A southeast Georgia man was arrested and charged in the 1985 murder of a couple at a black church after the original suspect — who served 20 years behind bars — was acquitted based on DNA evidence, authorities said.
Erik Kristensen Sparre, 61, was jailed on charges of murder and aggravated assault in the killings of Harold and Thelma Swain, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a news release Monday. Sparre was arrested nearly four decades after the couple was fatally shot at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in coastal Camden County.
Sparre became the focus of a renewed investigation into the Swains’ deaths after authorities concluded they had initially prosecuted the wrong man.
Dennis Perry was sentenced to life in prison when a jury convicted him of murdering the Swains in 2003. He spent 20 years in prison before a Supreme Court judge ordered a retrial in 2020. The judge dismissed all charges against Perry in 2021 after prosecutors asked for the case to be dropped.
Georgia Innocence Project
Investigators and courts took another look at the case after attorneys from the Georgia Innocence Project tested DNA from hairs found in the hinge of glasses left next to the victims’ bodies. They said the DNA matched Sparre, who was once considered a suspect, and not Perry.
Meanwhile, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Sparre’s alibi that he was working at a grocery store when the murders occurred could not be true. The newspaper also raised doubts about Perry’s conviction, noting that jurors were never told that a key witness had been offered a $12,000 reward before testifying.
Sparre’s ex-wife, Emily Head, told police in 1986 that he had confessed to the killings in a telephone message her family recorded, the newspaper previously reported.
The GBI said Sparre was arrested in Waynesville, where he lives, about 90 miles southwest of Savannah, Georgia, and booked into the Camden County Jail. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated assault, according to jail records.
Sparre has previously denied that he killed the Swains. A phone number for Sparre did not work Tuesday and it was not immediately known whether he had an attorney to represent him.
According to the Georgia Innocence Project, the original suspect, Perry, has been spending time with this woman since his release from prison and is reconnecting with family and friends.
“It took a long time, but I never gave up,” Perry told the organization after his acquittal in 2021. “This charge has been hanging over me for over twenty years and it is such a relief that I finally don’t have to worry about it. be accused of this terrible case.”
