George Howard Putt died in prison sometime last year state prison officials disclosed Wednesday -- far from the brief time he spent in Memphis but never far from the carnage he left behind in the Memphis of 1969.
The bodies of the first two of the five people killed by Putt between Aug. 14 and Sept. 11, 1969 were discovered just days after the murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles by the Manson family dominated national news coverage. Less than a year earlier the Boston Strangler movie was in theaters, creating a sensation about the murders committed by serial killer Albert DeSalvo in Boston just a few years earlier.
Bernalyn and Roy Dumas were strangled by Putt in their home in Cooper-Young and Putt mutilated her body in a way that police homicide detectives still wouldn’t talk about decades later. The bodies were found in separate rooms.
Even with no details other than the names of the victims, the city was quickly spooked by the double murder. So when the body of Leila Jackson was found short of two weeks later, the city’s reaction was a palpable fear in which anyone unknown was to be avoided. Memphians didn’t tarry after work. They went home and bolted the doors.
It got worse as more victims turned up with little in common other than four of the five were women. They were of varying ages. Some were strangled and some were stabbed.
Just about any magazine rack of the day include true crime magazines that by the late 1960s were beginning to look very dated in their lurid noir-like covers teasing the most sensational crime narratives of the day.
They were an intentional contrast to the cover images of youth in bright colors in natural settings in other magazines heralding a new future and youth culture.
The murders in a Southern city, whose 1969 conservatism is hard to describe nearly 50 years later, quickly grabbed the covers of the true crime magazines. And the images they offered spoke to the scenic reality where Putt roamed even as the murders continued.
Apartment buildings and boarding houses were the settings for some of the murders but not all.
Glenda Sue Harden was last seen walking to her car parked on the Cobblestones from the insurance office she worked at nearby. Her body was found in Martin Luther King/Riverside Park hidden under a piece of plywood.
At one of the murder scenes, police found an ice pick stuck in the side of the building with a stocking tied around it.
Putt’s last victim, in an apartment building on Bellevue, screamed as she was stabbed repeatedly and others in the building gave chase with police close behind, arresting Putt near the new and unopened section of the interstate that runs west of Bellevue.
Putt tried to force his way into another apartment nearby but the women inside kept him on the other side of the door.
The killer that panicked an entire city was a skinny utterly forgettable guy in his 20s with sideburns and glasses who appeared to have rarely roamed beyond a community of neighborhood bars, boarding houses and old apartment buildings in the Midtown and Medical Center areas.
It turns out he came to Memphis after walking away from a prison farm in Mississippi and into a Memphis that was slowly but surely changing. And the world that Putt encountered would soon vanish in large part.
Overton Square’s incarnation was about a year away. A new bridge was about to be built across the Mississippi River as part of Interstate 40 which was to go through Overton Park just south of the north-south leg of the interstate where Putt was captured.
Originally sentenced to death, Putt’s sentence was commuted when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty in the early 1970s.
He was serving a 497-year sentence when he died at the Turney Center Wednesday in Only, Tennessee.
Putt never sought parole and never gave any explanation for why he killed five people in less than a month and his apparently random selection of victims.

2. Strickland: Police Director Armstrong Stays, For Now - Saturday, November 28, 2015

The city of Memphis eventually will have a new Memphis Police Department director, but, for now, current director Toney Armstrong will continue to hold the job.

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland announced Friday, Nov. 20, that Armstrong will remain in the job while he searches for a replacement.

3. Strickland: Police Director Armstrong Stays, For Now - Monday, November 23, 2015

The city of Memphis eventually will have a new Memphis Police Department director, but, for now, current director Toney Armstrong will continue to hold the job.

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland announced Friday, Nov. 20, that Armstrong will remain in the job while he searches for a replacement.

4. Strickland: Police Director Armstrong Stays, For Now - Saturday, November 21, 2015

The city of Memphis eventually will have a new Memphis Police Department director, but, for now, current director Toney Armstrong will continue to hold the job.

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland announced Friday, Nov. 20, that Armstrong will remain in the job while he searches for a replacement.

5. IBM Team on Non-Emergency 911 Calls Sounds Familiar Theme in Memphis - Thursday, May 14, 2015

A team of outside experts will come to Memphis for a short period of time to analyze a specific problem and make recommendations to City Hall.

If that scenario sounds familiar, it’s because Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. sought the same solution in February to his administration’s stalled plan for a Mid-South Fairgrounds renovation.

6. Memphis Fire Department to Test New Strategies - Saturday, March 28, 2015

The Memphis Fire Department plans to test software this summer that it hopes will reduce non-emergency ambulance calls it responds to.

The pilot program is one part of a long-term strategy for the department recently rolled out by the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.

7. Memphis Fire Department to Test New Strategies - Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The Memphis Fire Department plans to test software this summer that it hopes will reduce non-emergency ambulance calls it responds to.

The pilot program is one part of a long-term strategy for the department recently rolled out by the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.