Wichita man sentenced for using obituaries to plan burglaries

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – A Wichita man was sentenced to prison use of online obituaries to plan burglaries.

Gary Garrett was sentenced to 120 months in prison and 78 months in the Sedgwick County Jail after being found guilty in three separate cases in August on a total of 27 charges. The counts include three residential burglaries, one commercial burglary and multiple counts of theft, forgery and identity theft.

Garrett, 50, was convicted on 25 counts; the judge dismissed two counts of theft because they were duplicitous. His sentences total 16 1/2 years.

Victims told police they lost financial documents, weapons and electronics in the home burglaries, some of which occurred while the families were at a funeral service for relatives.

When Garrett was arrested in a Walmart parking lot last November, he had a driver’s license of a person whose obituary he had likely found online. A Wichita Police Department burglary detective testified that a download of Garrett’s phone showed online searches for obituaries that matched burglary locations in the city from July to November 2023.

Garrett was also convicted of using fake IDs to rent and purchase multiple vehicles during the same period. One of the vehicles Garrett rented had a GPS location device that placed the vehicle at the scene of several burglaries, according to testimony at the trial.