Bobby Jack Fowler was never tried for a killing. He was an American laborer who spent years moving between states and, for a time in 1974, across the border into British Columbia. In 1996 a court in Lincoln County, Oregon, convicted him of kidnapping, assault and attempted rape, and he died in an Oregon prison in 2006, about ten years into a 16-year sentence. The killings associated with his name are attributions made after his death, by police in Canada and prosecutors in Oregon, and none has been the subject of a charge or a verdict.
On September 25, 2012, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced at a news conference in Surrey, British Columbia, that DNA evidence linked Fowler to the 1974 killing of Colleen MacMillen, a 16-year-old from Lac La Hache. The announcement came from Project E-PANA, the RCMP unit that investigates the deaths of women along highways in the British Columbia Interior. The same day the RCMP said he was a strong suspect in two further cases from 1973, and the District Attorney of Lincoln County, Oregon, said he was a suspect or person of interest in four unsolved deaths in his own county. What the record supports is a narrow set of facts: a criminal history in several American states, one Oregon conviction, a death in custody, and a series of statements by agencies that named him after he could no longer answer them.
Little is on record about Fowler's early life. Police described him in 2012 as born in Texas, and he was 66 when he died in 2006. The year and place of his birth, his family and his schooling are not on record.
What they did describe is an adult life of casual work and movement. RCMP investigators said he was a transient laborer who worked as a general laborer and roofer, rented rooms or stayed in motels, and frequented bars and restaurants. Global News, summarizing the police account, said he was a man who could be violent toward men as well as women. At a news conference in Prince George, an RCMP staff sergeant, Wayne Clary, said Fowler could be very social but that his personality could change and become extremely violent.
Police in Canada said he had no criminal record there. His record in the United States was another matter. Investigators told reporters that he had run-ins with the law in Ohio, California, Oregon and Texas, and Global News listed a record that included attempted murder, assault, sexual assault, kidnapping and arson. CTV News reported that he had served two years in Texas for assaulting a 67-year-old woman. The RCMP's Inspector Gary Shinkaruk said that there was a stretch of time in the United States when Fowler had no contact with law enforcement, and that determining where he was during it, and what he did in British Columbia, had been the central difficulty for investigators.
One entry in his record concerns a killing charge, and it ended without a murder conviction. CBC News reported in 2013 that in 1969 he was charged in Texas with two counts of murder and was convicted only of a lesser offence. The court, the people involved and the sentence are not on record. The outcome as reported is a conviction for the lesser offence and no conviction for either murder count.
The RCMP said Fowler worked in Prince George in 1974 for a roofing company. Police learned of the job, they said, from a single line in a Tennessee parole report. The company had closed, and its records, according to the Prince George Citizen, had been destroyed in a flood the year before the announcement; its former owners were described by police as extremely cooperative. Police said he may have worked there only briefly. In 2012 they asked anyone who had met Fowler, worked with him or had dealings with the company to call the E-PANA tip line.
Fowler had no Canadian criminal record. According to The Tyee, police sent his fingerprints to Ottawa to see whether he had lived in Canada under another name, and nothing came back. Police also told reporters they believed he had crossed the border between the two countries over a period of years before his imprisonment, and that he was not on the radar of Canadian investigators before the DNA result.
Fowler was arrested in Newport, Oregon, in June 1995, after an incident involving a woman. He was not a suspect in any homicide at that time. In 1996 he was convicted in Lincoln County of kidnapping, assault and attempted rape. The counts and statutes are not on record.
The sentence was reported as 16 years in the Associated Press account and in Global News. The Prince George Citizen gave it as 195 months, which is 16 years and 3 months, and Maclean's gave 10 years.
He served the sentence at the Snake River prison in Oregon, according to APTN News. He appealed. APTN reported that one of his filings, handwritten and addressed to a United States federal court, contained the sentence "No kidnapping took place." The outcome of the appeals is not on record, but the conviction stood, and it was in force when he died.
Fowler died in an Oregon prison in 2006. The Associated Press, Global News and CBC News gave his age as 66 and his cause of death as lung cancer, and the Prince George Citizen described the cancer as end-stage. The Canadian Press, through CP24, gave natural causes. He died with the Oregon sentence unfinished and with no charge against him in either country for any killing.
The RCMP's announcement was prepared a day ahead. On the Monday, E-PANA issued a release saying it would announce a significant development in efforts to solve the unsolved cases of at least 18 women along highways in the British Columbia Interior, and that it would make a plea for assistance to British Columbians, Canadians and Americans. It said families who might be affected had been notified, and that a representative from the United States would speak. It was the first time police had mentioned a possible American connection to the northern British Columbia cases.
On Tuesday, September 25, 2012, the news conference took place in Surrey, followed by others in Kamloops and Prince George on the Wednesday. The British Columbia Minister of Justice, Shirley Bond, issued a statement the same day about the latest developments in E-PANA, calling the work a very active, ongoing police investigation.
At the conference Inspector Shinkaruk said that DNA evidence linked Fowler to the 1974 killing of Colleen MacMillen. CTV Calgary quoted him as saying that Fowler was responsible for her murder. A deputy commissioner of the RCMP described the match as the oldest DNA match in Interpol's history. CTV Calgary reported that the Oregon State Police reported the match on May 3, 2012.
The announcement did not describe a charge, because none could be laid against a man who had died six years earlier. The language the RCMP used was the language of attribution.
E-PANA was created in 2005 to look at unsolved cases of women and girls along Highway 16, and it later took in cases on other Interior highways, among them Highways 5 and 97. By the time of the announcement the RCMP had collected 750 DNA samples, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. The 18 cases under review were thirteen homicide investigations and five other investigations.
Of those 18, the RCMP said Fowler had been eliminated as a suspect in eight. It called him a strong suspect in two others, the 1973 deaths of Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington, both 19. Shinkaruk, according to Maclean's, called him an incredibly strong suspect in those two. Other outlets reported that police regarded him as a possible suspect or person of interest in several more, the CBC giving the figure as up to ten and the Associated Press and Deseret News giving seven.
The RCMP acknowledged the difference between the cases. Staff Sergeant Clary said the police lacked the direct evidence in the Weys and Darlington cases that they had for MacMillen, and added, according to the Prince George Citizen, "Personally, I think it's him in the other two." The Canadian Encyclopedia notes that no conclusive evidence existed to convict him in either case.
The RCMP also stated that it did not believe one person was responsible for all 18. Shinkaruk said police strongly believed that a single offender was not behind the whole group, and Clary said E-PANA had found no evidence linking other cases and that its other suspects were in Canada. CBC News reported that police had strong persons of interest in three or four cases and that the others remained unsolved.
On the same Monday evening, the Lincoln County District Attorney, Rob Bovett, issued a release saying Fowler was a suspect in four other unsolved deaths of teenage girls in his county, two in a 1992 case and two in a 1995 case.
The Associated Press quoted the District Attorney more fully. On the 1995 case, in which two girls from Newport died, Bovett said: "He's a suspect in our 1995 case. I haven't linked him. He's a suspect." On the 1992 case, in which two young women died, the Associated Press said Fowler was a person of interest and quoted Bovett as saying that DNA evidence might not be obtainable. The AP also quoted Bovett as saying that the basis for suspicion was Fowler's history and his location, and Global News and other outlets carried Bovett's broader statement that Fowler was a suspect in a number of homicides in the United States and Canada between the 1970s and the 1990s.
Oregon officers were more guarded as time passed. In 2013 CBC News quoted Ron Benson, the Lincoln County investigator, as saying that Fowler had been all but eliminated as a suspect in the two 1995 deaths: "We're stalled right now until we find something new." A Tillamook County detective sergeant, Michelle Brewer, said in a 2019 account that Fowler had been mentioned as a possible suspect in a separate 1992 Tillamook County case, that there was no evidence either way, and that all that tied him to it was his presence in the Lincoln County area around that time.
A year after the announcement the RCMP said the investigation of Fowler was at a standstill. Clary told reporters, as Global News reported on September 26, 2013, and CBC News also reported, that hundreds of tips had come in since the public appeal and that none had panned out. "Unfortunately nothing panned out that would sort of further any of our investigations," he said, and he added: "I think, unfortunately, he may have taken this information to the grave with him."
Global News reported that police believed they had a suspect but not enough evidence to lay charges. By 2019, no charge or court finding on any killing had been announced by any agency.
The brother of Colleen MacMillen spoke after the conference. CBC News quoted him as saying that the news was a welcome relief; he noted that Fowler would never stand trial but took comfort that he had been in prison when he died. CTV Calgary reported that the family was stunned and grateful. Maclean's reported that the family was disappointed Fowler died before facing trial.
The following points are attributed, contested or unsettled, and none is a finding of a court.
The MacMillen case. The RCMP stated that DNA linked Fowler to her killing and that he was responsible. The statement is a police attribution made after his death. No charge was laid and no court has examined the evidence.
Weys and Darlington. The RCMP called him a strong suspect in both. Its own officer, Clary, said the direct evidence was lacking, and the Canadian Encyclopedia says no conclusive evidence existed.
The Oregon deaths. The District Attorney called Fowler a suspect in 1995 and a person of interest in 1992, and said he had not linked him. By 2013 an investigator said he had all but been eliminated in the 1995 case.
Other British Columbia cases. Seven or up to ten others were described as possible, depending on the outlet. None has been attributed to him by name beyond MacMillen, Weys and Darlington.
The figure of more than twenty deaths. A broadcaster's headline spoke of more than 20 deaths in the United States and Canada; the figure was not attributed to any agency, which spoke of 18 women in British Columbia and four deaths in Oregon.
Sentence length. The Oregon sentence was reported as 16 years, 195 months and 10 years.
Place of death. CTV Calgary placed his death in a Lincoln County prison and described a murder sentence; other sources, including the Associated Press and APTN, describe an Oregon prison, the Snake River institution and a sentence for the Newport offences.
1969: charged in Texas with two counts of murder; convicted of a lesser offence.
1973: Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington, both 19, die in British Columbia; the RCMP later calls Fowler a strong suspect in both.
1974: Colleen MacMillen, 16, dies in British Columbia; Fowler is working in Prince George.
1992: two young women die in Lincoln County, Oregon; the District Attorney later calls Fowler a person of interest.
June 1995: Fowler is arrested in Newport, Oregon.
1995: two girls die in Newport; the District Attorney later calls Fowler a suspect.
1996: convicted in Lincoln County of kidnapping, assault and attempted rape; sentenced to 16 years.
2006: dies in an Oregon prison of lung cancer.
May 3, 2012: the Oregon State Police report a DNA match.
The day before the conference: the RCMP announces that it will make a significant announcement; the Lincoln County District Attorney issues his release.
September 25, 2012: RCMP news conference in Surrey names Fowler in the MacMillen case.
The day after the conference: news conferences in Kamloops and Prince George.
September 2013: the RCMP says the investigation of Fowler is at a standstill.
November 29, 2019: Tillamook County detective says there is no evidence either way tying him to a separate 1992 case.