous serial killer Carlton Gary, also known as the “Stocking Strangler”, will not be getting a new trial after a Muscogee County Superior Court judge denied the request Friday.
News 3 media partner The Ledger-Enquirer reports Judge Frank J. Jordan Jr. delivered his ruling almost three years after Gary’s attorney first filed the request to introduce DNA evidence that was not available when Gary was first tried in 1986.
Gary was convicted in three out of seven rape and strangulation cases in the Wynnton neighborhood of Columbus from September 1977 to April 1978.
The Ledger reports Judge Jordan wrote the DNA evidence along with secretor evidence work papers, a shoe print and a bite mark mold on a victim’s left breast did not “rise to the level of being so material as to probably result in a different sentencing verdict.”
Gary’s attorney John R. Martin says they plan to appeal the judge’s verdict.
The Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Gary in December 2009 to order the case be returned to Muscogee County for hearings on DNA evidence. Prosecutors and defense attorneys in February 2010 agreed to test the evidence deemed most likely to yield the killer’s DNA profile to compare to Gary’s.
Gary was convicted in three of the cases, but prosecutors maintain he committed the acts in all seven cases, including two in which the victims survived.