Gary Dean Artman (YouTube: WOOD-TV screenshot) and Sharron Hammack (KCSO)
A 65-year-old long-haul truck driver from Florida will spend the rest of his life in prison 27 years after he sexually assaulted and murdered a pregnant 29-year-old mother in Michigan. A jury in Kent County, Michigan, on Thursday found Gary Dean Artman guilty on one count of open murder, one count of felony murder, and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in the horrific 1996 slaying of Sharron Hammack, authorities announced.
According to the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, KCSO deputies on Oct. 3, 1996, responded to an emergency call at a location on 76th Street SE, between Patterson Avenue and Kraft Avenue in the Caledonia Township in regards to the discovery of a deceased adult female. Upon arriving, first responders located the victim — later identified as Hammack — who was pronounced dead on the scene. A subsequent autopsy determined that Hammack had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.
DNA evidence was collected from the scene, including samples from the victim’s genitals and fingernails, as well as from the blanket in which her body had been wrapped, but the case went cold and remained that way for decades.
A break in the case came in 2019, when investigators at KCSO sent DNA samples from Hammack’s murder to a genetic genealogy company called Identifinders.
“Countless hours were spent tracing the subjects DNA matches from Eastern Europe to Michigan,” Identifinders wrote in a press release. “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.”
Artman fit the profile for committing such a crime, as he had been convicted in 1980 of raping and threatening to kill a 16-year-old girl. He was released from prison in 1992.
Detectives with the KCSO Major Case Unit in August 2022 located Artman in Mississippi and, in conjunction with state and local authorities, took him into custody.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors emphasized that it likely took as long as three minutes for Hammack to die while being manually strangled by Artman and read from letters and journal entries penned by Artman, using the now-convicted killer’s own words against him, according to a report from Grand Rapids, Michigan 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 to one of his brothers sent from prison.
The state concluded its closing statement by reading from a journal entry entered into evidence during the trial.
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“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,” one of Artman’s journal entries reportedly read.
Booking photo of Garry Dean Artman (Kent County Sheriff’s Office).
“The strange thing is I never felt guilty about raping them,” said another.
Senior Assistant Prosecutor Blair Lachman told jurors that the writings illustrate how Artman had “decided he is judge and executioner,” according to Grand Rapids NBC affiliate WOOD-TV.
Prior to closing arguments, Artman’s defense attorney reportedly moved for a direct verdict dismissing the charge of open murder, arguing that the state had only presented sufficient evidence showing 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.
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.”
A conviction of first-degree murder in Michigan carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Artman, who has already been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, is also accused of killing 24-year-old Dusty Shuck, who was killed in Maryland in 2006 and dumped on the side of the interstate.
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