A judge freed him early. Nine months later, she was dead.
In 1999, Michael Garrett was sentenced to 24 years in prison for stalking and attacking Sylvia Matthews. In March 2021, a D.C. judge granted him compassionate release. Nine months later, after two separate 911 calls that same morning, Matthews was found dying at the bottom of her own basement stairs — in the exact spot where Garrett had been arrested 22 years earlier.
Garrett and Matthews first met at a D.C. jail in the 1990s. What followed was decades of documented violence: a 1998 hammer attack, the 1999 conviction and 24-year sentence, and years later a compassionate-release petition that prosecutors objected to but a judge granted anyway in March 2021, citing Garrett’s age and health. Nine months after his release, Matthews was dead, killed in her own home.
Michael Garrett pleaded guilty to second-degree murder while armed and was sentenced on September 11, 2026 to 25 years in prison, plus 5 years of supervised release, for Sylvia Matthews’ December 3, 2021 murder — the same woman he had already been convicted of stalking and assaulting more than two decades earlier. At sentencing, a U.S. Attorney said Garrett’s earlier release “gave him the opportunity to come out and kill Sylvia.”
The full documentary above covers the case in depth: the decades of warning signs, the compassionate-release decision itself, and the sentencing hearing that closed out the case.
Related reading
No well-reviewed book has been written about this specific case. For background on domestic violence, stalking, and the survivors who live with it: a tagged Amazon search.
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Sources
U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia press release, “D.C. Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Murdering Same Woman He Was Previously Convicted of Assaulting” (Sept. 17, 2026); WUSA9 investigative reporting, “‘Failed by the system’ | The life and death of DC stalking victim, Sylvia Matthews”; WUSA9, “Man sentenced for killing woman he was previously imprisoned for stalking and assaulting”; Daily Voice, “Michael Garrett Sentenced For Murder Of Sylvia Matthews.”
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