Carl Patton

Carl Millard Patton, Jr. (born 1949) is an American serial killer who committed five murders across Georgia from 1973 to 1977 with multiple accomplices. He was linked to them with the help of DNA in 2003, subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Little is known of Patton's background. Born in 1949, he spent most of his life Georgia, having lived in DeKalb, Clayton and Henry counties. In 1968, he married a woman named Norma, with whom he would have two daughters - one in 1970, and another in 1977. In the 1970s, Patton learned a number of trades in the construction industry, working in the field until his final arrest. In mid-1983, he was arrested for felony theft and convicted of the charge in November, receiving a year of imprisonment as a consequence. He did not serve the sentence in full, as Patton was granted parole and released on May 2, 1984. He is not known to have committed any crimes after this, and no criminal charges were filed against him until his 2003 arrest. In late 1998, Patton's youngest daughter, 21-year-old Melissa Wolfenbarger, went missing in Atlanta. On April 29, 1999, her severed head was found wrapped up in a garbage bag in a dumpster near her home. On June 3, her dismembered remains were found in black trash bags in another dumpster, but her torso was never found. The remains went unidentified until 2003, after her father's arrest. By early 2003, Patton and his wife had moved to Locust Grove, where he worked as a roofer. On February 23 of that year, Patton was arrested for the murder of 31-year-old Liddie Matthew Evans, who had been murdered in December 1977, after a DNA match linked him to the crime scene. Minutes after his arrest, Norma Patton told the officers that she was willing to testify against her husband in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The DeKalb County Prosecutor's Office made a plea deal with her in which they would drop all accessory to murder charges, in exchange for Norma revealing that her husband and a friend of his, firefighter Joe Cleveland, were responsible for several murders dating back to late 1977.