Serial Killer Carlton Gary Used A Truly Bizarre Murder Weapon
By LUKE HOLDEN
History - Science
Content Warning
This story contains discussions of murder and sexual assault.
Over the course of eight months between 1977 and 1978, Carlton Gary of Columbus, Georgia, raped and murdered seven women living in the quiet southern town and managed to maintain anonymity for a span of years after the case unexpectedly went cold. Gary was ultimately apprehended and brought to justice in 1984, but that was only after he'd earned the moniker "The Stocking Strangler."
As the moniker suggests, Gary would remove the leg garments, or stockings, that his victims were wearing at the time of the assault and use them as a strangling device. "The victims were not anonymous individuals, but rather mothers and grandmothers, fellow church members, neighbors and close friends,” said William Rawlings, author of "The Columbus Stocking Strangler."
Gary was eventually arrested six years after the final murder took place, when a stolen firearm used in an unrelated crime connected him to the cold case — and Gertrude Mille, Gary's first victim who survived the brutal assault, was able to identify him. The infamous Stocking Strangler was convicted of three of the seven murders and was put to death via lethal injection on March 15.