Gary Ray Bowles confessed in November 1994 to killing six men in Florida, Maryland and Georgia over the previous eight months. He was 32, an ex-convict and drifter who had sold sex to men since he was a teenager. Investigators said he met most of the men in bars, moved in with several of them, then killed them and took their cars, cash and credit cards. The press called him the I-95 killer, because the killings ran along the Interstate 95 corridor and many of the men were found near it.
He was convicted of three of the killings, all in Florida: John Hardy Roberts in Daytona Beach in March 1994, Albert Morris in Nassau County in May, and Walter Hinton in Jacksonville in November. He was sentenced to death for the Hinton murder and to life for the other two. The deaths in Maryland and Georgia were never prosecuted. After appeals in state and federal courts, including a late claim that he was intellectually disabled that the courts refused as filed too late, Florida executed him on August 22, 2019.
Bowles was born on January 25, 1962, the date recorded by the Florida Commission on Capital Cases. A Washington Post report in 1994 described him as a native of Clifton Forge, Virginia. He grew up in West Virginia. His father, a coal miner, died of black lung disease before he was born, according to the Associated Press.
His mother married again several times, and court records show that his first two stepfathers were abusive. His mother testified about his childhood at the 1999 resentencing, and the judge there found as a mitigating fact that he had an abusive childhood, including abuse of his mother that he saw. The judge also found the absence of a father figure, a history of alcoholism and a lack of education. He did not finish the eighth grade, his lawyers told the courts. Investigators told the Associated Press that he began drinking, smoking marijuana and huffing glue at about 11; his lawyers' later filings refer to inhalant use as a juvenile.
At 13, according to the Associated Press, he hit his second stepfather in the head with a rock, nearly killing him, and then left home. Bowles himself told police in 1994 that he ran away at 14. He said the first man who picked him up hitchhiking offered him money for sex, and that he went on selling sex to men for about 18 years. "I don't consider myself gay," he told police. Years later the Daytona Beach detective who worked his first murder case recalled asking him how he did describe himself. Bowles answered: "A hustler."
In 1982, while living in Tampa, Bowles was convicted of beating and sexually assaulting his girlfriend and was sentenced to eight years, according to the Associated Press. Records summarized by the Florida Commission on Capital Cases list a Hillsborough County case from an offense on June 4, 1982: a conviction for aggravated battery with a sentence of three years, dated September 27, 1982, and a conviction for sexual battery with a threat of a deadly weapon with a sentence of eight years. The Florida Supreme Court described the 1982 judgment as convictions for sexual battery and aggravated sexual battery of his girlfriend at the time.
In 1991 he was in court again, this time in Volusia County, on Florida's Atlantic coast. On July 18, 1991, he was sentenced for unarmed robbery, after pushing a woman down and taking her purse, and for two counts of grand theft, one of them for a motor vehicle. The terms were four and five years. He was released from prison only months before the first killing, according to the 1994 Washington Post account, and he was on felony probation throughout 1994, a fact the courts later counted against him.
After his arrest he told police that a girlfriend had become pregnant and had ended the pregnancy in 1985, and that she had left him because of what he was doing with men. He said he blamed gay men for the loss of the baby and that they had ruined his life with women. These statements, and what prosecutors made of them, became the central issue in his first death sentence appeal.
The first of the six men was John Hardy Roberts, a 59-year-old insurance salesman who lived in Daytona Beach. Bowles was living with him. By the account Bowles gave police, Roberts gave him an ultimatum on March 15, 1994, and he responded by beating and strangling him. Volusia County court records give the date of the offense as March 14, 1994; news accounts give March 14 or March 15.
Bowles took Roberts' money and cards. Daytona Beach police identified him quickly. He had left a probation document at the scene, and an ATM camera recorded him trying to withdraw money from Roberts' account. Catching him took far longer. "Why do you kill people after the first one?" the detective on the case, Thomas Youngman, said in 2019. "The first one could be a mistake, maybe. But the third, fourth, fifth and sixth? When do you stop?"
From Florida, Bowles traveled widely. The 1994 Washington Post account placed him in Washington, D.C., Wheaton, Maryland, Missouri, Virginia, Georgia and Florida during his months on the run, and said the killings spread fear through Washington's gay community.
David Jarman lived in an apartment in Wheaton, a Montgomery County suburb of Washington. He worked as a loan processor at a credit union in Washington, D.C. In April 1994 he failed to report to work and was found dead in his apartment, according to a credit union trade publication summarizing Washington Post coverage. Montgomery County police linked his death to the killings of men in Florida and Georgia. Bowles later admitted killing him and taking his car, according to police. Metro Weekly gave Jarman's age as 39. Associated Press reports in 2019 placed the Maryland killing in Rockville, the Montgomery County seat; other reports, including the Washington Post in 1994, name Wheaton.
Milton Bradley was 72 and lived in Savannah, Georgia. He was a Navy veteran of World War II who had suffered a severe head injury when his ship sank in the Pacific, and he was well liked in his community, the Associated Press reported. He met Bowles in May 1994. Bowles admitted strangling him, according to police. His nephew told the Associated Press in 2019 that the family had waited a long time for the execution.
The Savannah case brought Bowles into contact with John Best, a Savannah police detective, who later interviewed him after his arrest and spoke to reporters about him in 2019.
Alverson Carter Jr. was 47 and lived in Atlanta. Bowles confessed to killing him in 1994. Little more was reported about him than his name, his age and his city. Like the deaths of Jarman and Bradley, his death was never brought to trial; Bowles was never prosecuted in Georgia or Maryland.
Albert Morris was 37 and lived in Hilliard, in Nassau County, Florida, just south of the Georgia line. He had befriended Bowles. According to the Florida Commission on Capital Cases, Bowles killed him after a fight outside a bar. Court records give the date of the offense as May 18, 1994. One 2019 television report gave May 19. Sources differ on his middle name.
Morris was the fifth man Bowles admitted killing, and the second in Florida. By then the FBI had joined the search. Action News Jax reported in 2019 that the FBI began looking for Bowles in the summer of 1994 and that he was profiled at least five times on the television program America's Most Wanted while he was on the run.
Bowles had been living in Jacksonville since June 1994, according to the Washington Post. He used the name Tim Whitfield. The alias kept police from identifying him even when he was arrested for minor offenses during those months, the Post reported.
In late October or early November 1994, he met Walter Hinton at Jacksonville Beach. Hinton was 42 and worked as a florist. He needed help moving belongings from Georgia to his mobile home in Jacksonville. Bowles agreed to help, and in return Hinton let him live in the mobile home.
On the evening of November 16, 1994, Bowles, Hinton and a friend drank beer and smoked marijuana together, then took the friend to a train station. Back at the mobile home Hinton went to bed. Bowles kept drinking. He later told police that at some point during the night he "snapped."
He attacked Hinton as he slept and strangled him. The medical examiner gave the cause of death as asphyxia. The Florida Supreme Court later held that strangling a conscious victim supported the trial judge's finding that the murder was especially cruel.
Bowles stayed on. Two days later he was seen driving Hinton's car and wearing his watch, and the trial judge's order describes him buying liquor in the days that followed. When Hinton stopped answering his telephone and his door, his sister and her fiancé grew worried. Several days after the killing they found his body in the mobile home. His watch, car keys, car and stereo equipment were missing.
On Tuesday, November 22, 1994, Jacksonville police questioned a man they believed was a day laborer called Tim Whitfield, who might have killed his roommate. For the first hour he said nothing useful, according to the Washington Post. Then he told them his real name. He was Gary Ray Bowles, and he was a fugitive the FBI had added to its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives shortly before. The Post said he had been added the week before his arrest; Metro Weekly, in 2019, said three days before.
The FBI's record of its Ten Most Wanted list gives him the number 438. It says he was arrested in Jacksonville Beach on November 22, 1994, by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, after he was brought in for questioning in a local murder investigation; he admitted who he was, and fingerprints confirmed it. The Post credited a rookie Jacksonville officer with the capture, two days after Hinton's body was found. He was held without bond in the Duval County Jail.
Bowles gave oral and written confessions to Hinton's murder. He told FBI Agent Dennis Reegan that he had expected to find money on Hinton or in the mobile home, and that when he found none he felt stuck, with no money and nowhere to go. He told the agent that he worked as a hustler for money, that he disliked having sex with men, and that he was not gay.
He also confessed to the other five killings. John Best, the Savannah detective, interviewed him. Bowles said he was tired of keeping his secrets and asked only for cigarettes, according to the Washington Post. He said he wanted the killings to stop, and that he would rather face six life sentences than the electric chair. The St. Petersburg Times reported the day after the arrest that a man described as one of the nation's most wanted fugitives had confessed to six murders in three states.
A Duval County grand jury indicted Bowles on December 8, 1994, for first-degree murder and robbery in Hinton's death. The robbery count was later dropped. His trial lawyers were Charles Cofer and William White, and the judge was Jack M. Schemer of the Fourth Judicial Circuit.
On Friday, May 16, 1996, Bowles pleaded guilty to premeditated first-degree murder. The St. Petersburg Times reported that the plea surprised the courtroom. The case went to a jury for a penalty phase. On July 18, 1996, the jury recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2, and on September 6, 1996, Judge Schemer sentenced him to death.
The prosecution's main theory at that first penalty phase was that Bowles killed Hinton because Hinton was gay. In his opening statement the prosecutor told the jury that Hinton was gay, that Bowles did not like homosexuals, and that two former girlfriends had left him over his way of life. The defense objected and asked for a mistrial, which was denied.
Witnesses then described what Bowles had said about the 1985 pregnancy and about gay men. A detective testified that Bowles said gay men had ruined his life with women. A jail informant testified that Bowles admitted robbing gay men in Daytona Beach; the judge sustained an objection to that testimony and told the jury to disregard it. The FBI agent described Bowles's statement that he was a hustler who disliked sex with men. In closing, the prosecutor argued that Hinton died because he was gay.
While the Hinton appeal was pending, the other Florida cases were resolved. On October 10, 1996, Bowles was convicted in Nassau County of the first-degree murder of Albert Morris and sentenced to life. On August 6, 1997, he was convicted in Volusia County of the first-degree murder of John Hardy Roberts, together with robbery with a deadly weapon, burglary with an assault and grand theft. He received life sentences on the murder, robbery and burglary counts and five years for the theft. The Eleventh Circuit later described him as having pleaded guilty to all three murders. Television reports in 2019 said the same.
On August 27, 1998, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed Bowles's conviction for Hinton's murder but reversed the death sentence. The court held that his statements about the abortion and his feelings toward gay men had no logical tendency to prove a motive for this murder or that it was cold, calculated and premeditated. The prosecution had promised to tie that evidence to Hinton's killing and never did. "The State simply never linked, as it promised it would, this evidence to the murder of Walter Hinton," the court wrote. Because the evidence had become a feature of the sentencing hearing, the error was not harmless, and the court said it doubted the reliability of the proceeding. All seven justices joined the decision, and the case went back for a new penalty phase before a new jury.
At the resentencing, Bowles was represented by William White and Brian Morrisey, and Judge Schemer again presided. On May 27, 1999, the new jury recommended death by a vote of 12 to 0. On September 7, 1999, the judge sentenced Bowles to death a second time.
The judge found five aggravating circumstances. Bowles had prior violent felony convictions, including the two other murders, which had been decided after the first sentencing. He was on felony probation. The murder was committed during a robbery and for money, which the judge merged into one factor. The killing was especially cruel. And it was cold, calculated and premeditated. The last two were given great weight.
The judge rejected the two statutory mental-health mitigators the defense put forward, extreme emotional disturbance and substantially impaired capacity. He gave significant weight to the abusive childhood and the abuse of his mother that Bowles had witnessed, some weight to his alcoholism and the absence of a father figure, and little weight to his lack of education, his cooperation and guilty plea, and his intoxication on the night of the murder. He gave none to Bowles's circumstances after he left home. He found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigation overwhelmingly.
Bowles raised 12 claims on appeal. On October 11, 2001, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence. The court held that the cruelty finding was supported because Hinton was conscious while he was strangled. It held that the robbery and money factor applied because the taking of Hinton's property was not an afterthought: "there is no other apparent motivation for this murder," the court wrote, pointing to what Bowles told the FBI agent. It found no error in how the judge weighed mitigation, upheld the use of hearsay evidence about a prior violent felony, and found the sentence proportionate to other cases. Five justices joined the opinion and two concurred in the result. The U.S. Supreme Court denied review on June 17, 2002.
The trial court denied Bowles's state postconviction motion in 2005. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on February 14, 2008, and denied a separate state habeas petition the same day. One issue was why his trial lawyers had not called a psychologist who could have testified about mitigation. The psychologist testified in the postconviction hearing that Bowles had told her of three more murders, beyond the six he confessed to in 1994. His trial lawyers had kept her off the stand so that prosecutors could not cross-examine her about them, and the court held that this was not ineffective assistance. Those three further killings were not identified in the reporting.
In federal court, a district judge in the Middle District of Florida denied his habeas petition in December 2009. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit considered one claim: that prosecutors had used peremptory strikes to remove prospective jurors who supported the death penalty but had reservations about imposing it. In an opinion by Judge Ed Carnes, joined by Judges Tjoflat and Black, the court affirmed in 2010, holding that no U.S. Supreme Court decision barred such strikes. The Supreme Court denied review on November 29, 2010.
A further challenge based on the Hurst decisions, which changed Florida's death penalty procedures, also failed. On January 29, 2018, the Florida Supreme Court held that Hurst did not apply retroactively to his sentence, which had become final in 2002.
Florida's clemency process ran in 2018. Since 2017 Bowles had been represented in federal court by lawyers from the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Public Defender's Office, appointed by a federal judge. The Florida Clemency Commission instead appointed a private lawyer who had never represented him as his clemency counsel. In July 2018 the commission told the federal defenders and their expert that they could not attend or take part in his clemency interview, and it refused to reconsider. The interview took place on August 2, 2018, and lasted about an hour and a half; no federal defender was present. The federal lawyers joined a six-page letter with his other counsel but submitted nothing else.
Clemency was denied. When Bowles later challenged the process in federal court, the Eleventh Circuit refused to stay his execution on August 19, 2019. Chief Judge Carnes held that the federal statute providing appointed counsel did not clearly require a state to let those lawyers appear in its clemency proceedings. Judge Martin concurred in part, writing that it was "not only mysterious but possibly tragic that counsel was turned away," and that the commission's decision cast a shadow over the proceeding.
On June 11, 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Bowles, setting his execution for 6 p.m. on August 22, 2019. The governor's office released information that police believed he targeted gay men. Bowles would be the second person executed since DeSantis took office in January 2019; the first was Bobby Joe Long, executed on May 23.
Bowles first claimed in October 2017 that he was intellectually disabled, and so could not be executed, and he pressed the claim again after the warrant was signed. His lawyers relied on an IQ score of 74 from a test given in 2017 and on earlier scores of 80 and 83; the score of 80 came from a test a psychologist gave in 1995, and she said she had not been asked then to assess him for intellectual disability. Psychologists said in affidavits that it was likely he was intellectually disabled, and people who had known him as a young man described him as forgetful and aimless. The state pointed out that he had earned a high school equivalency diploma in prison and that his early grades in elementary school were standard.
On July 11, 2019, Circuit Judge Bruce Anderson in Duval County denied the motion without a hearing, finding the claim untimely and waived. Florida's rule had required such claims to be raised within 60 days after October 1, 2004. On August 13, 2019, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the record conclusively showed the claim was untimely and that Bowles had not shown good cause for the delay, writing that his "inaction should not be ignored on the basis of the perceived futility of his claim." The court also rejected his argument that national trends had made the death penalty cruel and unusual, and refused to order further public records. Chief Justice Canady concurred in part.
His lawyers then turned to the federal courts. On August 22, 2019, the day of the scheduled execution, the Eleventh Circuit refused to let him file a second federal habeas petition. Chief Judge Carnes, for the panel, wrote that the claim rested on Hall v. Florida, a 2014 decision that the circuit had held was not retroactive, and that there was no futility exception to federal limits on repeat petitions. Judge Martin agreed that circuit precedent required the result but wrote, "I do not consider this decision to be a just one," and said the Florida courts had refused even to consider the merits.
Bowles asked the U.S. Supreme Court for review and a stay, backed by disability rights groups and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. On August 22 the Court denied both. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement respecting the denial. She called Florida's requirement that prisoners raise Hall claims by 2004, a decade before Hall was decided, a "Kafkaesque procedural rule," and said that in an appropriate case she would be prepared to revisit it, but she did not think the questions as presented warranted review.
The execution had been set for 6 p.m. It was delayed while the prison waited for the Supreme Court's ruling. Bowles woke that day in good spirits, according to a corrections spokeswoman, and did not ask to see family or a spiritual adviser. His last meal was three hamburgers, french fries and bacon.
He was put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison and pronounced dead at 10:58 p.m., according to the governor's office. He was 57. He made no statement in the chamber, though he appeared to speak to himself, perhaps in prayer, the Associated Press reported.
In a handwritten statement dated that day he wrote that he was "so very sorry to all of the family and friends of Mr. Hinton." He wrote: "I never wanted to kill him, and I'm sorry for all of the pain and suffering I have caused." He said he hoped his death would ease their pain. He apologized to his mother, thanked his friends, his lawyers and the prison staff, and said he had been treated with respect during his 73 days on death watch. He said he had told the FBI everything and that no cases remained open. "I never wanted this to be my life," he wrote. "You don't wake up one day and decide to become a serial killer."
The execution was Florida's 99th since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976, Action News Jax reported, citing WCJB-TV. It was the last in Florida for more than three years. The next was that of Donald Dillbeck, on February 23, 2023, who was the first person executed in Florida since Bowles, WUWF reported.
Thomas Youngman, the retired Daytona Beach investigator, told reporters that the execution was long overdue and that the six killings could be proved "without a doubt." He thought Bowles "probably enjoyed it after a while." Bernie de la Rionda, the Jacksonville prosecutor on the Hinton case, called the manner of the killing "really outrageous." Milton Bradley's nephew said the wait had been a long one for his family.
The case also left a legal question. Judges Martin and Sotomayor both criticized Florida's 2004 deadline for intellectual disability claims, which barred Bowles from a hearing on the merits even after the Florida Supreme Court had made Hall retroactive. Neither court reached the question of whether he was in fact intellectually disabled.
How many men he killed. Bowles confessed to six killings in 1994, and in 2019 he wrote that he had told the FBI everything. A psychologist testified in postconviction proceedings that he had told her of three more murders; the courts treated this as evidence his trial lawyers were right to keep out, not as a finding, and no further victims were reported as identified.
Virginia. In November 1994 Henrico County, Virginia, police named Bowles a suspect in the June 12, 1994, death of Henry W. Weatherford Jr., 50, an antique dealer found dead in his home near Richmond, according to the Washington Post. No charge or result was reported.
Women. John Best, the former Savannah detective, said in 2019 that Bowles freely discussed the men he killed but avoided questions about women. "He never gave us a yes or no answer," Best said. Best suspected that Bowles might have killed women. No evidence of this appears in the court record.
Motive. The prosecution's first theory, that he killed Hinton because Hinton was gay, was rejected as unproven by the Florida Supreme Court in 1998, which found the evidence of his feelings had never been connected to the murder. Bowles told the FBI he killed Hinton because he expected money and found none. Investigators and the governor's office in 2019 said he targeted gay men, and the 2019 Eleventh Circuit opinion noted that the court in 1998 had found strong evidence of his hatred of gay men.
Convictions. Several 2019 reports said he was convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, six murders. He was convicted of three. The killings of David Jarman, Milton Bradley and Alverson Carter Jr. were confessed but never tried.
Dates and places. Sources differ on the date of the Roberts killing (March 14 or 15, 1994), the Morris killing (May 18 or 19) and the place of the Maryland killing (Wheaton or Rockville). Sources also differ on whether he left home at 13 or 14.
January 25, 1962: Gary Ray Bowles is born.
At 13 or 14, by differing accounts: leaves home after attacking his second stepfather.
June 4, 1982: offense in Hillsborough County leading to his convictions for aggravated battery and sexual battery of his girlfriend.
July 18, 1991: sentenced in Volusia County for robbery and two grand thefts.
March 14 or 15, 1994: John Hardy Roberts, 59, is killed in Daytona Beach.
April 1994: David Jarman is found strangled in Wheaton, Maryland.
May 1994: Milton Bradley, 72, is killed in Savannah, Georgia.
1994: Alverson Carter Jr., 47, is killed in Atlanta.
May 18, 1994: Albert Morris, 37, is killed in Nassau County, Florida.
June 1994: Bowles settles in Jacksonville under the name Tim Whitfield.
November 1994: added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
November 16, 1994: Walter Hinton, 42, is killed in his Jacksonville mobile home.
November 22, 1994: arrested in Jacksonville Beach; confesses to six killings.
December 8, 1994: indicted in Duval County.
May 16, 1996: pleads guilty to Hinton's murder.
July 18, 1996: jury recommends death, 10 to 2.
September 6, 1996: sentenced to death.
October 10, 1996: convicted of Albert Morris's murder in Nassau County; life.
August 6, 1997: convicted of John Hardy Roberts's murder in Volusia County; life.
August 27, 1998: Florida Supreme Court reverses the death sentence.
May 27, 1999: new jury recommends death, 12 to 0.
September 7, 1999: sentenced to death again.
October 11, 2001: Florida Supreme Court affirms.
June 17, 2002: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
February 14, 2008: Florida Supreme Court affirms denial of postconviction relief.
2010: Eleventh Circuit affirms denial of federal habeas; Supreme Court denies review November 29.
October 19, 2017: intellectual disability claim first filed.
January 29, 2018: Hurst claim rejected.
August 2, 2018: clemency interview.
June 11, 2019: Governor DeSantis signs the death warrant.
July 11, 2019: Duval County judge denies the intellectual disability claim as untimely.
August 13, 2019: Florida Supreme Court affirms.
August 19 and 22, 2019: Eleventh Circuit denies stays.
August 22, 2019: U.S. Supreme Court denies review; Bowles is executed at 10:58 p.m.
February 23, 2023: Florida's next execution.