A Hall County man convicted of three deaths in three decades was laid to rest Wednesday after dying in prison five years into a life sentence.

Raymond Woodring, 63, died Saturday at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Peggy Chapman confirmed. Woodring died from natural causes, she said.

In March 2004, Woodring walked into the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and confessed to the bludgeoning death of his wife, 48-year-old Wanda Corbin.

Corbin was killed with a blunt object and hidden in a ravine in a wooded area off Ga. 52 in North Hall. Authorities suspected that Woodring, who was a carpenter, used a hammer in the killing.

Woodring previously served eight years of a 20-year prison sentence for killing a man with a hammer in 1970. A Hall County rejected a murder charge but found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter in that case.

Woodring served an additional year for escaping from Georgia State Prison, a maximum security facility.

In 1989, Woodring was convicted of vehicular homicide in Jackson County and served a year in prison. Details of that conviction were not available.

Under parole policies in effect at the time of his conviction, Woodring would have been eligible for parole consideration in 2018.