Murdered or missing in Grand Rapids: 17 women, little justice

This report contains graphic crime scene photos and adult themes. Viewer discretion is advised.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — No one recognized it the Christmas of ‘93. On Grand Rapids’ unsuspecting streets, twinkling with holiday spirit, a sinister season loomed.

By the time the darkness lifted three years later, it had claimed 17 women — all missing or found dead.

Among them was Sharon Hammack, a 29-year-old mother of two from Grand Rapids. A delivery driver discovered Hammack’s blanket-rolled body on the side of 76th Street near Kraft Avenue SE, south of Grand Rapids, the morning of Oct. 3, 1996.

Hammack’s killing was likely the last in the series of murders, but it would ultimately lead to the first and only arrest.

On Aug. 18, 2022, 26 years after Hammack’s murder, the Kent County Sheriff’s Department arrested Garry Dean Artman, a Florida-based long-haul trucker, in the 1996 rape and killing of Sharon Hammack. It was a stunning development; no one had ever been directly charged in any of the mid-1990s murders.

Artman, 65, lived in Grand Rapids at the time of Hammack’s killings, as well as the deaths and disappearances of 16 other women. But in the 10 months since his arrest, investigators have not accused Artman of any more of those deaths and DNA testing has eliminated him in at least one of them.

Police have long believed that more than one killer, perhaps even several acting individually, committed the string of murders targeting Grand Rapids’ commercial sex industry.

But nearly three decades later, the families of 16 women still wait for answers.

In early 2021, well over a year before Artman’s arrest, Target 8 began researching those three murderous years on the streets of Grand Rapids’ red-light district. Through more than a dozen interviews, hundreds of pages of police reports, court transcripts and death records, we hope to shine a light on the women for whom justice and public attention have so far been largely denied.

THE FIRST DAYS OF FEAR

Norma Abbott had never talked publicly about her big sister, Linda McHugh.

No one had ever asked.

“She has family. She was a human, you know,” Abbott said. “She was just a really nice person. Nurturing. Always looking out for me. Not selfish in any way.”

What happened to Linda McHugh shortly before Christmas of ’93 may have marked the first glimpse of an impending — and deadly — threat.

It was Dec. 12, 1993, and McHugh, 29 and the mother of a baby girl, was preparing for a night out.

“She’s like, ‘OK, my friends are coming to get me,’” Norma Abbott, McHugh’s younger sister, recalled. “I said, ‘You’ll be OK, right?' And she’s like, ‘Yes, I will.’ She said, ‘I love you, Norm. I’ll see you later.’”

But Abbott wouldn’t see her later. McHugh vanished early the next morning. No one has seen nor heard from her since.

According to a Wyoming police report, McHugh’s boyfriend told officers she’d called him, upset and crying, between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. Dec. 13.

“He said she … asked if he could pick her up at the ‘Bottle House,’” wrote an officer, referring to a party store on Division Avenue south of Burton Street. “He said he went down to get her and she was not there. He looked around but could not locate her. That was the last contact he had with her.”

Norma Abbott and her half-brother James Abbott are certain their sister is dead.

“She would not go 30 years without talking to anybody. There’s no way,” James Abbott said.

“She loved us all. She always wanted to do everything for everybody,” he continued, his voice breaking with emotion.

But McHugh, said her siblings, had long struggled with alcohol, and began drinking at age 13 in part to cope with abuse she suffered growing up. McHugh managed to graduate high school, took business courses, worked, got married and had a baby girl she adored. But by her late 20s, McHugh also had a crack addiction, according to her siblings, and had begun sex work to pay for it.

The crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged American cities did not spare Grand Rapids.

“We all went through some stuff,” said James Abbott, McHugh’s half-brother. “I went to rehab, and she went down there.”

“Down there” was Division Avenue South, a gritty artery that pulsed through the heart of the city. If prostitution had a business address in the mid-90s, Division was it. Back then, those looking to buy sex cruised by car, not keyboard. On 3 miles of street corners, from Wealthy Street south to 28th Street, sex workers advertised their services.

"FEET STICKING OUT OF A BUSH"

Three weeks after McHugh’s disappearance in December 1993, it happened again.

Lesa Otberg, 23, was last seen around 4:30 a.m. Jan. 2, 1994. Police say she had gotten into a vehicle at Division Avenue and Cottage Grove Street. That’s about a mile north of the party store where McHugh’s boyfriend had arrived to find her gone.

Like McHugh, Otberg was stuck in the vice grip of the crack cocaine epidemic.

“I think she had a lot to deal with herself,” Kandi Katerberg, Otberg’s daughter, said. “She didn’t have the best childhood. I think that all just snowballs, especially when you introduce drugs.”

Katerberg was 9 when her mom vanished.

“(My mom) was feisty,” Katerberg said. “She had an opinion, and she’d let you know it, but she had the biggest heart. She would help anybody. … She was 23, and she had her whole life ahead of her. Until she didn’t.”

Three months after Otberg’s disappearance, on March 28, 1994, a grandmother walking home in Muskegon spotted feet sticking out of a bush near Hackley Avenue and Stein Street.

Lesa Otberg was missing no more.

Muskegon police said Otberg was found naked. She had been strangled.

Katerberg learned the news watching TV.

“I remember everyone was kind of looking at me, but I was excited that they had found my mom,” she recalled. “I didn’t realize finding her body meant that she was dead.”

Twenty-nine years later, Katerberg knows no more about her mom’s murder than she did at 9 years old.

“I just want to know who did it,” she told Target 8. “Why, maybe? … I want to know the facts. That’s how my brain works. All of the facts, even when I was little, I wanted to know. But the police said, ‘No.’”

Katerberg didn’t know it yet, but police were about to change their answer.

A BLUE HIGH HEEL

After Otberg, it would be another eight months before the discovery of a second body.

On Nov. 6, 1994, rabbit hunters stumbled upon the remains of a woman, initially unidentified, in a ditch between Coopersville and Grand Rapids near 32nd Avenue and Arthur Street.

An autopsy failed to identify a cause of death but determined she had likely been killed in spring or summer 1994.

For decades, the remains were referred to only as “Matilda.” But in 2022, genetic genealogy identified her as Shelly Rae Christian of Minnesota.

“My sister, Shelly, she was a caring person,” Shanna Christian said in a Zoom interview with Target 8. “She would help anyone out.”

Shelly Christian was 29 the last time her sister saw her in October 1993. Shanna Christian has no idea how or why her sister made her way to West Michigan.

“I can’t thank Michigan enough for loving my sister before I knew where she was,” Shanna Christian said.

She said her sister had long struggled with addiction, a journey that began with pain pills when she underwent multiple knee surgeries as a teen. Shanna Christian believes her sister may have been doing sex work in Grand Rapids, partly because of a clue found near her remains.

“The shoe that was found,” Shanna Christian explained. “It was a blue high heel shoe. She was not stable on high heels. She wore tennis shoes. She would only wear that type of clothing when she was out.”

She believes there’s still stigma associated with the commercial sex industry.

“Serial killers pick them because they believe no one will care. No one’s looking for them,” she said. “And that is not true. It’s not… I want to find out who did this. This is my new passion.”

The next woman to vanish was Robin Sue Scott of Grand Rapids. Last seen on Jan. 18, 1995, Scott was reported missing by her sister to Grand Rapids police.

“She last saw Robin as she left at 0300 hours (3 a.m.) on 1-18-95 to go to work on Division Avenue,” the police report on Scott’s disappearance reads in part.

Robin Scott was 37 with one teenage son when she disappeared.

"SHE WASN’T JUST SOME PROSTITUTE"

On June 2, 1995, the body of a third woman was discovered by a man heading out to trap minnows in the Grand River.

Pamela Lynn Verile was found beaten to death not far from the river’s edge, near Veterans Memorial Drive and Riverbend Drive in Walker.

“She deserves justice and to be at peace and to be able to rest,” Sara Brookmiller, Verile’s youngest child, said. “Because she can’t yet.”

Brookmiller was 7 when her mom was murdered on the banks of the Grand River, then dragged up a hill and across Veterans Memorial Drive near Millennium Park.

The man who was preparing to trap minnows spotted the blood trail on the riverbank and followed it, thinking he would find a dead fish to use as bait. He found Pam Verile instead. The 33-year-old mother of three had suffered blunt trauma to her head.

According to a Walker police report, Verile had been last seen hours earlier by an Amoco gas station attendant at Hall Street and Division. He told police she bought her regular Styrofoam cup of coffee and headed toward the street.

“I don’t want her to be another number. To me, she wasn’t just some prostitute or drug addict,” Brookmiller said. “Those were her life choices, but that didn’t make her who she was. It didn’t define her as a person. She was still a very good person. People loved her. People either wanted to be her or know her or be with her.”

Brookmiller, who first talked to Target 8 in March 2023, does not think her mom’s murder was connected to the others. By May, she received news that would further solidify that belief.

On June 15, 1995, Fonda Lockridge joined the growing list of missing women.

Lockridge was 26 with two young children when her sister reported her disappearance.

“She said her sister left to go to the store and hasn’t returned since,” the officer reported. “She said this is unlike her sister and she is worried.”

Lockridge’s mom later told police her daughter left around 11 p.m. June 15, 1995, to walk to a party store at Oakdale and Eastern, which is a mile east of Division Avenue.

But according to the police report, Lockridge’s mom said a nephew saw her daughter at the corner of Hall and Prospect the night of June 16, 1995, at which time he loaned her $5.

Fonda Lockridge has not been seen nor heard from since.

"JUST ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE GIRLS"

In the 1990s, Grand Rapids’ red-light district was so well-established that it drew workers from other states, including two sisters from Omaha, Nebraska, who arrived in Grand Rapids on July 7, 1995. One of them would never return home.

“We caught the bus to Grand Rapids that Friday and we got us a hotel room,” Deanna Dennis recalled in a May 2023 Zoom interview from her Omaha home. “We went down what they call Division … which was a track … where all the working ladies were. We were ladies of the night.”

She was 34 in the summer of 1995. Her sister, Cathleen Dennis, was 28. Both women did sex work to support their families, explained Deanna Dennis, but neither wanted to work in their hometown. So the sisters traveled out of state together.

“She was just a joy to be around,” Deanna Dennis said of her sister. “She was just goofy. … The life of the party. Me and her, we used to be in that hotel room, laughing and wrestling on the bed. Doing all kind of crazy stuff.”

On that Friday evening, she said, the sisters started their night with a couple drinks at a long-shuttered club before parting ways to go to work.

“I was walking down one side (of Division). She’s down the other. I seen her through passing,” the older sister recalled.

But when Deanna Dennis was ready to quit for the night, she couldn’t find her sister.

“About 4 o’clock in the morning, I was ready to go home. I was walking around, and I don’t see her,” she said.

When Cathleen Dennis had not returned to their hotel by morning, her sister said she knew something terrible had happened.

“I flagged the police down first and told them, and they treated me like, ‘Oh, it’s just another one of those girls,’ so they didn’t give me help or nothing,” Deanna Dennis said.

She filed an official report with Grand Rapids police, and her mom and another sister traveled from Omaha to join the search.

“We made flyers, passed them out everywhere, looked in alleys and dumpsters, thinking somebody might have dumped her body. We had to do all the footwork ourselves,” Deanna Dennis said.

Cathleen Dennis is still missing today.

Deanna Dennis said she last saw her sister getting into a light-color Chevy at Division and Putnam Street, the same corner Robin Scott, who had vanished about six months earlier, was known to work.

“(Deanna said) she saw Cathleen getting into a white Chevy, possibly a 1965-1968 model at the corner of Division Avenue and Putnam Street Southwest,” a Grand Rapids police officer wrote in a report.

VANISHED: THREE WOMEN IN SIX MONTHS

Cathleen Dennis, Robin Scott and Fonda Lockridge, all of whom are Black, disappeared within six months of each other in 1995 while working in Grand Rapids’ commercial sex industry.

In 2021, Grand Rapids police penned a new entry in the missing persons reports of all three women. In each one, the update noted that the subject remains missing and that the case is now considered an open homicide.

The Grand Rapids Police Department declined to comment on any of the disappearances or murders, which is standard protocol for GRPD when the investigation remains open.

GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom did, however, respond to concerns raised by Cathleen Dennis’s sister, who felt officers were dismissive when she reported her sister missing in July 1995.

“While I can’t speak to this family’s experience or the standards in the department almost 30 years ago, my expectation is that all victims and their families are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect,” Winstrom said. “Cases like these may grow cold, but they are not forgotten. Any new information that leads to justice and closure for families will be pursued.”

As for the disappearance of Linda McHugh in December 1993, a Wyoming police lieutenant said the department still classifies her as a missing person, not a homicide victim.

All four missing women are listed in NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and other online resources.

“It’s been 29 years at this point, and I feel like there hasn’t been enough done to try to figure out what happened to her,” Cathleen Dennis’ son, Tommy Dennis, said. “I want folks to remember the name Cathleen Dennis, and anybody who knows something, come forth. Help us. Help us get closure on this. Don’t just act like she was a nobody. She was somebody to us.”

Three months after Dennis’ disappearance, on Oct. 12, 1995, a walker found the strangled body of Gale Annette Cook, 39, in a wooded area near Leonard Street and Crahen Avenue NE.

Then, on Nov. 17, 1995, the body of Dawn Marie Shaver was found in a creek beneath railroad tracks near Ann Street and Elizabeth Avenue on Grand Rapids' northwest side. According to her death certificate, Shaver, 25, had been strangled and beaten in the head, chest, and abdomen. She was fully clothed.

On Aug. 9, 1996, a city worker who needed to relive himself stumbled upon a badly decomposed and partially clothed body in the woods near Curve Street and Underhill Avenue SW. Michelle Ann Becker, 36, had been last seen around April 27 working the corner of Division and Canton SW in Grand Rapids. An autopsy was unable to determine a cause of death.

"IT MATTERS IMMENSELY"

Around the same time Michelle Becker was found dead, Sherry Stewart Brown vanished.

On Aug. 9, 1996, Stewart Brown’s dad brought a peach cobbler to her Grand Rapids apartment to celebrate her 33rd birthday. It was the last time he saw his daughter alive.

Two years later, on July 22, 1998, a couple trying to round up stray dogs on Butterworth Drive SW near Maynard Avenue stumbled upon Brown’s skeleton.

It would be another four years before she was positively identified through DNA.

“She was a beautiful spirit,” Stewart Brown’s younger sister, Debra Williams, said in a Zoom call with Target 8 from her home in Chicago. “I just want to make sure I can relate to you how special she was. She was very strong-willed and fiercely protective of me. … I loved her ability to speak up for herself, and she taught me how to do that.”

Williams said Stewart Brown was competitive, a good worker and a good mom who loved taking care of her four children and keeping a beautiful home. She was also Williams’ best friend. The sisters were just 13 months apart in age. Williams said even now, nearly 27 years later, she doesn’t have a best friend with whom she can share everything. That person was her sister.

“I give that to her,” said Williams, tears in her eyes. “I have not filled that spot with anyone since.”

The sisters got their first apartments together and their first album — Whitney Houston.

“When Whitney Houston passed, it reminded me so much of my sister. I was at home bawling like a baby,” Williams said. “It’s just that connection we had.”

Williams said Stewart Brown began to struggle with addiction after she was introduced to crack cocaine as an adult. She tried rehab multiple times but would never get the chance to succeed.

Now, Williams hopes someone will find it in their heart to tell police what they know.

“It matters immensely. It would mean a lot to me. It would mean a lot to my parents so they could finally have this burden lifted and they would have some closure,” she said. “I pray that for all of the victims, for all of these ladies, that they have some closure.”

On Sept. 21, 1996, a jogger discovered the body of Sonyia Marie Campos in the 1900 block of O’Brien SW near Butterworth Street, less than 2 miles from where Stewart Brown’s remains would later be found. The 27-year-old from Wyoming had been missing since Sept. 4. Her body was too decomposed to determine a cause of death. Campos, who was found nude, was initially identified by her tattoos, most of which were unicorns and roses.

“(Sonyia) couldn’t give enough love,” Kathleen Robinson, Campos’ mom, told News 8 in December 1996. “She gave a lot of love in everything she did.”

In the months after her daughter’s death, Robinson spoke out often, concerned the murders were not getting the attention they deserved.

“I just think it’s unfair,” Robinson said in February 1997 when she learned a task force investigating the murders would soon disband. “I strongly believe that if my daughter and the other girls didn’t have a label as prostitutes and drug users that the investigation would continue.”

Nearly three decades later, Robinson’s voice is weary, and her family fears she’ll leave this earth without knowing who killed her daughter. Robinson is in poor health, so it was Campos’ sister who pleaded for help at the family’s annual gathering to pay tribute to Campos in September 2022.

“26 years we don’t know who did it. Why they did it,” Danielle Rosales said with tears in her eyes. “We need answers.”

FOUR BODIES IN ONE MONTH

By fall of ’96, seven women had been found dead and four had disappeared.

Then in October 1996, four more women were found dead, including two within two days.

On Oct. 1, the body of Dawn Sharlene Phillips was found in the 600 block of Canright Street NE near Coit Avenue in Plainfield Township. No cause of death could be determined.

Phillips, 26 and a mom to two girls, had been last seen Jan. 19, 1996, at Division Avenue and Hall Street.

“She was mixed up with the drugs and all the other stuff that they say she did, but that wasn’t the real Dawn,” Phillips’ husband told Target 8 in 1996, shortly after her body was discovered. “The real Dawn was a loving mother, a beautiful wife, and a very dear friend to me when my down times came around.”

On Oct. 3, a delivery driver discovered the body of Sharon Kay Hammack, 29, bound and wrapped in a blanket on the side of 76th Street between Kentwood and Caledonia.

On Oct. 13, 1996, the nude body of another woman was discovered in some brush behind a business near Ionia Avenue and Logan Street SW in Grand Rapids. She would later be identified as Cheryl Lynn Mason, 39.

In her teenage years, Mason was a roller-skating champion. She later married and had six children before she became addicted to crack cocaine.

On Oct. 27, Victoria Moore was found murdered on 20 Mile Road near Sparta Avenue northeast of Kent City. She was last seen on Aug. 1, 1996, at Division and Logan in Grand Rapids.

13 DEATHS, FOUR ABDUCTIONS

Around Halloween of 1996, the killing seemed to abruptly stop.

Over three years, four women had vanished and 13 had been found dead, their bodies scattered in lonely woods and roadside ditches and brush in Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties.

But their last known locations were chillingly confined. According to law enforcement records, nine of the 13 women who died were last seen on Division Avenue and three more were just a couple blocks from that main drag.

Of the 17 women, six were Black and 11 white.

In eight of the 13 deaths, the bodies were discovered too late to determine a cause of death. Of the other five, three were strangled (two with a ligature); one was strangled and beaten in the head, chest, and abdomen; and the fifth suffered blunt trauma to the head.

Among the women, at least three were found naked, two wore just bras and one was fully clothed.

Only three of the 13 women who died were discovered the same day they disappeared. The other 10 were well concealed amid woods and brush, their bodies not found for a week, three months, nine months and, in the case of one woman, two years.

The investigations are dispersed among five police agencies, including Grand Rapids, Kent County, Walker, Muskegon and Wyoming. Only two of those agencies, Muskegon and Walker, shared details regarding the status of their investigations. For that reason, it’s not clear how many crime scenes yielded potentially useful suspect DNA. The sole murder in which police have confirmed the presence of the alleged killer’s DNA is the only one that’s produced an arrest.

Garry Artman remains in the Kent County jail awaiting trial for the 1996 rape and murder of Sharon Hammack. Target 8 reached out to Artman in jail seeking comment, but he did not respond. His defense attorney, John Pyrski, also declined comment.

Target 8 attempted to reach Artman's five siblings, who are scattered among several Midwestern states and Florida. They either declined to speak or did not respond to messages.

Artman's parents Donna and Wilfred Artman are both dead, but a record in St. Clair County Circuit Court indicates their marriage was in trouble shortly after his birth in December 1957. In a document dated March 31, 1958, a judge approved Wilfred Artman's "bill of complaint" and declared the couple divorced. He had sought the divorce based on "acts of cruelty" allegedly committed by Donna Artman. Judge Halford I. Streeter ruled that "hearing the proofs," he believed the allegations to be true.

"On reading the bill of complaint and hearing the proofs taken as aforesaid from which it satisfactorily appears to this court that the material facts charged in such bill of complaint are true and that the defendant (Donna Artman) has been guilty of the several acts of cruelty and other acts and causes for divorce therein charged," the divorce decree read.

At the time, the Artmans had four children, all under 4 years old. The judge granted custody of three of the children to Wilfred Artman but ruled Garry Artman, who was 3 months old, would stay with his mom.

"The physical custody of baby Gary (sic) Dean Artman, born December 13, 1957, is hereby awarded to Donna Marie Artman, defendant herein, until further order of the court," read the judge's decision.

Both parents would be allowed to visit the children while "in the physical custody of the other at reasonable times and places."

Wilfred Artman was ordered to pay weekly support for the "support and maintenance of baby Gary (sic) Dean Artman."

Though the judge granted the divorce, it's unclear if the couple actually went through with it.

"MAMA, THEY GOT HIM"

“He’s a monster,” Sharon Hammack’s sister, Tina DeYoung, said outside a Grand Rapids courtroom in January 2023, five months after Garry Artman’s arrest in Mississippi. “He’s not a human being… (My sister) was a beautiful soul who didn’t deserve what was done to her.”

When asked to describe Hammack, DeYoung’s face brightened and she chuckled.

“She was a goofball,” DeYoung said. “We did some crazy stuff… There was just never a dull moment with her. She was a lot of fun. I miss that. I really miss that.”

DeYoung and her sister, Terri Navitskas, said Hammack was also stubborn and feisty.

“She did not back down. If you pissed her off, you better watch out," DeYoung said.

But Hammack was also very protective of her siblings, and when she got sucked in by the crack cocaine scene in her mid- to late 20s, she made sure to keep her sisters away from it.

“Me and my mom would drive up and down Division to see if we could see her and talk to her,” Navitskas said. “When she’d see my mom’s van, she would run… She didn’t want us to see her like that.”

Target 8 first sat down with Hammack’s sisters in May 2022 for a story on the unsolved murders in mid-90s Grand Rapids.

“She was a loving sister, a loving daughter, and a loving mother to two children… and she was three to five months pregnant when she was killed,” Navitskas said on the front porch of her Walker home in spring 2022. “So, there’s a baby we don’t even know. … We just want to know who did this to Sharon.”

Three months after that first interview, at 7:29 p.m. Aug. 18, 2022, DeYoung texted Target 8.

“Oh my God just found out they got my sister Sharon’s killer,” she wrote.

Months later, in the courthouse hallway, DeYoung recalled the moment the Kent County detective revealed news of the arrest.

“He said he’s Caucasian, and he’s an over-the-road trucker,” DeYoung remembered. “I just looked up at the sky and I said, ‘Mama, they got him. There is justice. It may not have been before the good Lord took you, but you guys can celebrate now.’”

Hammack’s mom and dad died without knowing who killed their daughter.

'MURDER,' 'RITUAL,' 'MASTER'

On Oct. 7, 2022, Garry Dean Artman appeared in a Kent County courtroom for his first substantive hearing. Clad in dark-green jail garb with closely cropped white hair, a light beard and pock-marked face, the Port Huron native appeared to listen intently as an investigator explained how they developed Artman as a suspect.

Detective John Tuinhoff testified that the Kent County Sheriff’s Department submitted DNA from Hammack’s suspected killer to a firm called Identifinders International. Linda Doyle, a forensic genealogist with Identifinders, compared the suspect DNA against more than a million DNA samples uploaded to public databases by people tracing their ancestry. Doyle essentially built an alleged killer’s family tree in reverse.

“She had narrowed down the perpetrator to one of four male sons of Wilfred and Donna Artman,” Tuinhoff testified, adding that only one of those four sons — Garry Dean Artman — had ties to Grand Rapids.

Online records show that at the time of Hammack’s murder, Artman was living on 54th Street, which is 5 miles from Division Avenue and Burton Street, the area where Hammack was last seen in the early morning hours of Oct. 3, 1996. Artman’s residence was also 8 miles from the 76th Street location where Hammack’s body was found. The long-haul trucker worked as a delivery driver just 4 miles from the body site.

Another detective testified regarding Artman’s statements during an interview following his arrest.

“He indicated that during his time in Grand Rapids he did use prostitutes. He specially mentioned that most of the time he would pick those prostitutes up from the area of Division on the southeast side of Grand Rapids,” Detective Paul VanRhee of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department reported.

Online records show Artman moved his home base from Grand Rapids to Florida around 2018.

In court, the investigator testified about a journal found in Artman’s storage unit in Lake City, Florida. Also in the storage unit: women's underwear. In the journal, according to VanRhee’s testimony, Artman wrote about his friendship in the early 2000s with a woman in Grand Rapids named Tammy.

“’I was able to restrain myself with Tammy because of master,” VanRhee testified, quoting from Artman’s journal. “’Ever since I’ve known Tammy… she has had these visions of me that are completely inaccurate and false. Visions of me torturing, mutilating, and ritualizing things that never happened.’”

Later in the journal, VanRhee reported, Artman denied killing anyone but then seemed to make an admission:

“When she asked me if I had murdered anyone, I said, ‘no.’ I then, (weeks later) told her that I had but in ritual.’”

Testimony at the preliminary hearing revealed the origin of the crime scene DNA submitted to Identifinders International as seminal fluid that had been taken from vaginal and rectal swabs, as well as the blanket in which Hammack was bound.

Kent County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cohle, who conducted Hammack’s autopsy in 1996, testified that she died from ligature strangulation, deep purple bruising from which could be clearly seen encircling her neck. She also suffered two stab wounds to her left scalp and bruises and abrasions on her face.

“The body was wrapped in a blanket and the arms and legs were tied,” Cohle testified. “I would refer to that pattern as … hogtied… (Her) hands are tied behind the back. The ankles are tied together, and there was a length of rope securing the ankles to the thighs.”

According to testimony, Hammack was bound with electrical cord and wrapped in an electric blanket.

Crime scene pictures show she was found clad in only a bra but still wore a strand of pearls around her neck and pearl earrings.

“It is sickening to see those photographs,” Judge Sara Smolenski said in court before binding the case over for trial. “Heartbreaking beyond compare, and we’re not even the family of Sharon Hammack.”

TWO MURDERS, ONE ALLEGED KILLER

Testimony also covered a second murder to which Artman had been tied through CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System maintained by the FBI.

In 2008, 14 years before Artman was allegedly identified through genetic genealogy, CODIS revealed a match between the murders of two young women, separated by 10 years and 500 miles. Suspect DNA from the 1996 killing of Hammack matched crime scene DNA from the 2006 murder of a woman in Maryland.

According to Maryland State Police, the body of Dusty Myriah Shuck, 25, was found on May 4, 2006, near a rest stop on I-70 in Frederick, Maryland, about 40 miles west of Baltimore. Shuck was clothed but had no shoes nor identification. Maryland State Police said the young mother had been stabbed and beaten.

Sharon Hammack and Dusty Shuck had crossed paths with the same alleged killer, long-haul trucker Garry Artman.

In the days following Artman's arrest, Target 8 reached out to Dusty Shuck's mom, who was living in Texas at the time. Her daughter had not known Hammack in life, but they would be forever connected in death.

"I looked at my text messages, and there you were," Lori Kreutzer, Shuck's mom, said in a Zoom interview with Target 8. "I knew the minute you had identified yourself as a reporter that it had to have a connection with Dusty. It's been years since anybody's contacted me."

Kreutzer had no idea Michigan investigators had identified her daughter's alleged killer. She didn't know, either, that CODIS had connected her daughter's murder to that of a Michigan woman.

"After the detective on (Dusty's) case retired from the Maryland (State Police), I wasn't able to really talk to anyone anymore… The (retired) detective, he really tried. (Dusty's) was the only case he was not able to wrap up before his retirement, and every year he called me on May 4th, the day she was found," said Kreutzer, who believes her daughter may have been hitchhiking cross-country and accepted a ride from the wrong man.

"Dusty, from the moment she was born was beautiful, happy, mellow. Got along with everybody. Good in school. She was a great artist, a good young mother. She was everything," Kreutzer said.

But after the birth of her son, Shuck began to struggle.

"She went through a series of breakdowns, which finally was diagnosed as schizophrenia," explained Kreutzer, who tried everything to get her daughter help.

Shuck went in for treatment but end up taking off.

"With the right medication, she probably would have been stable," said Kreutzer, who couldn't understand why the mental health system allowed her daughter to walk away.

"She was a walking victim," Kreutzer continued. "Some predator like Garry, he picked up on it… She couldn't discern that she was with somebody so evil."

After speaking with Target 8, Kreutzer sent an email to the Maryland State Police and a detective responded with a phone call the same night.

"Ten o'clock my time. Had to be later for him. Cared enough to do it," she said.

In September 2023, Maryland prosecutors charged Artman with Shuck's murder.

"I just thank the Kent County police department for putting it altogether," Kreutzer said. "At least now, he has stopped. … Now, we're going to get some resolution, I believe. We're going to get him convicted. Hopefully other parents can find their daughters. He knows he's caught. Might as well just admit everything he's done. … I would ask him, 'Please tell us what you did. Why?'"

While Artman listed Grand Rapids as home from 1992 to 2018, he was transient much of that time, traveling the country in what police described to Target 8 as “a mobile crime scene,” the cab of a semi-truck.

“I think it’s highly unlikely that he commits one murder in ’96, commits another one in 2006, 10 years later, and nothing in between. Right?” retired FBI agent Andy Bartnowak said in a September 2022 interview with Target 8. “It kind of denies reasonable thinking.”

More than a decade before Artman’s arrest, an FBI campaign to expose serial killing truckers led to the arrest of 10 over-the-road truck drivers believed responsible for 30 murders. Right now, records show there are at least 16 long-haul truckers, all suspected serial killers, in prisons nationwide.

Bartnowak predicted cold case detectives across the country are taking note of Garry Artman’s arrest.

“I think they’re going to start looking at, ‘Hey, this guy’s a truck driver, did he ever come through our town?” Bartnowak explained, noting departments will review their files for unsolved murders involving commercial sex workers.

“These are marginalized people in society,” Bartnowak said of the women Artman allegedly targeted. “They operate sort of in the shadows because of law enforcement. In his mind, he may well be thinking, ‘Nobody cares about these people.’ He picked them for a reason.”

"NEXT TIME HE WOULD NOT LEAVE WITNESSES"

Bartnowak said there’s a reason, too, that Artman silenced his alleged victims forever.

“What stood out (about Artman) is that he has a prior conviction for a pretty violent, gruesome rape,” he said. “And what was the reason he got convicted? Because the victim testified against him. She was alive. So, he realizes, ‘Well, this can’t happen again.'”

Target 8 uncovered a Michigan State Police report that quoted Artman as sharing that exact sentiment upon his release from state prison in 1992. He had served 11 years for sexually assaulting three women at knifepoint in two separate attacks. The assaults happened in 1979 and ‘80 in Artman’s hometown of Port Huron. He was in his early 20s at the time, back home after a stint in the U.S. Marines.

After Artman’s release from prison in ‘92, corrections employees contacted state police when they heard about an abduction, rape, and attempted murder near Ann Arbor. The corrections officer thought detectives on that case should look at Artman as a potential suspect.

“The inmate was apparently threatening to many DOC employees, especially females,” wrote the state police trooper who took the tip. “He was serving time for (criminal sexual conduct) and is quoted as saying just prior to his release that next time he would not leave any witnesses to his crime.”

It’s not clear if the Michigan Department of Corrections warned Grand Rapids police when Artman headed to the city’s red-light district after he left prison in July 1992.

Online records show Artman landed at the Herkimer Hotel on Division Avenue South, ground zero for the series of murders and abductions that would begin in December 1993 and likely claim 17 women.

Grand Rapids police may have been unaware of Artman’s presence, but court records show a member of the task force investigating the mid-90s murders received a tip about the trucker.

It was submitted Oct. 23, 1996, three weeks after Sharon Hammack’s murder. It mirrored what corrections employees had told state police previously.

“Women at the (Ionia prison) were scared of him,” read the tip, according to a search warrant filed shortly after Garry Artman’s arrest in August 2022. “(Artman) made claims that the only reason he got convicted (was) because he left his victims alive. He like(d) to do it in the car. Used knife. Exhibits anti-social personality. No morals. No remorse.”

In the search warrant, Kent County detectives reported a state police detective on the task force interviewed Artman in March 1997.

“Garry Artman admitted … that he had prior problem looking at girls as objects for his pleasure,” a Kent County detective wrote after reviewing notes from the 1997 interview. “Artman admitted to using prostitutes for sex from June of 1992 through November of 1996. Artman was shown pictures of the deceased women working as prostitutes in the Grand Rapids area and denied recognizing them or harming any of them.”

According to the search warrant, the detective who interviewed Artman noted “he believed based on Garry Artman’s past that he had a high potential for sexual assaults.”

Target 8 contacted the state police detective who conducted that Artman interview in 1997. He’s now retired and said he has no recollection of that interview 26 years ago.

CO-WORKER: "I WAS AFRAID TO BE ALONE WITH HIM"

By fall 1996, Garry Artman, then 38, had made a life in Grand Rapids, working as a driver at Skyrunners Inc., an air freight delivery company located on Patterson Avenue near 44th Street in Kentwood. That’s 4 miles from where Sharon Hammack’s body was dumped on the side of 76th Street SE.

“He gave me the creeps,” recalled a woman named Ellen, who worked at Skyrunners when Artman did and didn’t want her last name used. “Something just didn’t feel right. He’s not somebody I would have invited to my house for dinner.”

Ellen said Artman bragged about his knife and sword collection, even bringing some to work to show them off. He also threatened to “slice up” his boss with them if he didn’t give Artman a truck, according to a report filed with Kentwood police in spring 1997. Skyrunners’ owner told police he was concerned for his well-being and wanted his fears documented.

“On numerous occasions, Garry has acted unruly and very violent,” wrote the Kentwood officer who took the report.

Ellen and another employee, Jessica, who also wanted to be identified only by her first name, submitted affidavits confirming they’d witnessed the threats.

“Artman many times … displayed violent temper (yelled profanities, threw items and threatened revenge) and would walk out if he didn’t get the job he wanted,” read Ellen’s affidavit, which also described Artman as “frequently abusive and constantly demanding.”

In a handwritten addition to the affidavit, Ellen noted “I was afraid to be alone in the office with Artman.”

The other Skyrunners employee, Jessica, described Artman as “dark and weird.” Then 18, she had ridden alone with Artman to make a delivery in Pennsylvania.

“I never felt threatened. He didn’t get aggressive with me. But looking back, I think he was testing to see where I was at,” Jessica told Target 8. “I remember certain things he said that I’ve never forgotten, and it had to do with fellatio and skulls. He brought it up like it was a dream, and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and I shut that down.”

Jessica, who recalled feeling “weird and uncomfortable” around him, had not heard about Artman’s arrest for a murder that happened during the time she worked with him.

“Wow. OK. That’s disturbing,” Jessica said, noting she was glad her colleagues knew she was traveling with him. “Everybody knew that I was there and who I was with… We were on a business trip. Had it been anything outside of that, you might not be talking to me right now.”

TASK FORCE: MORE THAN ONE KILLER

Around the time Jessica and Ellen worked with Artman in fall of 1996, six women were found dead over three months in and around Grand Rapids.

A regional task force of detectives from Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties, formed in October 1996, believed more than one person was responsible for the killings.

Among those identified by the task force was a Grand Rapids man named Jimal Lacey, described in court transcripts as the “primary suspect” in the murders of sex workers. Lacey admitted he knew some of the victims but denied killing any of them.

Lacey, 31 at the time of his arrest in December 1996, was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for choking two women who survived. At sentencing, prosecutors said murder charges may follow, but they never did.

An additional suspect, Gregory Kelley, was developed in 2004 by two Kent County detectives assigned to take another look at the then-unsolved murder of Sharon Hammack.

“Gregory Kelley was a very dangerous and violent individual,” retired detective Marc Burns said. “All the women he came in contact with said that he was incredibly ruthless and violent to them. That’s when he originally came on our radar.”

The remains of one of the woman Kelley allegedly trafficked were discovered in July 1997 behind a roadside park along M-21 east of Ada. A forensic pathologist determined Stephanie Renee Judson had been killed more than a year earlier.

Judson’s remains were known only as “Ada bones” for more than two decades. In 2022, a genetic genealogist gave Judson her name back.

She was a mother of two in her late 20s who had a “heart of gold,” according to family. Her sister told Target 8 that Gregory Kelley had convinced Judson to follow him to Grand Rapids from her hometown of Benton Harbor.

Kelley, who was never charged with murder, was sentenced in 2005 for transporting sex workers. He died in prison in 2020 of complications from COVID-19.

Retired detective Burns also believes more than one killer committed the mid-‘90s murders. Burns said there’s too much variation in the way the women were killed and the locations and conditions of their bodies.

ARTMAN NOT A MATCH

The August 2022 arrest of Garry Artman in the 1996 rape and murder of Hammack gave the families of the 17 murdered and missing women new hope for answers. Though Artman lived in Grand Rapids during the three years women were murdered and abducted, he has so far not been publicly tied to any of the other killings. In one of the murders, he’s been eliminated.

Sara Brookmiller does not believe her mom’s murder was connected to the others. She believes it was personal, tied to her mom’s alleged work as a drug informant. It was a role Brookmiller said her mom planned to quit the very morning she was murdered.

On May 9, two months after our first interview, Target 8 returned to Brookmiller’s home. Minutes later, a Walker police detective called Brookmiller with an update: A lab had tested the killer’s DNA from her mom’s case against that of Garry Artman. It was not a match, not to Artman nor to anyone whose DNA had been uploaded to the federal database.

Brookmiller was not surprised.

The detective told her the next step is submitting the DNA for genetic genealogy testing.

“I just want to know who did it,” Brookmiller said. “For her, and for my peace of mind. I’ll figure it out before I die. I’ve always said that.”

NEW HOPE

Kandi Katerberg is determined to get justice for her mother, too. Lesa Otberg, 23, was the first woman found murdered in the three-year series of killings.

Her nude body was discovered in Muskegon, 40 miles northwest of where she was last seen getting into a vehicle on Division Avenue in Grand Rapids.

“If I look back at who I was when I was 23, I’ve had many years to grow and change and develop and make better choices in my life, and she just didn’t have that option,” Katerberg said. “Somebody took that option away.”

Katerberg, who wants to know everything she can about her mom’s murder, had no idea if Muskegon police were actively working it. She told Target 8 she wanted to know if there’s even a chance police have DNA evidence in her mom’s case, even if it never leads to an arrest. We shared that with Muskegon police and they agreed to take Katerberg’s phone call.

Minutes later, as she listened to the police sergeant on the other end of the line, a single tear slid down Katerberg’s face.

“So, they do have DNA,” she said. “That’s awesome. That gives me hope. I haven’t had hope in a long time… These are happy tears, I promise.”

Now, she’s setting up a Facebook page for families of the murdered and missing women, hoping to generate leads.

“The mystery isn’t better,” Katerburg said, referring to not knowing what her mom endured. “Me putting in whatever my brains come up with that she may have suffered at the end. I want to know the facts. That’s how my brain works.”

If you have any information about the deaths or disappearances of the 17 women, their families hope you’ll share it with Silent Observer and help them secure the justice they so desperately seek. The number to call is 616.774.2345.

You can also submit a tip online or through the app on iPhone or Android.