Stocking Strangler Serial Killer Carlton Gary To Be Executed, SCOTUS Denies Stay

A SERIAL killer dubbed the "stocking strangler" who raped and murdered elderly women has been executed by lethal injection after a freaky last meal request.

Carlton Gary, 67, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Thursday at Georgia's Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, where he declined to receive a last meal, meaning he'll receive a standard institutional tray of a hamburger, hot dog, white beans, coleslaw and a grape drink, the Ledger-Enquirer reports.

If the execution is carried out as scheduled, he will be the first inmate executed in Georgia this year, according to WSB-TV.

Gary contented there was enough evidence to prove he was innocent of the crimes he is convicted off.

Gary was sentenced to death for murder, rape and burglary in the deaths of Florence Scheible, 89, Martha Thurmond, 69, and Kathleen Woodruff, 74.

Prosecutors linked Gary to the string of nine similar murders in Columbus-plus others earlier in the NY cities of Albany and Syracuse. Most were choked with stockings, and seven of them died. All but one of the Georgia victims lived in the Wynnton neighborhood, and all lived near Gary's home at the time of the crimes.

Gary's lawyers have argued physical evidence that exonerates him wasn't available at the time of trial, either because the necessary testing wasn't yet available or because the state didn't provide it.

Stocking Strangler Carlton Gary is trying to derail his execution in Georgia by firing his lawyers.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles held a closed-door clemency hearing Wednesday morning for Gary. That's significant, Gary's lawyers assert, because the woman had dramatically identified Gary as her attacker during his trial, and the prosecution relied heavily on her testimony.

The state countered in court filings that the evidence Gary's lawyers cited had already been considered by the courts and that his convictions and sentence had repeatedly been upheld by state and federal courts over the past three decades.

Further, they say, DNA evidence has surfaced that positively matches Gary to one of the attacks for which he wasn't charged.

"Mr. Gary is not the Columbus Stocking Strangler", his lawyers wrote in their March 9 appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of that evidence includes recent DNA testing, a footprint in one of the crime scenes and a bite mark found on one of the victim's corpses.

District Attorney Julia Slater opposed the stay, writing in a motion that Gary's attorneys failed to show that the execution amounts to "cruel and unusual" punishment.