A serial killer known as the "stocking strangler" who raped and murdered multiple elderly women has been executed by the lethal injection in Georgia, US.
Carlton Gary, 67, who was convicted of raping and killing the women in attacks that terrorised a small city decades ago, was pronounced dead at 10.33pm local time Thursday, authorities said. He died from an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson.
He was the first inmate executed by the state of Georgia this year. Gary was strapped on a gurney with his eyes closed when the warden asked him if he wished to make a final statement or have a prayer recited shortly before the death procedure was to be carried out. The inmate did not respond to the warden's question, keeping his eyes closed shortly before he was put to death.
He also had little to say the night before when he was given the option to request whatever he wanted for his final meal. Gary instead told officials he wanted whatever other prisoners were having that evening. He subsequently received "the institutional tray" - standard prison food including a grilled hamburger, hot dog, white beans, coleslaw, and grape beverage.
Gary was convicted in 1986 on three counts each of malice murder, rape and burglary for the 1977 deaths of 89-year-old Florence Scheible, 69-year-old Martha Thurmond and 74-year-old Kathleen Woodruff. Though charged only in those deaths, prosecutors say Gary attacked nine elderly women in the west Georgia city of Columbus from September 1977 to April 1978. Most were choked with stockings, and seven of them died.