Garrison arrested immediately after his release from prison

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- A man released from a North Carolina prison<br>today was immediately arrested by North Carolina's State Bureau of<br>Investigation in connection with the murder of a 13-year-old

Friday, October 22nd 1999, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- A man released from a North Carolina prison
today was immediately arrested by North Carolina's State Bureau of
Investigation in connection with the murder of a 13-year-old boy 10
years ago in Oklahoma.

Wayne Henry Garrison was released from the Columbus Correctional
Institute about 10 a.m. today and was arrested by the SBI as he was
leaving the facility, said Anna Turnage, with the North Carolina
Department of Corrections.

As a teen-ager, Garrison killed two children in Tulsa, one of
them his young cousin. Authorities now suspect him in the slaying
of Justin Wiles.

Justin was reported missing in June 1989 when he didn't come
home from mowing lawns. He was last seen in his neighborhood about
a block from Garrison's house.

Parts of his body were discovered four days later at a lake near
Bixby, Okla.

Following Justin's death, Garrison, now 40, moved to North
Carolina, where he was sentenced in 1997 to 31/2 years in prison for
the abduction and drugging of an 11-year-old Cabarrus County. He
pleaded guilty to two counts of giving prescription painkillers to
a minor and one count of abduction of a minor.

Investigators there have said that they feared the boy might
have been killed if deputies had not gone to Garrison's mobile home
looking for him, reports said.

Police and prosecutors have stopped short of saying charges
would be filed in the Wiles case.

Garrison is being held at the Columbus County Jail, awaiting an
extradition hearing that would bring him to Oklahoma.

Tulsa attorney Art Fleak delivered a letter to the Tulsa Police
Department notifying them that Garrison did not want to be
interviewed by police.

"He is exercising his right to remain silent," Fleak said.
"He does not want to be tricked and have his words twisted in some
way."

Fleak said Garrison denies killing the boy.

In 1972, Garrison was ordered confined to a mental hospital
after his 4-year-old cousin was found strangled under a house.
Garrison had faced a juvenile murder petition, but the charge was
reduced to a "child in need of supervision," and he was placed in
the hospital for psychiatric treatment.

In 1974, while on a pass from the hospital, he killed 3-year-old
Craig Neal, whose body was found underneath Garrison's mother's
home.

Garrison pleaded guilty the next year to a reduced charge of
involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison
for Craig's slaying.

He was 17 years old and had spent less than two years in the
Oklahoma State Reformatory when he was released in 1977.

Fleak said Garrison does not fit the definition of a serial
killer.

"He went 15 years without getting in a bit of trouble. That is
not the classic serial killer," Fleak said.

Garrison had been scheduled to be paroled to a halfway house in
Greensboro, N.C. and was supposed to serve nine months of
supervised probation once he was released.