In the pre-dawn stillness of July 10, 1980, a blue Dodge sedan carrying a sleeping family from Kentucky was a quiet vessel of dreams interrupted. Inside, at a rest area off Interstate 75 near the small town of Lenox, Georgia, were Katie Christine Back, a 28-year-old Caucasian female, and her husband, David Hardin, 22. Tucked in the back seat were their three young children and David’s niece, all returning from a sun-soaked vacation in Daytona Beach, Florida. The gentle hum of the interstate was a lullaby that would soon be shattered by an act of inexplicable violence.
As the family slept, other travelers pulled into the rest stop. One witness, unable to sleep, sat on the hood of her car and watched as a dark-colored semi-truck, pulling an empty, yellow flat-bed trailer, circled the car parking lot several times before parking. The driver, a man later identified as William Howard Putman, an Alabama truck driver, exited his cab and walked toward the sleeping family's car.
What happened next was a sudden and brutal intrusion into the peaceful night.
Without warning, Putman fired a. 38 caliber revolver, fatally wounding David Hardin as he slept in the driver's seat. The loud report woke the others in the car. Putman then moved to the passenger side where he grabbed Katie and demanded she come with him. In a moment of fierce defiance, she refused, screaming for her dying husband. In response to her resistance, Putman shot her in the head. He then reached into the car, took something from his victims, and fled north in his truck. David's 14-year-old niece, who had been asleep in the back, was a terrified witness to the horror.
The alert was sounded immediately, with law enforcement agencies on the lookout for a dark-colored semi-truck with a yellow flat-bed trailer. It wasn't long before a truck matching the description was spotted at another rest area further up I-75 in Dooly County. Inside was William Howard Putman. A search of his truck uncovered David Hardin's wallet and the. 38 caliber revolver used in the killings. The weapon would prove to be the key that unlocked a string of violence.
Ballistics testing confirmed that the bullets that killed Katie and David were fired from Putman’s gun. The same weapon was also linked to the murder of another man, William Gerald Hodges, who had been found dead earlier that same night at a truck stop in Valdosta. It became clear that Putman was on a deadly spree through South Georgia.
William Howard Putman was tried and convicted for the murders of Katie Back and David Hardin. In September 1982, a Cook County jury sentenced him to death for each of the murders. He had also been convicted and sentenced to life for the murder of William Hodges. For more than two decades, Putman sat on death row, his appeals winding their way through the legal system.
The case of Katie Back and David Hardin did not languish in the cold case files. The evidence was strong, the perpetrator was caught, and the legal process, though lengthy, ran its course. On November 13, 2002, William Howard Putman was executed by lethal injection for the senseless murders that had ended a family's vacation and stolen the lives of a young couple. The final chapter of this tragic story closed with the execution of the man responsible, bringing a measure of justice to the families of his victims.
