Michael Terry

Michael Devern Terry (born 1960) is an American serial killer active between 1985 and 1986, who killed six gay men in Atlanta, Georgia following sexual encounters. Whilst he claimed they were done in self-defense, Terry was nevertheless convicted and given three life imprisonment terms, which he is still serving. Early life Michael Terry was born in 1960, in Tallassee, Alabama. Little is known about his personal life, but after dropping out of the 10th-grade, Terry evidently began committing small crimes, amassing convictions for burglary, robbery, simple battery, aggravated assault and carrying an unlicensed firearm. In 1983, he moved to Atlanta, first staying at a rooming house near Morris Brown College, before asking Gus Jones, a co-worker at the tire company where he was employed, to help him find another location. Jones agreed, finding another rooming house on 664 Kennesaw Avenue, where Terry moved to. While residing there, his neighbors and acquaintances described him as a strange loner who did not mix and carried a gun at all times, even in his own home. Approximately a year before his murder spree, Terry was laid off from work, but found another job at a tire recapping shop in Lithonia. Murders As victims, Terry would choose young, black "street hustlers" who frequented the area of the Georgia Baptist Hospital and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. He would not approach the victims himself, instead leaning on walls or sitting until a suitable target offered their services to him. If the man was to his liking, the pair would go to an isolated area to have sex, right after which Terry would either stab or shoot the victim to death. In five out of the six cases, they were found to be nude from the waist down. In total, he killed six men: Richard Williams (24): found in a vacant building behind a house at 867 Mayson Turner Road on December 6, 1985. He had been shot in the back of the head and stabbed twice. Curtis Lee Brown (21): found in an isolated part of Dean Rusk Park at 433 Peeples Street on December 14, 1985. He had been shot twice, with one of those shots being in the back of the head. Alvin George (31): found in an alleyway near Terry's house on Kennesaw Avenue on March 20, 1986. He had been stabbed multiple times in the neck. Jason B. McColley (18): found in the same alleyway as George, on April 6, 1986.