Wayne Leroy Gross, 52, was killed in Marietta, Georgia, on December 16, 1995, in an attack that began inside the Cobb County home where he and his wife had been housing a guest. Gross, a Navy veteran with earlier ties to Kansas, had once befriended a Turkish national named Yucel Ucak while living in Turkey. Ucak later stayed as a guest with the Grosses in Georgia, but by December 1995 Wayne Gross had asked him to leave after Linda Gross grew uneasy with Ucak’s behavior.

According to the court record, Ucak shot and stabbed Gross; Gross suffered numerous stab wounds and died from a gunshot wound to the chest. Ucak also fired at Linda Gross as she escaped by jumping from a second-story window and shot one of the responding officers. Ucak was indicted on March 8, 1996; on November 5, 1997, a jury found him guilty but mentally ill of felony murder, aggravated assault, and aggravated assault on a police officer. The trial court imposed life for the murder plus consecutive 20-year terms on the aggravated assault counts. Appeals raising ineffective assistance, evidentiary, and jury-instruction claims were rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2001.

If anyone knew Wayne Gross, his family, or had contact with the Gross household in the mid-1990s, information could still clarify the circumstances that led to this violent betrayal.