Wichita man searched obits online, robbed homes during funeral. He’s guilty of 27 counts

A jury found a 50-year-old Wichita man guilty of 27 counts, including searching obituaries online and robbing the deceased person’s homes during the funerals.

Gary Steven Garrett will be sentenced Oct. 24. He has been in Sedgwick County Jail since Nov. 9 .

Garrett has a long criminal history, with crimes similar to those he was found guilty of by a jury on Monday after a six-day trial.

The 27 counts include “three residential burglaries, one attempted residential burglary, one business burglary and multiple counts of theft, forgery and identity theft,” Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Dan Dillon said in a news release Wednesday.

The charges included using the Walmart Visa card of a deceased couple, according to court documents.

“Victims reported losing financial documents, guns and electronics in the residential burglaries, some of which occurred while the families were at the funeral services for their deceased family members,” Dillon said.

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, according to the news release.

“Garrett also was convicted of using fake IDs to rent and purchase several vehicles during the same time frame,” the news release says. “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.”

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.

He has 51 disciplinary reports from his time in prison, with 17 of those being contraband, KDOC records show. He was last released from prison in 2012.