Man spent 20 years in prison in deaths of GA deacon and wife. Now, new suspect charged
Nearly four decades after authorities say a deacon and his wife were shot to death inside a south Georgia church, a new suspect has been charged, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Erik Kristensen Sparre, 61, was arrested in connection with the 1985 killings of Harold and Thelma Swain, the GBI said in a Dec. 9 news release.
The deacon and his wife were fatally shot during Bible study at the Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Waverly, the Georgia Innocence Project said in a news release. The case was closed in 2003 after another man, Dennis Perry, was convicted in the killings, according to the GBI.
Perry was jailed in 2000. However, new evidence in 2020 prompted a second look at the decades-old case, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, and Perry was released from prison.
A judge granted a motion to dismiss his charges in 2021, nearly 20 years after he was found guilty in the Swains’ deaths, as reported by the AJC and The New York Times.
“The fact that they sought the death penalty on a case with incredibly weak evidence, and involving extensive misconduct, is an indictment on the death penalty,” Clare Gilbert, executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project, which worked on Perry’s case, told The New York Times.
“Thank God Dennis Perry wasn’t executed before anybody found this out,” Gilbert said, according to the outlet.
Sparre was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated assault, the GBI said. Authorities didn’t release additional details, including a possible motive for the killings.
Investigators did not say if or how Sparre and the victims knew each other.
The GBI declined to release additional details, citing the ongoing investigation
Sparre’s arrest comes years after authorities raided his Waynesville home in 2020.
“The search was conducted as part of the ongoing investigation,” agents said at the time, adding that they were still trying to “determine what involvement Erik Sparre had in the Swain’s deaths.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the GBI regional investigative office in Kingsland at 912-729-6198.
Waverly is about a 60-mile drive north from Jacksonville, Florida.
This story was originally published December 10, 2024 at 12:02 PM with the headline "Man spent 20 years in prison in deaths of GA deacon and wife. Now, new suspect charged."