In 1996, Sharron Hammack was a pregnant mother of two when she was raped and murdered by Garry Artman.
The 29-year-old’s body was discovered after being dumped alongside a road in Caledonia Township, Michigan, near Grand Rapids.
Hammack’s loved ones finally got a chance to confront Artman this week for the brutal crime, in which she was sexually assaulted, stabbed, hog-tied and then fatally strangled.
“I hope you rot in hell,” Hammack’s sister, Tina DeYoung, told Artman during a sentencing hearing on Thursday, according to WOOD-TV.
“I hope you get everything that’s coming to you. You killed my sister and my nephew that was inside her body.”
Another Hammack sister, Terri Navitskas, also expressed the decades of grief and pain that she and her family have endured.
“You’re not even a person!” Navitskas yelled at Artman, according to WOOD-TV. “You’re not a man. You’re not a person. You’re nothing but a piece of garbage.”
Artman, 65, was a truck driver from Florida at the time he attacked Hammack. Authorities believe he may be a serial killer, in part because there were 11 other killings around the same time that have similarities to how Hammack died.
At Thursday’s hearing, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Scott Noto sentenced Artman to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A jury in September convicted him of open murder, felony murder and first-degree criminal sexual conduct in connection with Hammack’s death, according to Fox 17.
Artman has a long history of violence toward women. He was convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl and threatening to kill her in 1980. He also faces a murder charge in Maryland in connection with the death of 24-year-old Dusty Shuck, who was found alongside an interstate in 2006, WZZM-TV reports.
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[Feature Photo: Sharron Hammack/Family Handout]
