Mother says she wants to visit man who murdered her teen daughter

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — A mother says she wants to visit the man who murdered her teenage daughter.

Katie Hamlin was just 15-years-old when someone found her burned body by the side of a small bridge over a creek in Cherokee County.

Donna Hamlin moved to florida, but was in town this weekend for a victim's program. She reached out to Channel 2's Lauren Pozen and met up with her when she went back to her daughter's gravesite.

Hamlin said she now is on a mission to meet the man who took Katie's life.

“We really still to this day don’t really know what happened,” Hamlin said.

Monday was the first time Hamlin had been back to her daughter's gravesite in more than a year.

"She was raped, asphyxiated and died and they dumped her on the side of the road and set her on fire," Hamlin said.

Her daughter's convicted killer, Jamerson Mangrum is now serving a consectective prison sentence instead of concurrent one.

“We found out that one of the charges, actually two of them, they have to run by themselves, they don’t run together.”

She said she learned of the change last year when she reached out to the parole board because she had questions about his sentencing.

Hamlin said the parole board admitted there was a mistake in the paperwork and corrected it.

“Everyone has a chance for their file to go in front of parole, he will have that chance but they told me I shouldn’t be worrying," she said.

Hamlin says while she feels relief, she wants to visit Mangrum in prison for closure.

"I just want to tell him something," she said. “It is in my heart and I have to live with it that I have to forgive him I don’t forgive what he did, I forgive him from my heart. I have moved on.”

Hamlin says if Mangrum doesn't want to see her, just trying is good enough for her to get that closure she wants.

Cox Media Group