Convicted murderer Garland Charles Shaffer dies in hospice while serving a life sentence
Garland Charles Shaffer, an inmate at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, died of natural causes on Saturday while in hospice care, according to a news release from the Iowa Department of Corrections. He was 96.
Shaffer pled guilty to first-degree murder in November 1994 for the strangulation death of Clara Baker in Des Moines on June 26, 1994, according to reports from the Des Moines Register. Law enforcement officials found her body in Madison County in a ravine under an abandoned chair.
Polk County prosecutors at the time dismissed two charges of first-degree kidnapping. Shaffer was also accused of first-degree murder of Phillis King, a Missouri woman whose body was discovered in Clark County in northeast Missouri.
The plea bargain spared Shaffer from the death penalty in Missouri. He was sentenced in Iowa to life without parole.
During Shaffer’s confession in court, he admitted that he planned to kill King, but decided to kill Baker when she came over to help King, who was concerned about how Shaffer was treating two women who lived in her neighboring apartment, the Register reported. Shaffer confessed that he strangled Baker with an extension cord.
Shaffer drove King across the Missouri state line and beat her to death with a board, dumping her body in a wooded area near Kahoka, Missouri.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Convicted killer Garland Shaffer dies in prison amid life sentence
