The Columbus Stocking Strangler

By: William Rawlings

Narrated by: James Edward Thomas

Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

During an eight-month period in 1977 and 1978, the city of Columbus, Georgia, was terrorized by a mysterious serial killer who raped and ritualistically strangled seven elderly women in one of the community’s finer neighborhoods.

Despite intensive efforts on the part of police, the Stocking Strangler, as he came to be known, managed to elude capture. After the last murder in April 1978, the case went cold. In the spring of 1984, a series of fortuitous events connected to an unrelated murder and a stolen pistol led to the capture of Carlton Gary, who had recently escaped from a South Carolina prison. Following a dramatic trial in August 1986, Gary was convicted of three of the seven Columbus murders and sentenced to death, a penalty that would not be carried out until March 2018.

This convoluted tale of crime and punishment is punctuated by dramatic and unexpected twists and turns, including issues of race, alleged conspiracy, misconduct on the part of the police and the judiciary, a second serial killer active in Columbus during the time of the Strangler murders, the Ku Klux Klan, errors in DNA analysis, and a vigorous and prolonged struggle by attorneys and death penalty opponents who believed in Gary’s innocence.

©2022 William Rawlings (P)2022 William Rawlings

So… I’m from Columbus and was about 10 when this happened

I really like the story - it was well written and accurate. There were many details I had either forgotten or never knew… I was 8-10 at the time. No problem with the story, and I appreciate the author’s meticulousness. However…. Columbus has some very colloquial pronunciations of names. The reader should have been made aware of these. (Not his fault and, for most, it won’t matter as they don’t know, but for the bulk of people who read and listen or will read/listen to this book will be from here… it makes a difference to us. Yes, very specific- but shouldn’t the reader of informational text be given that information? It is informational….)

These are only my thoughts… don’t let them dissuade one from listening. It’s a very good story.

Colloquial may not be the exact word needed here because it’s not really slang … but, an example is, the name Jordan isn’t pronounced Jor- dan. It’s pronounced Jur-dan. Passailaigue isn’t pronounced Pass- a- lay. It’s pronounced Pass-a-leg. (I didn’t say it was correct…. I said it was the pronunciation here…)