GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Jurors on Wednesday were shown autopsy photos of a woman who was strangled to death in 1996 as the man accused of killing her stood trial.
Sitting in the gallery, Sharon Hammack's sister covered her eyes when the photos were displayed. Tina DeYoung said she is determined to remember her sister in life, not death.
Wednesday marked the third day of Garry Artman's trial for the Oct. 3, 1996, rape and murder of Hammack whose body was found wrapped along 76th Street near Kraft Avenue north of Caledonia.
Kent County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cohle, who performed the autopsy in 1996, testified that Hammack's neck showed the imprint of the pearl necklace that she was wearing when she was strangled. Cohle also told the jury Hammack was alive when she was stabbed twice in the head.
Cohle explained that her body was found wrapped in a blanket and "extensively tied up" with electrical cord and shoelaces.
"We can see that she's hogtied," Cohle told jurors as they viewed images of Hammack's body projected on a courtroom wall.
In one photo, Hammack still wore earrings and a stand of pearls. She was clad in only a bra.
DeYoung, Hammack's sister, pressed a tissue against her eyes and fought to control her sobs as she listened to what her sister endured in her final moments. Hammack, 29, was a mother of two and was pregnant when she was killed.
Artman was arrested in August 2022 after a forensic genealogist used DNA from the crime scene and public ancestry databases to narrow the suspect pool to four brothers. Investigators say Garry Artman was the only one who had ties to Grand Rapids: He lived about 5 miles from where Hammack was last seen alive and worked only a few miles from where her body was found. He had previously served prison time for rape.
Artman's murder trial began Monday. Prosecutors are also working to show the jury that he raped Hammack, though his defense attorney has argued that because she was a sex worker, prosecutors can't prove the contact was not consensual.
But prosecutors say Hammack had decided not to go with Artman after a previous encounter. They put a witness on the stand Tuesday who said that Hammack was afraid of Artman.
“She said (Artman) was a creep, and that he would get rough and force the girls to do things they didn’t want to do,” Hammack’s friend testified.
Prosecutors have also put forth journal entries they say Artman wrote in which he was unapologetic for committing rape, saying he hated women. The defense has said there's no proof Artman was the person who wrote the journals.
The journals were found in Artman's storage unit in Florida after his arrest. Also in the unit: knives, ropes and more than a dozen pairs of women's underwear. There was a hard drive containing videos depicting the torture and rape of a woman and documents with stories about violence against women.
Prosecutors called the last of their witnesses Wednesday. The defense did not call any, instead working to point out weaknesses in the prosecution's case. Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday, after which the case will go the jury.
Artman, 65, is also accused of murdering 24-year-old Dusty Shuck, whose body was found in Maryland in 2006. He is slated to stand trial there, but whether that will happen will depend on his health — he has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.