'Stocking Strangler' Serial Killer Put To Death in Georgia

The man known as the “stocking strangler,” a convicted serial killer has been put to death by the state of Georgia.

Carlton Gary, 67, was executed earlier this month by lethal injection, marking the first inmate executed by the state in 2018, according to CBS News.

He had no last words and didn’t want a last meal, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In 1986, Gary was convicted for the rape and murder of three elderly women in 1977: 89-year-old Florence Scheible, 69-year-old Martha Thurmond and 74-year-old Kathleen Woodruff. Prosecutors believe he killed seven other women from 1977 to 1978, who ranged in age from 59 to 89. All seven were killed in Columbus, Georgia, and many were shocked to death with their own stockings. Two additional women were attacked in a similar fashion that year, but they survived.

Other murders around the country have been linked to Gary. Marion Fisher, 40, was found dead on a road in Syracuse, New York in 1975. Later, DNA found on her strangled body matched Gary’s, according to Syracuse.com.

Gary's lawyers claim that Gary is innocent and fought his convictions right up until his death, claiming that more modern evidence proves that the wrong man was convicted. Gary’s attorneys have claimed that semen found on one of the surviving women’s clothing does not match Gary. They find that significant because they claim the prosecution relied on her testimony for Gary’s conviction, according to CBS News.

Gary himself reportedly acknowledged being present when some of the women were murdered, but maintained that someone else killed them, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[Photos: Georgia Department of Corrections]