Grand Rapids, Michigan – A convicted killer admitted to 11 murders in a deathbed confession, revealing the brutal murder of a Grand Rapids woman in 1996, and the murder of another victim along with nine other unsolved cases, sources disclosed.
Garry Artman, who was on his deathbed due to lung cancer, reached out to detectives just days before his passing, admitting to the 11 murders, 10 of which occurred in Grand Rapids.
Most notably, Artman confessed to the murder of Sharon Hammack in 1996, the sole case in which he was convicted, along with the murder of 24-year-old Dusty Shuck.
Shuck was found beaten and stabbed to death near a truck stop off I-70 in Maryland in 2006. Although Artman never faced charges for Shuck’s murder, DNA evidence linked him to the case. Despite his terminal cancer prognosis, Artman’s confession provided some closure to Shuck’s family.
Artman’s confession also implicated him in the disappearance of Cathleen Dennis, a case that had remained unsolved for decades. When Artman was in a coma and expected to die, he came out of the coma and fully confessed to causing Dennis’s death.
Artman also shared details about the victims and the circumstances surrounding their murders, shedding light on a series of unsolved cases from the 1990s. Investigators have been working diligently to verify Artman’s claims and to seek justice for the families affected by these tragic events.
The killer who was previously convicted of the 1996 murder of a Grand Rapids woman, Sharon Hammack, blamed someone else for the crime at his October 2023 sentencing. However, after Artman’s death, his confession painted a darker picture of his involvement in numerous unsolved cases, possibly making him one of the most prolific serial killers in the United States.
Artman’s death may have robbed the families of his other victims of bringing him to justice, but it also provided some measure of closure. This confession, while revealing, has opened the door to numerous ongoing investigations aimed at verifying his claims and providing closure to the families devastated by these heinous crimes.