The latest on a Middle GA man charged with shooting at police, kidnapping and murder
Thomas Gary Palmer, a Macon-area man who in the spring of 2017 shot and killed his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend and then reportedly kidnapped her and opened fire on sheriff’s deputies, pleaded guilty to murder last week.
Palmer, 61, who entered his plea Friday in Crawford County Superior Court, was sentenced to life in prison — an automatic 30-year term, which means he won’t be eligible for parole until the late 2040s.
The episode that landed him in trouble began the night of April 7, 2017.
A murder and kidnapping
Law enforcement officials have since said Palmer, who was also accused of growing what cops described as “a fairly decent quantity” of marijuana in a drug operation based at his Lizella home, killed Kenneth Nolan Hutcheson at Hutcheson’s house on Beryln Drive north of Byron.
Palmer’s former girlfriend, who was with Hutcheson, 55, that night, had been due in court the next morning regarding a restraining order against Palmer, prosecutors said in a statement sent to news outlets Monday.
“At some point during the night, Palmer had arrived at the house and waited for the couple to return,” the statement continued. “Hutcheson’s girlfriend heard a gunshot after walking up the steps to the house. When she turned around, she saw Hutcheson on the ground and Palmer with a gun. Palmer struck her with the gun and forced her into Hutcheson’s truck.”
Palmer then took the woman to neighboring Bibb and Monroe counties, and when he stepped out of the truck in Monroe, the woman drove off and alerted the authorities.
A familiar location
It was then, about 5 a.m. on April 8, that Monroe sheriff’s deputies were sent to check on the woman at a Marathon Gas Station in Bolingbroke near the northern intersection of Interstate 75 and I-475.
She said she had escaped from Palmer nearby at Harrison and Klopfer roads.
From there, the search was on for Palmer, who was said to be walking along a country road.
The area wasn’t far from where he and a former wife had lived in the late 1990s when Palmer abducted her and was sent to prison for eight years for false imprisonment.
In the minutes after the reported kidnapping in 2017, Palmer was spotted by a trio of deputies and he allegedly opened fire on them. The deputies shot back. No one was seriously wounded and Palmer surrendered.
The status of the charges against Palmer for allegedly shooting at the deputies and for the alleged drug operation in Bibb was not immediately available.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 11:50 AM.