Who is Garry Dean Artman? Florida truck driver sentenced to life 27 years after he raped and killed pregnant woman
KENT COUNTY, MICHIGAN: Garry Dean Artman, a long-haul truck driver from Florida, has been sentenced to life in prison 27 years after he raped and killed a pregnant 29-year-old mother in Michigan in 1996.
Garry Dean Artman, 65, was found guilty on one count of open murder, one count of felony murder, and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in the horrific slaying of Sharron Hammack by a jury in Kent County, Michigan on Thursday, September 28.
When were Michigan authorities informed about the crime?
According to the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, KCSO deputies responded to an emergency call at a location on 76th Street SE, between Patterson Avenue and Kraft Avenue in the Caledonia Township on October 3, 1996. The call was about the discovery of the body of a deceased adult woman.
The emergency responders discovered the victim upon arriving at the scene. An autopsy report later revealed that Hammack had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.
When did authorities make a breakthrough in the case?
The authorities collected DNA samples from the crime scene which included samples from the victim’s genitals and fingernails, alongside from the blanket in which her body had been wrapped. Despite this, it remained a cold case for decades.
In 2018, a major breakthrough was made in the case as when investigators at KCSO sent DNA samples from Hammack’s murder to a genetic genealogy company called Identifinders.
“Countless hours were spent tracing the subject's DNA matches from Eastern Europe to Michigan,” Identifinders wrote in a press release, as per Law and Crime.
The company added, “In spite of distant matches and complex family pedigrees, the FGG (forensic genetic genealogy) methodology ultimately led to one contributor of the DNA left at the crime scene — Gary Dean Artman.”
When was Garry Dean Artman arrested?
Artman became the person of interest as he fit the profile for committing such a crime. He had already been convicted in 1980 of raping and threatening to kill a 16-year-old girl and was released 12 years later.
KCSO Major Case Unit detectives located Artman in Mississippi in August 2022 and took him into custody with the help of state and local authorities.
Prosecutors noted that it likely took as long as three minutes for Hammack to die and that she was manually strangled by Artman.
The closing argument also included prosecutors reading from letters and journal entries penned by Artman according to Fox affiliate WXMI. “All the girls I wanted to have and couldn’t when I was growing up in high school, I can now get,” Artman wrote in a letter sent from prison, addressed to one of his brothers.
The prosecution's closing statement concluded with an entry from his journal, which had been entered into evidence during the trial. They read, “You ask yourself who you are. Here is who you are: you are death itself to those who deserve it and life to those who live it.”
“The strange thing is I never felt guilty about raping them,” another entry that they read said.
Senior Assistant Prosecutor Blair Lachman told jurors that the writings illustrate how Artman had “decided he is judge and executioner,” according to Grand Rapids city's NBC affiliate WOOD-TV.
What did the suspect's defense attorney say?
Artman’s defense attorney, before closing arguments, reportedly moved for a direct verdict dismissing the charge of open murder, arguing that the state's evidence only showed that Artman had sex with Hammack, not that he killed her.
Artman claimed that he had consensual sex with Hammack and the two parted ways while she was still alive. However, to no surprise, the motion was quickly shot down by District Court Judge Scott Noto, who cited the DNA evidence against Artman.
“In looking at the DNA in this case, particularly the DNA on the blanket wrapped around Ms. Hammack, the DNA under her fingernail clippings, the DNA found in her vaginal and rectal areas, all of which correlate with the defendant, Mr Artman, I consider how she was tied, naked and hogtied,” he said, per WXMI. “Defense motion is denied.”
Garry Artman's past criminal records
Artman, who has already been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, is also accused of killing 24-year-old Dusty Shuck, who was murdered in Maryland in 2006 and dumped on the side of the interstate, apart from the 1980 crime for which he served 12 years in prison.