Wichita man who searched obits, robbed people’s homes during funerals gets prison
A 50-year-old Wichita man has been sentenced to prison after using online obituary postings to plan residential burglaries that happened from July to November 2023.
Gary Steven Garrett was sentenced Thursday to 16 1/2 years, with 120 months to be served in prison and 78 months in the Sedgwick County Jail, Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Dan Dillon said Thursday.
Of the original 27 counts against him, Garrett was sentenced on a total of 25 — a judge dismissed two theft counts because they were duplicates.
The charges included three residential burglaries, one attempted residential burglary, one business burglary and multiple counts of theft, forgery and identity theft, according to an August news release from the DA’s office.
Victims reported losing financial documents, guns and electronics in the residential burglaries, some of which occurred while the families were at the funerals of family members.
A Wichita police detective testified that Garrett’s phone showed online searches of obituaries that corresponded to the burglary locations across the city from July to November of 2023.
“Garrett also was convicted of using fake IDs to rent and purchase several vehicles during the same time frame,” the news release said. “One of the vehicles rented by Garrett had a GPS location device that placed the vehicle at the scene of several of the burglaries, according to testimony in the trial.”
More than 40 witnesses testified at Garrett’s six-day jury trial in August. Garrett has a long criminal history, with crimes similar to those he was found guilty of earlier this year.
Garrett has 22 previous convictions in Kansas, with 17 of those in Sedgwick County, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records. The convictions range from 1994 to 2011 and include aggravated indecent liberties with a child, arson, six counts of making a false writing, six counts of forgery, five counts of theft and two counts of identify theft, the Eagle reported.
He has 51 disciplinary reports from his time in prison, with 17 of those being for contraband, KDOC records show. He was last released from prison in 2012.
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 5:21 PM.