GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Sharon Hammack's sisters just wanted to know why.
"I want answers," Terri Navitskas said as she stared down Hammack's killer in a Grand Rapids courtroom Thursday morning. "I just want to know why you took my sister from us and our family. My parents could not get justice because they passed away."
Garry Artman, who is 65 and has terminal lung cancer, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1996 rape and murder of Hammack, a 29-year-old mother of two.
A jury deliberated just 30 minutes Sept. 28 before convicting the long-haul trucker, who lived 5 miles from where Hammack was last seen on a Grand Rapids street.
"You took something from us that was precious," Hammack's sister, Tina DeYoung, declared. "We never got to meet a nephew. She never got to meet my son. What gave you the right?"
Hammack was pregnant at the time of her murder.
"You're not even a person. You're not a man. You're nothing but a piece of garbage," Navitskas yelled. "I hope you get everything that's coming to you for the rest of your life."
Prior to the sisters' testimony, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Scott Noto announced he would not limit how long they spoke or what they said, nor to whom they addressed their comments.
Previously, a clerk in Noto's office sent an email to the prosecutor's Victim Witness unit, reminding them that Noto does not allow victims to address defendants directly at sentencing or wear clothes with victims' names or faces on them.
But at Thursday's sentencing, Noto made clear he would not enforce that rule.
"I have permitted people to speak because I understand the feelings," Noto said from the bench. "In prior cases, I've allowed people to speak to the defendant. I don't want to abridge that right that you have to make your statement."
He acknowledged Hammack's family has waited a long time for this moment.
On Oct. 3, 1996, two delivery drivers spotted a body-shaped blanket along the shoulder of 76th Street between Kraft and Broadmoor avenues north of Caledonia. Hammack had been raped, stabbed, strangled, hogtied and bound in an electric blanket.
"You're a monster," DeYoung told Artman. "I hope you rot in hell."
It was DNA from the 1996 crime, advances in testing and forensic genetic genealogy that finally identified Artman as Hammack's killer.
At sentencing, Kent County Senior Assistant Prosecutor Blair Lachman also had a message for Artman regarding the series of murders that happened in and around Grand Rapids from late 1994 to late 1996.
"I'm hopeful Mr. Artman will listen," Lachman said. "There've been similar homicides, at least 11 more homicides that are similar to this. Mr. Artman has clearly lived a very selfish life... What we're asking is for the first time that he give to somebody else... give to others by letting the families know what happened to their loved ones."
Artman did not give Lachman nor Hammack's sisters the answers they sought. Instead, he denied killing Hammack or any of the other women who were murdered or went missing in mid-1990s Grand Rapids.
"I don't know what happened to her and that's the truth," Artman told the judge, referring to Hammack's murder.
Artman's DNA was found inside Hammack, under her fingernails and on the blanket wrapped around her.
Addressing the judge, Artman did acknowledge he raped two women in 1980, for which he pleaded guilty and served 11 years. But that's all he admitted.
"They're blaming me for what somebody else did," Artman said Thursday. "Let 'em. If they get closure, fine, they get closure.
"But all these other murders, they're idiots," he continued, turning to face the investigators. "You detectives right there, 'scuse my language, are (expletive) idiots. Why? Because you keep looking at me, and I didn't do it."
Someone at the prosecutor's table said, "Yes, you did."
"Why don't you go back start at the beginning and look and actually do your job, and maybe you'll find out who did it," Artman said.
Corrections officers reported that upon Artman's release from prison in 1992, he vowed that next time, he would make sure to leave no witnesses.
Artman is scheduled to stand trial next in Maryland for the murder of Dusty Shuck, 24. Her body was found on the shoulder of I-70 in 2006.