Cherokee County

Family hopes new sketches will give new leads in abduction, killing of man

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — A Cherokee County hopes new sketches from state investigators will lead to an arrest in their loved one’s murder.

Police say he was kidnapped, shot and left for dead on the side of Interstate 75 in January 2016.

“It was just like someone ripped my heart out because he was just … He was someone I loved,” Gary McCoy said about the killing of his brother, Herbert “Buster” Perkinson III.

McCoy told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that his family and friends called his brother the third Buster.

“He was one of eight, and he was just the life of the party,” McCoy told Winne.

He now hopes sketches of two men drawn by a Georgia Bureau of Investigation forensic artist will generate information that will help investigators catch Perkinson’s killers.


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GBI Agent Bahan Rich said that about 5 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2016, two men surprised Perkinson and two friends in his driveway in Emerson, in Bartow County, and abducted him.

Soon after, he was found about three miles away, north of Exit 277 on I-75 south, just inside Cherokee County.

Rich said Perkinson later died of a gunshot wound at a hospital.

“We believe that it is someone that is very familiar with our victim,” Rich told Winne.

Rich said the two suspects in the sketches may be from the Bartow or north Cobb County area, and one avenue of investigation involves the shadowy underground of dog-fighting.

Rich told Winne that Perkinson sold pit bulls.

“The family, we still hurt every day. Put yourself in our position,” McCoy said.

Rich says one suspect has a medium complexion, may be between 30 and 40 years old, is about six feet tall and may have had a mustache.

The other suspect has a slightly darker complexion, also may be between 30 and 40 years old and could be slightly taller.

“We really have a very good artist,” Rich told Winne.

GBI forensic artist Kelly Lawson said God guides her hand in a way that often results in uncanny matches between her drawings and the actual suspects once they are eventually caught, and she hopes the drawings in this case help the family get answers.

“We still have faith. We are a family of faith that he or she will be brought to justice,” McCoy told Winne.