"I Just Snapped": Gary Ray Bowles, the I-95 Killer, in A&E's The Killer Speaks

Name: "I Just Snapped": Gary Ray Bowles, the I-95 Killer, in A&E's The Killer Speaks
Uploaded: 2023-01-26
Duration: 12 min 35 s
Description: From Florida's death row, Gary Ray Bowles told A&E how he killed John Roberts and Milton Bradley, took a dead man's acquaintance's identity, and was caught in 1994.

From Florida's death row, Gary Ray Bowles told A&E how he killed John Roberts and Milton Bradley, took a dead man's acquaintance's identity, and was caught in 1994.

Subject: Gary Ray Bowles
Recorded: about May 2014
Runtime: 12:35

Content warning: A convicted killer describes beating men to death; detectives describe the crime scenes, including objects stuffed into victims' mouths.

The Interview

In 2014, A&E's series *The Killer Speaks* filmed Gary Ray Bowles on Florida's death row for an episode about the six men he killed in 1994 along the Interstate 95 corridor. In this clip, posted by A&E in 2023, Bowles describes meeting John Roberts in a bar in Daytona Beach and says that something he saw at Roberts's house made him "snap". He then describes the killing of Milton Bradley in Savannah and how he took on another man's identity. The clip also includes series narration and interviews with the detectives who tracked him.

Historical Context

Between March and November 1994 Bowles killed six men in Florida, Georgia and Maryland: John Hardy Roberts, 59, in Daytona Beach; David Alan Jarman, 39, in Wheaton, Maryland; Milton Joseph Bradley, 72, in Savannah; Alverson Carter Jr., 47, in Atlanta; Albert Morris, 37, in Nassau County, Florida; and Walter Jamelle "Jay" Hinton, 42, in Jacksonville Beach. Most of the men were gay or older men he met in bars, and he robbed them after killing them. He was arrested on November 22, 1994, and confessed to all six murders.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview was recorded in prison for the 2014 episode; the date and the interviewer are not stated. By then Bowles had been under sentence of death since 1996 for Hinton's murder. The programme intercuts his account with interviews with John Best, the Savannah detective who linked the killings, with a detective named in the clip as J.P. Collins, with a man who met Bowles at a Savannah bar, and with Walter Hinton's sister, who found her brother's body.

What the Interview Covers

Bowles says he met Roberts at a bar, and that at Roberts's house a video triggered a memory he says he had blocked out from childhood: "The switch went on." He describes giving Milton Bradley a ride from the Faces bar in Savannah, beating him and stuffing his mouth with dirt, and says that afterwards he felt "relief". He explains how he took a wallet from a later victim's home and used the documents in it to become "Timothy Ronald Whitfield". The detectives describe the objects left in the victims' mouths, Best's teletype alerting police along the Southeast, the FBI's involvement, the pay stub in Whitfield's name found at Hinton's home, and Bowles's admission in the interview room: "I'm Gary Ray Bowles."

What Makes the Recording Significant

The clip records Bowles's own account of the killings and of his capture, about five years before his execution. His explanation of what set off the first murder is his claim and cannot be checked; the detectives' accounts show how a link between killings in three states was made in 1994, through a regional teletype and contacts between local departments and the FBI.

Archival Importance

Bowles was executed at Florida State Prison on August 22, 2019. The recording preserves his own on-camera account of the murders, his manner as well as his words, alongside the recollections of the investigators who caught him.

Important Caveats

Bowles's account of his motives, including the video he says he saw at Roberts's house and a blocked childhood memory, is his claim. A&E says the clip shows him revealing his motives "for the first time"; that is A&E's description. The narrator says he pleaded guilty to six murders; court records show he confessed to six but was convicted in Florida of three (Hinton, Morris and Roberts), pleading guilty in the Hinton and Roberts cases. The narration's "15 years on death row" is its own figure. A 1982 conviction for an assault on a woman in Tampa is not mentioned in the clip, and the woman is not named here.

Gary Ray Bowles: [unclear: "I'm saying to save it" / "I'm sad save it"], it's not hard to kill somebody. You can, you can kill somebody pretty easy if, yeah, if you have the mindset for it.

Narrator: March 15, 1994, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Interviewer: How did you meet [unclear: "John Lewis"; probably "John Roberts"]?

Gary Ray Bowles: I met him at the bar. He gave me his phone number, and I called him up. It was later on. Just, he seemed like an all right guy.

Narrator: Gary Ray claims at Roberts's house something unexpected happened.

Gary Ray Bowles: I went to his house, and I walked into his living room. He said, there's some videos there. If you want to watch a video, watch a video. So I put one of the videos in. What came on the screen, it just, it shocked me, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It just totally freaked me out. That video triggered a memory that I had blocked out, of me being a little kid. The switch went on, and, you know, and that was it. I just snapped.

Narrator: Gary Ray Bowles has just killed his first victim, John Roberts.

Gary Ray Bowles: I guess it just opened up a monster.

Narrator: Allegedly, spurring him on to a mission to kill.

Gary Ray Bowles: I was on a real adrenaline high, and from there on it was just downhill rage.

Narrator: Savannah, Georgia, seven weeks after the murder of John Roberts.

John Best: The Savannah Golf and Country Club. It's an old Savannah institution. It's a very nice golf course on the east side of the city, and it's somewhat odd that we would get a call about a deceased person being there. It doesn't look like he had a heart attack, and things are not looking very good. Blood was noted coming from his mouth. He suffered a fair amount of trauma to the face and the head area. Something violent took place. Some other investigators arrived. One or two detectives and a patrol officer commented, that looks like Milton Bradley.

Narrator: Milton Bradley was a World War II veteran from a distinguished family in Savannah. He was 72 years old.

John Best: You can see some leaves and/or dirt protruding from his mouth. Dirt and leaves have been stuffed into his mouth, down under his throat, which just really filled it, literally. This is obviously somebody who has, for lack of a better term, a lot of issues. This was a lot of force. This was overkill.

Narrator: Detective Best hits the streets to search for witnesses who may have last seen the victim.

John Best: Milton liked to go to happy hour. He had a very, very narrow, narrow little area of the world that he didn't stray from. And Milton would go to a bar called Faces.

Narrator: At the Faces Tavern, Detective Best learns that Milton Bradley had been seen with a mysterious man who just arrived in Savannah.

Bar Patron: There was this new guy in town. He said his name was Mike. Anyway, at some point we started playing pool, and the game ended early, because me and him wasn't getting along very well. He just seemed a little jittery or something. Something wasn't right. You could tell he was a hustler. He was there to see if he could hustle the older guys.

Narrator: One of the older guys at the bar that night: Milton Bradley.

John Best: And when it was time for Milton to take his taxi home, this guy had apparently offered him a ride.

Gary Ray Bowles: The bartender asked me if I had a car, and I told him I had a car, and he said, well, can you give this guy a ride?

Gary Ray Bowles: Well, I just got a bad vibe from the guy.

John Best: He was an operator in the Navy, and he had spinal meningitis, I believe. And before you know it, he didn't even know who he was. Finally, he had a lobotomy, and he became like a little child. I don't think Milton understood anything that was happening. He apparently just thought he was getting a ride home. He may have even thought he was getting in a taxi, for all that goes. Milton just really didn't understand his surroundings very well.

Gary Ray Bowles: He just started talking all crazy, and it just got real creepy. It just got to be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna [bleeped] this guy up, you know. [unclear: "Took him behind his head" / "to combined"], and I just beat the hell out of him. Stuffed his mouth full of dirt and left him.

Interviewer: How did you feel after [unclear: "receiving his body kind" / "him"]?

Gary Ray Bowles: I don't know. I felt all right, you know. There's not really a way to describe it, you know. It just, I guess, relief.

John Best: I felt the signature was something stuffed in the mouth.

Narrator: But colleagues in the department think this rookie homicide detective's theory is far-fetched.

John Best: To be polite, some people had their own sense of cynicism that the suspect could be a serial offender. But I've got feelings that said, we're close to I-95. Interstate 95 factors in this. If he's killing easy targets, or gay men who a lot of times don't report crime, this could be a serial offender.

Narrator: Acting on his hunch, Detective Best sends out a regional teletype alerting law enforcement across the Southeast to contact him with similar homicides.

John Best: On May 25th, Major Tom Reeves with the Nassau County, Florida, Sheriff's Department contacted me. He outlined a murder that they had which had a lot of similarities.

Narrator: 130 miles south on I-95, in Nassau County, Florida, two weeks after Milton Bradley's murder, a man was found dead in his trailer, and something was stuffed in his mouth.

John Best: This is it. That's it. It clicked right there. This is the lead. This is the person we're looking for.

Narrator: The detectives decide to bring the cases to the FBI. The FBI takes the lead. They connect the killings in Savannah and Nassau County to another unsolved murder ten weeks earlier, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

John Best: We put the information out there. We put the information out to the FBI. The information that we had gave [unclear: "him" / "them"] the name of Gary Ray Bowles. Gary Ray Bowles. Gary Ray Bowles.

Narrator: But what the FBI doesn't know is that in the moments after his last murder in Nassau County, Gary Ray Bowles vanished into thin air.

Gary Ray Bowles: Right after I killed him, I started searching his place, you know, to see what I could find to take with me. And I found that wallet in his closet.

Narrator: The wallet belongs to an acquaintance of the victim, a man named Timothy Whitfield.

Gary Ray Bowles: Had his driver's license, birth certificate, Social Security card. I wasn't gonna carry my ID around with my name on it, knowing that the police were looking for me. So I took the birth certificate and Social Security card. I took it down to the DMV, and I told them I lost my driver's license, and I basically became Timothy Ronald Whitfield. [laughs]

Narrator: Eight months after the first killing, a Jacksonville resident goes missing.

Walter Hinton'S Sister: My birthday was that Friday, and we had made plans to meet at the Outback, and he never showed up. I went by his home, and the lights were on. My husband went through the window, and I was banging on the door. He opened it and started pushing me back, but I did get past him.

Narrator: She finds the body of her brother, 42-year-old Walter Jamelle Hinton, a floral designer who lived alone. Detective J.P. Collins responds to the scene. The victim appears to have blunt-force trauma to the head, and Collins finds a twisted detail.

J.P. Collins: He was face up, and he had what I can remember is a ruby red rag stuffed in his mouth, which started sparking my mind to that pamphlet I first read. And I said, you know what? This is Gary Ray Bowles.

Narrator: But on a dresser, Collins finds another lead.

J.P. Collins: It was a pay stub, an Ameriforce labor pool, I believe it was, and it had a name on it, Timothy Ronald Whitfield. I had a name. That's better than nothing whatsoever. So I had a name, and I had somewhere to look.

Narrator: Police contact the labor pool, looking for Whitfield. The next day, they get a call that he's there.

Gary Ray Bowles: I'm at the labor pool, and the cops come in there, and they say, are you Timothy Whitfield? And I told them, yeah. They said, we want to talk to you, and we want to question you about this. And he took me down to the police station.

J.P. Collins: He may have nothing to do with this homicide whatsoever. He shows up, and we question him. He started telling me details, I believe it was about picking up his clothes, a reason to come back to the trailer, and it wasn't correct. It wasn't what he had told me before. And that's when I stopped him, and I said, stop. I told you not to lie to me. Don't lie to me, and tell me the truth. At that point, his demeanor changed drastically. He came forward. He was about a foot from my face. And he says, you want the truth? I'll tell you the truth. I'm Gary Ray Bowles. That's who I am, Gary Ray Bowles. He sunk down in the chair, and he said, I'm glad it's over.

Narrator: Gary Ray confesses not to four but to six murders: Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Nassau County, Florida; and two more unsolved murders in Atlanta and Maryland; and the one where it all started, Daytona Beach. After pleading guilty to six murders, Gary Ray Bowles was sentenced to death and has spent the last 15 years on death row. ---