Emmanuel Hammond Set For Execution in preschool teacher's slaying

ATLANTA -- The man who killed an Atlanta preschool fitness teacher in a high-profile case is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 25, state officials said Thursday.

Emmanuel Hammond was convicted in the July 1988 abduction and murder of 27-year-old Julie Love of Atlanta. Love was raped, bound with coat hangers and shot in the head.

Her disappearance led to a highly publicized 13-month search that ended when authorities found her body in a trash dump after Hammond's girlfriend gave them details about the murder.

This is how the killing took place, according to court records:

Hammond spotted Love walking on a busy northwest Atlanta road the night of July 11, 1988, after she ran out of gas. After she refused to get in the car, he jumped out, grabbed Love and threw her in the back. He then beat her with a sawed-off shotgun after they failed to get money from her ATM cards, and a co-defendant raped her.

Hammond then got clothes hangers and a sheet from the trunk of the car and used them to bind Love. He tied her hands behind her back and wrapped a sheet around her body and tried to strangle her before she broke free. Hammond then took Love into the woods, and a few minutes later a co-defendant heard a gunshot.

Hammond later told his girlfriend that he "blew the side of her face off" and dumped her body in a trash pile, she testified in court. The sawed-off shotgun was recovered, as were Love's earrings, which were pawned for $140.

Prosecutors said Hammond had struck before. They say he had kidnapped and robbed or attempted to rob young women on three previous occasions. He stabbed one of the women numerous times and left her for dead on a trash pile, they said.

Hammond was convicted of Love's murder in March 1990 and sentenced to death a day later. He filed appeals claiming that his trial attoey was ineffective, but they were rejected after a four-day hearing in 1993. And state and federal courts have since rejected other appeals.

Love's case is also notorious for another reason: It was linked to the mail bomb assassinations of a federal judge and a lawyer. A letter from a group claiming responsibility of the deaths of 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Vance and Savannah attoey Robert Robinson claimed the attacks were motivated by outrage over Love's slaying.