Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
The Chilling Crimes of The Stocking Strangler | Serial Killer Exposed
Sun, 23 Mar 2025
Carlton Michael Gary was an American serial killer convicted of the murders of three elderly women in Columbus, Georgia, between 1977 and 1978, though he is suspected of at least four more. Gary was arrested in December 1978 for an armed robbery and sentenced to 21 years in prison.Williams Book https://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Stocking-Strangler-William-Rawlings/dp/0881468428Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: Who is Carlton Michael Gary?
His first arrest was at age 17. He was without a doubt what people would describe as a career criminal. This was in fact the term that his own attorney used to describe him. During this period of time, he had about 30 months of unincarcerated freedom. During this time, he committed, in Columbus alone, at least seven murders. And this is one of the most fascinating stories I've ever heard.
And if you sat down and tried to write a novel, you couldn't come up with some of the same strange twists and turns that this story has. And given the racial climate of the city, the black population was up in arms saying, how are you going to blame this on black men? It's not good. And Ku Klux Klan decides, well, you know, we're going to start patrolling the neighborhood.
And of course, you know, that was beyond things. And it turned out that the police chief around the 1st of March gets a letter from someone signed by the chairman of the forces of evil. And this fellow says, we're a white supremacist group, and we're mad that a black man is killing white women in the city of Columbus.
And so what we're going to do, we're going to kill black women to avenge the murders of white women, hoping that this will pressure you to catch the slayer.
Hey, this is Matt Cox and I am here with William Rawlings. We are going to be doing an interview about one of his true crime books and he's got a really interesting story. I spoke with him for probably 30 minutes to an hour the other day and I think you guys are really going to enjoy the interview. So check it out. I appreciate you guys watching.
This book is about the Columbus Stocking Strangler episode. Briefly put, during an eight-month period in late 1977, early 1978, there were a total of nine vicious attacks in the city of Columbus, Georgia, which I'll say more about in a moment. Seven women were killed, two survived. There was a massive police presence, and the case went cold in April 1978.
Thereafter, it was six years later before the suspect was arrested. He was tried two years after that and eventually convicted, and there was a 32-year period between the time of his conviction and the time his sentence was carried out. A fascinating tale that spans almost half a century.
Okay. So real quick, you know, if you don't mind, like how, where were you born? You know, how, how did you, did you always want to be a writer? How did you get, how'd you kind of get into this?
No, no, no, no. I'm a good typist with too much time on my hands is my standard answer for that question. No, I am, by trade, a physician. I live in a very small town in Georgia. My family's lived here for the last couple hundred years, and I went off to school and got educated and came to my senses and moved back to the family farm where I have lived for the last several decades.
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Chapter 2: What were the details of the Stocking Strangler crimes?
And so what we're going to do, we're going to kill black women to avenge the murders of white women and until hoping that this will pressure you to catch the straggler. Now, if that sounds bizarre, indeed it is. And over the course of about a month, the police chief got a total of six letters from this person, the chairman of the forces of evil. Well, there's a lot to be said about that.
But to make a long story short, it turned out that this was, in fact, not some white supremacist. I believe that they said they were from Chicago. It was not a white supremacist group, but in fact, it was a black man, a white, Private William Henry Hance, who was an enlisted man at Fort Benny, which is a large military.
I think they've changed the name recently, but the large military installation there just south of Columbus. He, in fact, had killed two black women, three black women, actually, in Columbus and had killed another one earlier. In Indiana, in total, he killed four women. He himself was a second serial killer operating in Columbus at the same time.
He was identified, he was tried, convicted, and eventually executed in 1994. And finally, things calmed down. The last murder was in February, and there was a seventh murder on April 20th, 1978, a lady named Janet Cofer, who was an elementary school teacher. And she indeed did not show up for work one day. Someone from the school sent someone over to her house.
It was obvious the screen had been cut. The police found her, and like the other, she had been beaten, raped, strangled with a stocking, and her body had been covered up. And so here we have seven murders. We have two attacks where the would-be victims survive. The only thing that is sort of known is that they presume that the killer is a black man. They have no idea whatsoever who he is.
And the case goes cold completely. This is in April 1978. Of course, if you read the newspaper, I mean, the news stories begin to fall off. The task force was eventually disbanded a few months later. But still, there was the idea that, you know, any time this could happen again.
And, of course, the city of Columbus, when you talk to people around there, I've given a lot of talks on this book, and I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say, oh, God, I remember that, or my mother told me about that, or my grandmother told me about that.
And I've always wanted to learn more about it, and it was a terrible time for my family because everybody was scared and so forth. It was a major point in Columbus's 100-year-old history. So, in writing the book, I sort of wrote this first part. It was somewhat like what you would call a police procedural.
Everything is factual and very well documented because they had lots and lots of old records. But you have to recall, people say, well, you know, what about the DNA? Well, this was in the 70s. We didn't have DNA. Yeah. And then at the same time, they had some fingerprints. But this was before the CODIS system, the National Database of DNA and this National Database of Fingerprints.
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Chapter 3: How did the racial tensions affect the investigation?
Well, the judge in the case actually recently died. He came to the first book signing last year in a wheelchair, but the prosecutor who became a judge later, he turns 81 this month, very sharp guy. Some of the other policemen that I interviewed were in their 50s and 60s and older that were involved in the case one way or the other. So, I got a lot of firsthand stuff.
And the other good thing I had was ton of police records um right and so i could and the detail in all if you include the newspaper accounts and police records and the transcripts you're dealing between 15 and 20 000 pages of stuff i had to go through and i had a um copy of the video recording of the trial which was fascinating
You know, uh, reading, reading trial transcript is like reading a movie script, you know, you know, and someone says it was him, but in the, in the trial, I'll say it was him. He, you know, this sort of thing and you get the inflection and so forth. And it was fascinating to read it.
Yeah. It's great too. Cause like the prosecutors and the defense attorneys, like they, they typically have some great things that they say.
They do. They do. But, but when you, when you're, when you're looking at the transcript, they're just kind of black and white on a piece of paper. But when you see him, he's innocent. And, uh, it was, it was, it was a lot of work, but it was fun to do. So you, when was the book released?
Book was released last September, and it came out in both hardcover, which actually sold out before the release date, and softcover, and digital version, and there is an audio version that was released, I believe, in November. So it's in all four, hardcover, softcover, digital, and audio. Okay.
Okay.
And what was your, it was published by? Mercer University Press. Okay, I was gonna say, do you have a literary agent or you just went straight to the publisher?
Well, my first book was written in 2003. That's 20 years ago, literally. And that was a lot easier to get things published. I mean, much easier than 20 years ago. The first book was extremely successful to my great shock and amazement. Looking back on it, that was before I learned to write. I've gotten a lot better since then, I promise you. But people liked it.
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Chapter 4: What led to Carlton Gary's arrest?
There were dozens of lives whose direction changed because the box was not buried six inches deeper. So that's what I found fascinating about that.
Okay.
Well, is there anything you feel like we haven't covered that you want to... Do you feel like I didn't touch on?
No, no. I write a variety of books, mainly Southern history. Some of them are quite serious. I mean, I've got an academic history of the Ku Klux Klan, which is actually quite fascinating. Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. I've written an anthology of Southern... about the great Yazoo fraud and things that you've never heard of unless you live in Georgia.
And took it in eighth grade because the whole paragraph in your eighth grade history book about the Yazoo fraud, this kind of thing. But anyway, if you'd like to know more about me, go to my website. It's simply my name, William Rawlings. It's www.williamrawlings.com spelled out. And I think all of my books are listed there. And there's a little blurb about each one. Yeah.
Yeah, I will. Also, we'll put it in the description box so people can click on that. You know, if you I don't know if you watch YouTube, but, you know, there's a little box you just click on it. It'll have a link. Love YouTube. Yeah, it'll have a link right there. So let me give me one second. And I will. Also, I appreciate you taking the time to to talk to me about this.
Well, I'm honored that you ask. And I hope it's I hope your audience finds it interesting.
You know, so funny is my, you know, like sometimes I interview people and it's like, you know, my wife will say, well, what do you, you know, what do you have planned today? I'm like, I'm talking to this guy. He did this. He did that. You know, I'm like, you know, it's okay. But for the last week, I keep calling you the, you know, she doesn't know your name.
I keep saying like, listen, there's this like this old Southern gentleman. I said, I could listen to him talk forever.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was used in Gary's trial?
Literally it was just like trying to be considerate of my father. He comes into the office where I'm playing the video game. It was like math blaster or something, if you remember that. And he, he says, why is there no, why is there no sound coming through the computer? And I told him, I told him why I unplugged the speakers and he just lost it.
He grabs the speaker wire and he shoves it in my face. He's like, I'm going to fucking stick this in you. He sticks it in the back of the computer and he starts screaming at me. He starts taking books and computer games and throwing them at me off the shelf and screaming at the top of his lungs. Also, my father is six foot four, a good 225 pounds. He's a big dude.
you know, and I'm a kid, an asthmatic little chubby kid. He starts chasing me around the house, making me stop and salute him every time he said, what are you? And I'd have to stop and salute him and say, a stupid little fat boy, sir, and run around and do all these choices. He's just screaming at me. He's throwing things at me and he's whipping me with a belt.
And he did that for a period of about two weeks. And I remember He, and then he, then he would stop and then he would apologize and say, it's okay, daddy, sorry. And all this stuff, like, you know, the master manipulator, right?
Is he drunk? Like, is he?
No, no. So, so, okay. So everybody says that. So I want to be very clear. My father never drank. My father was not an alcoholic. And as far as I knew, didn't abuse drugs. Like I, you know, I, I only saw my parents drink on very limited occasions. My mother liked an Amaretto sour.
I think my father maybe drank scotch, but like they weren't drinkers, you know, alcohol wasn't something that I noticed in my house. He went, no, his father was an alcoholic, but he wasn't. So he was just a rage filled human. And I, I, so this was a time I was without my mother, you know, and then it's this apologizing back and forth. Right.
So finally my mother comes back and I'm now aware of like why she's ever like, let me be with my father for longer than certain periods of time. And I thought, you know, okay, there's like some real issues here. So she comes back from China and then flash forward a few months later, it's Memorial Day weekend, 1989. And I go with my father to,
to this barbecue party and we go like out the outskirts of Mansfield into the country country and go to this, these people's house and they were like racing quads and they're barbecuing and people were drinking beer and playing volleyball and stuff. And I had never seen anything like this as a kid. Because my mother was very preppy, very proper, as was my father.
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Chapter 6: What was the outcome of Carlton Gary's trial?
She instead comes from new for new year's and she arrives on new year's Eve or December 30th, 1989. And. What's interesting is my mother, when they were arriving, she saw my father drive down the driveway. We could see my grandmother was in the car. And she said to her best friend who she's on the phone with, well, Jack's here with his mother. So I guess he can't kill me tonight.
And the irony of all this is that my mother used to say things like famous last words. My mother had a very sardonic sense of humor. Right. So, you know, she used to say like famous last words, but famous last words. So my grandmother arrives, and we have dinner, whatever. My father leaves, and my grandmother and my mom are sitting in the living room, and I give everybody a kiss goodnight.
I give her a hug. Night, Mommy. Next thing I know, I'm startled awake by hearing a scream, and I look at this clock. I have this Batman clock on the wall, and it's about 3.18 a.m., And then I hear two loud thuds about 60 seconds apart. And between those thuds, I hear my father muttering. I recognize his voice. And then I count 12 footsteps as they walk down the hallway.
And I always slept with my door open. And in the doorway, I can see out of my peripheral vision, the two feet stop in my doorway. And something's telling me, don't look up. Because I firmly believe that if I had, at that point in time, there's no, it's nothing to make the hole a little bigger and say she left with the kid.
100%.
100%.
And the footsteps go away. I somehow go back to sleep. I wake up a few hours later. I jump out of bed. I run straight to my mother's room, and there's a bunch of sheets that are off the bed. It's in disarray, and I'm looking for bloodstains. I'm looking for anything I can find. I come downstairs, and my father is sitting on the couch watching CNN with a towel wrapped around his waist.
I said to him, where is my mother? And he doesn't respond right away. I said to him again, I said, where is my mother? And he looks at me, and he goes, well, Collier, mommy took a little vacation. And I knew at that moment it was game one, motherfucker. Like you fucking killed her. But I don't really want to believe it, but I'm like, this is what's happened.
So my grandmother comes in and my father says to me, my father says, okay, so we're not going to contact the police. We're not going to contact the FBI. And I thought that was really bizarre when he said the FBI. So I'm like, we're in Ohio, like at the FBI. And he goes into this whole story of explaining that the thuds that I heard was my mother throwing her purse at him.
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Chapter 7: How did Carlton Gary's execution unfold?
He is really sore and he has me rub Ben Gay on his shoulders because he was so sore. And he said from moving boxes in his new practice in Erie, Pennsylvania. And I'm just telling the detective everything as all this is transpiring over the next several weeks. But it wasn't until mid-January 1990, my father takes me to his office to go pick up some paperwork.
And I'm watching my father like a hawk, you know, so I don't let him out of my sight, right? And every night, like during this time, his divorce attorney is over at the house. Dave Messmore keeps coming to the house with other and other officers do. to want to talk to my father. He wants to question my father, but he refuses to talk to him.
And I see Dave at the doorway and I, and I, and I mind you, I'm talking to Dave behind my father's back at school reporting on everything that's going on inside the house. And it's like, we have this like thing and he's pretending not to know me and I'm pretending not to know. It was really weird. It was crazy. But what happens is I go with my father to get these, this paperwork in his office.
And on the drive back, we stopped at a gas station. He walks in the gas station to purchase some stuff and pay for gas. And I'm watching him through the windshield. I start rummaging through his car. I open up the center console of his truck and I find two photographs right next to each other. One is of a house that I've never seen before.
And the other one is of his girlfriend, Sherry Campbell, with her two children sitting in front of a fireplace that's wrapped in plastic. So it looks like a new fireplace. And I just kind of put two and two together. Like this is a new house. She's involved. This is something significant. Next day I go to school and I tell Dave Messmore about this.
Towards the end of January, so around January 21st, 1990, because I don't hear from Dave after telling him about this house for a couple of days. I noticed my father's behavior is becoming, he's becoming more and more stressed at home. But oddly, my father is not angry. My father has turned actually into this sort of very passive person in a lot of ways.
I was playing a video game because I got Nintendo for Christmas that year. It was a fighting game, and he saw me playing, and he goes, I didn't know this was a violent game. I wouldn't have bought it for you. And I'm thinking to myself, who is this guy? You're Mr. Violence.
I cover my eyes when you're watching Commando, and you're angry with me, and I'm playing a beat-em-up Double Dragon game, and this is what you're upset about? I was like, this is so bizarre. But my father comes to me is around January 21st, 1990. And he says, you know, Collier, I know it's been really hard on you, you know, with your mother leaving us.
It was always it was always with him over the course of this this sort of investigation. It was everything he would tell me was your mother left us. Your mother left us. You know, hopefully she'll come back. We would pray at meals at night for her safety. I mean, it was wacky shit. And I said, I was like, okay.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of this case on society?
You need, you have 20 minutes to pack a bag and get your stuff. And so I started packing my clothes and I say, okay, what about my dog? And they said, we'll come back for your dog. I never saw my dog again. I pack a bag for my sister. As I coming down the stairs is when I discover the entire house. And my grandma is screaming at these people. The entire house is filled with,
they're coming in with men and women in white coats and they've got all kinds of contraptions with them. Like they're executing a search warrant in my house for my mother's body. And it was complete mayhem. I get taken to a friend's house for the family's house. And I'm not going to school that day. I go and I,
I'm approached by a social worker comes and I don't know what a social worker is, you know, a caseworker, but I know it's not a good thing. And she basically explains to me, I'm going to be staying here for a while. I won't be going back to my home for a while. And they're kind of like, they're looking for my father. And I'm like, okay.
So that night, which is January 24th, 1990, I have what is literally the worst asthma attack in my life. And I was, I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to die. And I'm in a home. I don't have my medication. I don't have the stuff that I need to breathe, really. I don't know how I made it through the night, but I did. Next morning, they take me to the hospital because I somehow stabilized.
They take me to the hospital and I go to see a family friend who's a doctor. And as I'm walking into the hospital, they... They're the lobby is filled with people and there's an honor box, you know, honor boxes where they have the newspapers. And I just, as we're walking towards it, I get kind of veered away from it and go into the room and the doctor's there.
He gives me an injection for steroids. I get a breathing treatment and I'm like, okay, I can finally breathe. And this is January 25th, 1990. And this is when, this is when They tell me, they say, Collier, Lieutenant Messmore found your mother. And then there's like this eternal pause and she was dead. And the first thing out of my mouth was that bastard. And then that's when the circus starts.
So I have a question. Did you I mean, did you are you still you're you're still you're 11.
I'm 11, almost 12.
So did you think were you still holding out hope that maybe she was alive or you just kind of knew?
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