Gary Ray Bowles Biography
Gary Ray Bowles was an American serial killer who was sentenced to death for the murder of six men in 1994. He was executed on August 22, 2019.
Gary Ray Bowles Age
Bowles was born on January 25, 1962 in Clifton Forge, Virginia, United States. At the time of his execution on August 22, 2019 he was 57 years old.
Gary Ray Bowles Family
Bowles who was born in Clifton Forge, Virginia, and raised in Rupert, West Virginia is the son of “Frank” who worked as a coal miner. His father died from Black Lung Disease six months before, his mother, Frances remarried several times.
Gary Ray Bowles Early life
Bowles was abused by his second stepfather, a violent alcoholic who also abused his mother and older brother. The abuse continued until, at the age of 13, Gary fought back and severely injured his stepfather. Bowles left home soon after, angered by his mother’s decision to remain in the marriage. He was homeless for the next few years, earning money as a prostitute.
In 1982, Bowles was arrested for beating and sexually assaulting his girlfriend, and was sentenced to six years in prison. In 1991, after his release from prison, Bowles was convicted of unarmed robbery in the theft of an elderly woman’s purse, a crime for which he was sentenced to four more years in prison; he was released in two.
Gary Ray Bowles Murders
On March 15th, 1994, Bowles killed his first known victim, John Hardy Roberts, aged 59, who had offered him a temporary place to live in Daytona Beach, Florida. Gary beat and strangled him to death, and then stole his credit card. Police soon considered him a suspect after finding his fingerprints and probation records at the crime scene.
Over the next six months, he murdered five other men: David Harman, aged 38, Alverson Carter Jr., aged 47, Milton Bradley, aged 72, and Albert Morris, aged 38, in Nassau County, Florida; Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Wheaton, Montgomery County, Maryland.
Bowles’ typical modus operandi was to prostitute himself to his victims before beating and strangling them, and stealing their credit cards. While on the run, he was put on the FBI’s list of the country’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives for his four known victims. Finally, on October 22, 1995, he was arrested for the murder of Walter Jamelle “Jay” Hinton, and confessed to all six murders.
Following his arrest for the murders, Gary Ray Bowles told police that following his 1991 release from prison he had moved to Daytona Beach, and moved in with a girlfriend and resumed working as a prostitute. According to Bowles, his girlfriend became pregnant but then had an abortion after she learned that Bowles was a sex worker. He told police officers that he blamed gay men for the abortion, and this led him to becoming a murderer.
Gary Ray Bowles Aftermath
In May 1996, Gary Ray pleaded guilty to the Nov. 17, 1994, slaying of Walter Jammell Hinton in Jacksonville, who died after Bowles hit his head with a 40-pound steppingstone while Hinton was sleeping and stuffed a towel down his throat during the struggle. He received the death penalty for Hinton’s murder.
In August 1997, while sitting on death row for the slaying of Hinton, Bowles pleaded guilty to beating and strangling Roberts in 1994.
He was found guilty of three counts of murder and sentenced to death, but the sentence was reversed by the Florida Supreme Court, when they determined that the court erred by allowing the jury to hear that Bowles hated homosexuals and that the victim was gay. Bowles was given a new sentencing hearing, and in 1999 again received the death penalty. He is held in Florida State Prison awaiting execution.
Gary Ray Bowles Execution
Gary Ray Bowles was executed on August 22, 2019.
Gary Ray Bowles News
Gary Ray Bowles: Death row serial killer executed by lethal injection despite last-minute plea
A serial killer who admitted killing six gay men in just eight-months in the US east coast has been executed.
Gary Ray Bowles was given a lethal injection in Florida late Thursday after more than 20 years on death row.
The 57-year-old bludgeoned and suffocated his victims, who were spread from Maryland in the north to Florida in the south, during his grisly 1994 crime spree.
He was nicknamed the I-95 Killer because he appeared to target men living near the interstate highway which spans the eastern seaboard.
In one case, the one-time male prostitute dropped a 40-pound concrete block on the head of Walter Hinton, 47, who had invited him to stay in his Jacksonville trailer. In another, he attacked 38-year-old Albert Morris as they left a bar together in New York state. In all cases, his victims were found with objects stuffed down their throat – including a sex toy, leaves and a towel. In most, they were also robbed.
It is believed all six – Hinton and Morris, as well as John Hardy Roberts, 59, Milton Bradley, 72, Alverson Carter Junior, 47, and David Jarman, 38 – had been befriended by Bowles before he took their life.
He later told authorities he blamed gay men for his girlfriend leaving him and having an abortion after she found out he had been having sex with males for money.
He was convicted of three murders in 1996 and later admitted another three.
His execution at the state’s death chamber in Raiford came 23 years after he was first placed on death row. A last-minute plea by lawyers claiming Bowles was too intellectually disabled to be executed was rejected by the US Supreme Court.
Before he was put to death, he had a final meal of cheeseburgers, french fries and bacon.
He offered no final words but wrote in a handwritten statement that he regretted what he had done.
“I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering I have caused,” he wrote. “I hope my death eases your pain. I want to tell my mother that I am also sorry for my actions. Having to deal with your son being called a monster is terrible. I’m so very sorry. I never wanted this to be my life. You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a serial killer.”
Bowles, who originally came from West Virginia, became the 99th inmate to be put to death in Florida since 1976 when the death penalty was restored.
He is the 13th person to be executed in the US this year.
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk
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