Michael Terry (serial killer)

The following year, Terry was brought to trial for the murder of George Willingham. Despite the efforts of the prosecutors to gain the death penalty, citing the aggraviting circumstances in this murder, Justice John Langford imposed a third life term on Terry. In order to avoid further trials, Terry later pled guilty to the remaining murders, for which he was given three additional consecutive life terms. He was then imprisoned, remaining incarcerated as of October 2021.

Initially, all of the cases were considered unrelated and given to different investigators. After some time, however, Detectives Sheila Cumberworth and Marcellus Head noticed a pattern in several cold cases that had occurred in the city, and presented their theory that a serial killer was operating in the area to Lt. Horace Walker, the commander of the local police unit. Walker accepted their suggestions, ordering his team to re-examine the crime scenes and interview potential witnesses, all of whom described seeing an overweight, stocky black male known only as "Mike" as the last man they saw with each respective victim. After further investigation, they came across the name Michael Terry, who turned out to live very closely to the locations where George and McColley's bodies were found. On November 26, 1986, he was arrested without incident at his job in Lithonia by detectives, who charged him with the six murders.

Michael Devern Terry (born 1960) is an American serial killer active between 1985 and 1986, who killed six gay men in Atlanta, Georgia following sexual encounters. Whilst he claimed they were done in self-defense, Terry was nevertheless convicted and given three life imprisonment terms, which he is still serving.

Michael Terry was born in 1960, in Tallassee, Alabama. Little is known about his personal life, but after dropping out of the 10th-grade, Terry evidently began committing small crimes, amassing convictions for burglary, robbery, simple battery, aggravated assault and carrying an unlicensed firearm. In 1983, he moved to Atlanta, first staying at a rooming house near Morris Brown College, before asking Gus Jones, a co-worker at the tire company where he was employed, to help him find another location. Jones agreed, finding another rooming house on 664 Kennesaw Avenue, where Terry moved to. While residing there, his neighbors and acquaintances described him as a strange loner who did not mix and carried a gun at all times, even in his own home. Approximately a year before his murder spree, Terry was laid off from work, but found another job at a tire recapping shop in Lithonia.