GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Opening arguments are expected to continue Tuesday in the murder trial of Garry Artman, who's accused in what was once a Kent County cold case from 1996.
Advancements in forensic genetic genealogy helped investigators track down and connect the now-65-year-old Florida man in the rape and murder of 29-year-old Sharon Hammack in 1996.
The trial will resume Tuesday morning.
On October 3, 1996, Kent County Sheriff deputies responded to an incident on 76th Street SE, between Patterson Ave and Kraft Ave in Caledonia Township.
That's when they found a deceased woman and determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. That woman was later identified as 29-year-old Sharon Hammack.
Sharon was found lying in tall grass in a field, wrapped in some type of cloth. Authorities in 1996 said her panties were pulled down around her ankles, and her body was just 10 feet off the road.
She was also four weeks pregnant.
According to a probable cause affidavit from the Kent County 63rd District Court, Gary Artman has an extensive history of Criminal Sexual Assault (CSC) crimes, and spent 11 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) for a charge of CSC 1st Degree. He was sent to prison in August of 1981, and then discharged on the maximum (meaning the MDOC had the ability but chose not to parole him), in June of 1992, just four years before Sharon Hammack was murdered.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Kent County Sheriff's detectives had taken DNA left behind at the scene of Sharon's murder and submitted it for genealogical testing to try and find any relatives of the killer.
Maryland State Police were investigating the murder of a known prostitute who was raped and stabbed to death in 2006. The killer had left DNA on the victim.
"Familial DNA was done on both the Grand Rapids (Sharon Hammack) case and the Maryland case, and it was determined that the assailant was the same person," the affidavit read. "A DNA exam then found that the person who committed both crimes came from the same parents."
The affidavit went on to explain that Kent County Sheriff's detectives then traced that DNA to a couple with four sons. Further investigating showed that only one of those sons had any ties to Michigan, and that was Garry Dean Artman.
"Artman, by his own admission, was living and working near the murder scene and was present in the state of Michigan when the homicide was committed," read the affidavit. "Further investigation revealed that shortly before the homicide victim (was) found in Maryland, she was in Ontario, California. It was found that around the same time Garry Dean Artman was within 20 miles of Ontario, Ca(nada) when he was cited by local authorities."
Authorities confirmed that Sharon Hammack had a history of prostitution, and that at the time of her death, there were nearly a dozen unsolved murders of women over the previous 16 years. Of those, nine were confirmed to have been prostitutes. That had authorities worried they all might be linked to one suspect.
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