After briefly announcing a March 15 execution date for Carlton Michael Gary, Attorney General Chris Carr produced four pages and 41 years of procedural history on one of the most notorious serial murder cases in Georiga's history.

The man known as “the stocking strangler” is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1977 rapes and murders of Florence Scheible, 89, Martha Thurmond, 70, and Kathleen Woodruff, 74. As Carr explained in detail in an announcement on his website, prosecutors linked Gary to the string of nine similar murders in Columbus—plus others earlier in the New York cities of Albany and Syracuse.

Gary has concluded his direct appeal proceedings, and his state and federal habeas corpus proceedings, Carr said. The last step was in January, when the Georgia Supreme Court denied his motion for reconsideration.

Carr gleaned from a U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia summary, saying:
“Between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978, terror gripped the historic Wynnton neighborhood in Columbus, Georgia. Targeting elderly white women, an assailant sexually assaulted nine women, killing seven of them and leaving stockings around their necks as his calling card. Labeled the 'stocking strangler' by the local news media, the assailant suddenly ceased his activities in the Wynnton area in 1978 and eluded authorities for six years,” Carr's announcement said. “These crimes remained unsolved until 1984.”

The sudden stop in the murders that terrorized elderly women living alone all over Georgia coincided with Gary's imprisonment in South Carolina for burglary convictions there. After he escaped, he was arrested for another burglary. A stolen gun linked him to the Columbus murders. Gary confessed that he was present at the Columbus burglaries, but blamed the rapes and murders on different accomplices, none of whom were ever convicted. Fingerprints and DNA evidence eventually linked Gary to some of the crimes. But a dramatic turn came when one woman—beaten, raped, strangled and left for dead—survived the attack and ultimately identified Gary as her assailant.