A prosecutor who spent more than 40 years convicting killers, including Wayne Williams in Atlanta’s infamous child murders, died Thursday at his Cumming home. Jack Edward Mallard was 81.
Nicknamed “Blood” by a public defender for waving gruesome crime scene photos in front of jurors, Mallard prosecuted numerous killers in Fulton, Cobb and Forsyth counties.
Among others he prosecuted were Atlanta lawyer Fred Tokars, convicted of the murder-for-hire of his wife; Andrew Grant DeYoung, who fatally stabbed his parents and teenage sister; serial rapist Terry Thaddeus Greenway; and Lynn Turner, who lured two law enforcement officers into her life and then killed them for their money by poisoning them with antifreeze.
Prosecutors painted Turner as the classic black widow.
“She had a taste for caviar and resources for peanuts,” Mallard told jurors. “This case is about lust, greed and murder — one woman and two men.”
In a 2010 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mallard discussed the book he wrote about the Williams case, titled “The Atlanta Child Murders: the Night Stalker.”
“As a longtime prosecutor, what I would do is map out a trial plan, like writing a screenplay; everybody has a part,” Mallard said. “If you work up the right trial plan, then you expect things to go as you planned it. This trial went according to plan.”
Williams, who was on the stand nearly three days, received a life sentence for killing two of the victims, but he was implicated in at least a dozen others.
Mallard published a second book in 2012 titled “Two Faces of a Serial Rapist.”
Born in Jesup, Mallard received his law degree from Woodrow Wilson College of Law and was admitted to the Georgia State Bar in 1966.
Jack is survived by his wife, Becky, and two children, Jack Jr. and Anne Marie Neubert of Cumming; four grandchildren; three step-children; two step-grandchildren; siblings, Gracie Johnson and Julie Webster of Brunswick, Ivalene Miles, Patsy Branch and Royal Mallard of Jesup, and Roger Mallard of Fayetteville.
Visitation for Mallard will be held at McDonald and Son Funeral Home on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. His service will be Sunday at Cumming First United Methodist Church at 2 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the American Cancer Society or the American Heart Association.
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