- Detectives in Michigan are investigating an unsolved murder involving convicted murderer Garry Artman, who died in a prison hospital last week.
- Kent County Sheriff's detectives interviewed Artman before his death and gathered information that led to reopening the murder case.
- Police have determined that Atman is involved in the disappearance of a woman from about 30 years ago.
Authorities in western Michigan are investigating a missing person and unsolved murder after questioning a long-haul truck driver, a convicted murderer and long-haul trucker with terminal cancer who died at a prison hospital last week. There is.
Kent County sheriff's detectives questioned Gary Artman three times before his death Thursday at the State Correctional Health Facility in Jackson, Michigan.
Kent County Lt. Eric Brunner said detectives are “gathering information” from interviews with Mr. Artman and are working with other law enforcement agencies to “fill in the gaps and unsolved murders.” “We're trying to connect the dots,” he said.
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Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have linked Artman to the disappearance of a woman from nearly 30 years ago, but Brunner declined to say which cold cases or how many are being investigated. I didn't.
Authorities in western Michigan are investigating a missing person and unsolved murder after meeting with convicted murderer and long-haul truck driver Garry Dean Artman, who died in a hospital bed last week. . (Michigan Department of Corrections, via Associated Press)
A Grand Rapids Police Department spokesperson said Wednesday, “The interview with Artman provided sufficient information to reasonably conclude that Artman was involved in the 1995 disappearance of Kathleen Dennis. It is very unlikely that the body will ever be found.”
Grand Rapids detectives also met with Mr. Artman before his death and are investigating whether he is connected to other missing persons or homicide cases in the city, a spokesperson said in an email.
WOOD-TV first reported that Artman was also being investigated in other cases.
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John Pirski, Ertman's public defender, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he did not know whether Ertman had committed any other murders. But Pirsky added: “If he had, I'm glad he finally made everything right.”
Artman, 66, had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. A Michigan jury in September convicted him of raping and killing 29-year-old Sharon Hammack in Kent County in 1996. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole in October.
Artman was also charged with murder in the 2006 killing of Dusty Shaq, 24, in Maryland. Shaq was from Silver City, New Mexico. Her body was found near a truck stop on an interstate outside Newmarket, Maryland.
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Artman, who lived in White Springs, Florida, was arrested in Mississippi in 2022 after Kent County investigators identified him as a suspect in Hammack's murder through DNA analyzed by a forensic genetic genealogist.
His DNA also matched the DNA from Shaq's murder.
Maryland State Police said in a 2022 news release that Kent County Sheriff's investigators subsequently searched a storage unit in Florida believed to belong to Artman, and searched a storage unit in Florida to determine if there were any other victims. It was announced that several items of women's underwear, which had been confiscated as scientific evidence, had been discovered.
Artman served nearly 10 years in a Michigan prison after being convicted of sex crimes in 1981.
