Linwood Earl Forte was convicted of murdering three elderly people in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in the second half of 1990. Hattie Bonner, 79, died in July. Alvin Bowen, 78, and his wife, Thelma Bowen, 75, died together in October. In May of the same year a 70-year-old woman in the town had survived felonies for which Forte was later convicted as well. For more than a decade nobody was charged with any of it. In 2001 a review of old evidence by the State Bureau of Investigation linked Forte to all four cases, and on April 30 of that year he was arrested. He had never before been questioned about any of them.
His trial opened in Wayne County Superior Court on September 8, 2003. On September 30 the jury found him guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree burglary and two further felonies, and at a separate sentencing hearing it recommended death on each murder count. He was received on North Carolina's death row on October 8, 2003. On May 5, 2006, the Supreme Court of North Carolina found no error in either the guilt phase or the capital sentencing proceeding and left the three death sentences in place. In November 2026 he remains on the state's death row roster, in a state that has carried out no execution since 2006.
By 2001 he was working at a poultry processing plant in the area.
He had a criminal record well before 1990, and the Supreme Court of North Carolina set it out in its 2006 opinion. In 1982 he was convicted of felony larceny and possession of stolen property. In 1984 he was convicted of driving while impaired. In 1988 he was convicted of assault on a police officer and was incarcerated for it, and in 1989 he was convicted of driving while his license was revoked. A further felony conviction followed in 1996, six years after the Goldsboro deaths and five years before anyone connected him with them.
Evidence offered at his sentencing hearing in 2003 filled in the outline of those years. It described alcohol dependence and continual illegal drug use, repeated violations of probation and parole, and what the court called an "extensive history of aggressive behavior." The same evidence would later be weighed twice: once by the trial jury, which heard it as part of the case for mitigation, and again by the Supreme Court, which considered whether the trial court had handled his prior record correctly.
The first of the four cases was in Goldsboro on May 26, 1990. The victim was a woman of 70 who survived. She was alive to see the man responsible convicted, and the offenses against her became a separate group of counts at trial: first-degree rape, first-degree burglary and an assault felony, together with an attempted first-degree murder count that the trial court later dismissed.
The May case would matter twice more in the legal history. It supplied part of the course of conduct that the jury later found as an aggravating circumstance in each of the three murders, and it was the case in which the Supreme Court found a sentencing error in 2006.
Hattie Bonner died in Goldsboro on or about July 14, 1990, seven weeks after the first case. She was 79.
Her death was the first of the three murders for which Forte was later convicted. In her case the jury found that the murder was committed during a first-degree burglary and that it was part of a course of conduct that included other crimes of violence against other people. It recommended death.
Alvin Bowen, known as Al, was 78. His wife, Thelma Bowen, was 75. They were a married couple in Goldsboro, and they died together on October 6, 1990, less than three months after Hattie Bonner.
In each of the Bowens' cases the jury found the same two aggravating circumstances as in Hattie Bonner's, a burglary and a course of conduct, and a third: that the murder was committed during a further felony of which Forte was also convicted. In Thelma Bowen's case alone the jury found a fourth aggravating circumstance, the one set out in subsection (e)(9) of the capital sentencing statute, a circumstance the jury found in no other count. It recommended death for each.
The four cases went unsolved through the rest of the 1990s. There were no leads. Forte's name did not come up in any of them, and he was not questioned.
That changed in 2001. Federal grant money that year allowed the State Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory to reopen evidence from old unsolved cases across North Carolina, and the Goldsboro files were among them. The review linked Forte by evidence to all of the 1990 cases.
Forte was arrested and interviewed by police on April 30, 2001. In the interview he made statements to officers, and before his arrest he acknowledged wrongdoing. That acknowledgment carried legal weight later: when the trial judge sentenced him on the non-capital counts in 2003, the court counted it as a mitigating factor.
One moment in the interview became an issue on appeal. At a point in the questioning Forte was asked whether he wanted to answer more questions, and he said "no." An officer asked a follow-up question. His lawyers later argued that the single word had been an invocation of his right to remain silent and that questioning should have stopped there. The Supreme Court disagreed in 2006, holding that in context the answer was ambiguous and did not clearly invoke the right, so the follow-up question did not violate his rights.
A Wayne County grand jury indicted Forte on three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree burglary, one count of attempted first-degree murder, and three further counts: an assault felony and two offenses against property. The State proceeded capitally on the murder counts. The four cases were consolidated for a single trial in Wayne County Superior Court.
C. Branson Vickory III, the district attorney, was counsel for the State in the Supreme Court proceedings of 2005 and 2009.
The trial began on September 8, 2003, thirteen years after the last of the Goldsboro deaths. The State's case rested on two kinds of evidence: reports prepared by the State Bureau of Investigation laboratory, and Forte's own statements to police in 2001.
The defense called no witnesses in the guilt phase. Facing evidence of that strength, it rested without putting on a case. The jury deliberated for less than two hours.
On September 30, 2003, it returned its verdicts. Forte was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Hattie Bonner, Alvin Bowen and Thelma Bowen; three counts of first-degree rape; three counts of first-degree burglary; the assault felony in the May case; and one of the two property counts. The count of attempted first-degree murder and the other property count had been dismissed at the close of the evidence.
Goldsboro's police chief, Tim Bell, spoke after the verdict. "I know I slept better after the jury came back with a guilty verdict," he said.
Under North Carolina law a guilty verdict on a capital count leads to a separate sentencing hearing before the same jury. There the State must prove at least one statutory aggravating circumstance, the defense may offer any mitigating evidence, and a death sentence requires the unanimous recommendation of all twelve jurors.
The defense used the hearing to put Forte's history before the jury. Witnesses described his drug and alcohol problems. Defense experts testified that he suffered from mental problems, and the defense told jurors that he heard voices and saw visions. Prosecutors answered that he knew what he was doing. The jury did not find the statutory mitigating circumstances of mental or emotional disturbance or of impaired capacity.
It found the aggravating circumstances already described: each of the three murders committed during a first-degree burglary and as part of a course of conduct involving other violent crimes; the two Bowen murders also committed during a further felony; and, for Thelma Bowen, the (e)(9) circumstance. After about three hours of deliberation it recommended a sentence of death on each of the three counts of first-degree murder.
The trial court imposed those three death sentences. On the rape convictions and one remaining burglary conviction it imposed four consecutive life sentences, and on the assault count a consecutive term of 20 years. Judgment was arrested on two of the burglary convictions and on the property conviction. Forte was received on North Carolina's death row on October 8, 2003.
When the sentence was announced several jurors were in tears. Two relatives of the victims thanked the prosecutors and investigators for years of work on cases that, for most of that time, had produced no suspect at all.
A death sentence in North Carolina goes directly to the Supreme Court of North Carolina, and review there is automatic.
The court decided the case on May 5, 2006, in an opinion by Justice Robert Edmunds Jr. The disposition read: "No error guilt-innocence phase; no error capital sentencing proceeding; non-capital sentencing vacated and remanded for resentencing."
The opinion dealt first with the laboratory reports. Forte argued that admitting them without the testimony of the analysts violated his right to confront the witnesses against him under Crawford v. Washington, the United States Supreme Court's 2004 decision on testimonial statements. The North Carolina court held that the reports were admissible as business records, that they were neutral and routine, and that they were not testimonial in the sense Crawford meant. The court also rejected his claim about the interview, holding that his "no" had been ambiguous.
On sentencing the court split its answer. In the survivor's case the trial judge had raised Forte's non-capital sentences above the presumptive range on a finding that the victim was infirm, a fact the jury had never found. Under Blakely v. Washington, decided in June 2004, that was error, and the Supreme Court vacated those sentences and sent them back to Wayne County for resentencing. It also found that the trial court had erred in considering his conduct after the murders when it declined to submit the mitigating circumstance that he had no significant history of prior criminal activity, but it held that error harmless.
The court then carried out the proportionality review the statute requires in every capital case. It found that the record supported the aggravating circumstances, that no passion or prejudice had driven the sentences, and that the three death sentences were not disproportionate. They stood.
Forte's lawyers continued to litigate. On December 5, 2008, they filed a petition in the Supreme Court of North Carolina for a writ of certiorari to review an order of the Superior Court, Wayne County, in the same case. Margaret Lumsden and Mark E. Hayes represented him; Valerie Spalding and District Attorney C. Branson Vickory III appeared for the State. The court denied the petition on February 5, 2009. What that order decided, and the outcome of the 2006 resentencing, have not been reported.
As of November 11, 2026, Linwood Forte is listed on the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction's death row roster, with Wayne County as the county of conviction and October 8, 2003, as the date he was received. On December 31, 2024, Governor Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 people on North Carolina's death row; Forte was not among them.
No execution has taken place in North Carolina since August 18, 2006, when Samuel Flippen was executed. In October 2026, 122 people remained under sentence of death in the state.
North Carolina's capital sentencing law, General Statute 15A-2000, governs every case in which the State seeks death. After a conviction of first-degree murder the trial moves to a separate hearing, normally before the same jury. The statute lists the aggravating circumstances that can support death; three of those found in Forte's case were subsection (e)(5), a murder committed during certain other felonies, burglary among them; (e)(9), a circumstance concerned with the cruelty of the killing itself; and (e)(11), a murder that was part of a course of conduct including other crimes of violence. The statute also lists mitigating circumstances, among them (f)(1), "The defendant has no significant history of prior criminal activity." The jury must be unanimous for death; if it cannot agree, the judge must impose life imprisonment.
The same statute makes Supreme Court review automatic. The court must vacate a death sentence if the record does not support the aggravating circumstances found, if the sentence was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor, or if it is excessive or disproportionate compared with sentences in similar cases.
Forte's appeal reached the court at a time of change in sentencing law. Blakely v. Washington, decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 24, 2004, held that any fact other than a prior conviction that raises a penalty beyond the statutory maximum must be found by a jury. The Supreme Court of North Carolina applied that rule to the state's structured sentencing system in State v. Allen in 2005. The General Assembly answered with Session Law 2005-145, ratified on June 21, 2005, which set out a procedure for juries to find aggravating factors, but the new law applied only to offenses committed on or after June 30, 2005. Offenses from 1990 remained under the earlier law, and in Forte's case the only remedy was to send the affected sentences back for resentencing.
The question of the laboratory reports belonged to the same period. Crawford v. Washington, decided in 2004, had reshaped the law on out-of-court statements, and courts across the country were deciding which laboratory records fell within it. The North Carolina court treated routine, neutral laboratory reports as business records outside Crawford's reach.
The death sentences imposed in 2003 have since sat inside a long pause. Litigation over North Carolina's capital procedures, including claims under the Racial Justice Act of 2009, which the legislature repealed in 2013, and later challenges, has kept the state from carrying out an execution since 2006. Governor Cooper's commutations at the end of 2024 reduced the death row population but did not touch every case, and Forte's sentence remains as the jury returned it.
The defense case on Forte's mental state was presented to the jury and not accepted. Experts testified to mental problems and the defense said he heard voices and saw visions, but the jury rejected both statutory mental-state mitigators, and the Supreme Court found no error in the capital sentencing proceeding.
1982: Convicted of felony larceny and possession of stolen property.
1984: Convicted of driving while impaired.
1988: Convicted of assault on a police officer; incarcerated.
1989: Convicted of driving while license revoked.
May 26, 1990: A woman of 70 survives felonies in Goldsboro later charged against Forte.
On or about July 14, 1990: Hattie Bonner, 79, dies in Goldsboro.
October 6, 1990: Alvin Bowen, 78, and Thelma Bowen, 75, die in Goldsboro.
1996: Forte is convicted of a further felony.
2001: Federal grant funding lets the State Bureau of Investigation laboratory reopen old unsolved cases; the review links Forte by evidence to the Goldsboro cases.
April 30, 2001: Forte is arrested and interviewed by police.
September 8, 2003: Trial opens in Wayne County Superior Court.
September 30, 2003: Guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree rape, three counts of first-degree burglary and two further felonies.
Fall 2003: The jury recommends death on each murder count.
October 8, 2003: Received on North Carolina's death row.
June 24, 2004: Blakely v. Washington decided.
May 5, 2006: Supreme Court of North Carolina finds no error in the guilt and capital sentencing phases; non-capital sentences vacated and remanded.
August 18, 2006: Samuel Flippen is executed, the last execution in North Carolina.
December 5, 2008: Petition for certiorari filed to review a Wayne County Superior Court order.
February 5, 2009: Petition denied.
December 31, 2024: Governor Cooper commutes 15 death sentences; Forte's is not among them.
November 2026: Forte remains on the state's death row roster.