Gary Ray Bowles is set for execution this coming Thursday.
57-year-old Bowles was sentenced to death in November of 1994 after murdering a man named Walter Hinton in Hinton’s Jacksonville mobile home.
“In November 1994, Bowles helped Hinton move from Georgia to his mobile home in Jacksonville. In exchange, Hinton let Bowles live with him. One night, while Hinton slept, Bowles dropped a concrete block on his head, causing a fracture from Hinton’s right cheek to his jaw. Hinton woke up, but Bowles then strangled him to death.”
The Florida man was also tied to the 1994 murders of John Roberts of Volusia County and Albert Morris in Nassau County. He then later confessed to the murders of other men in Georgia and Maryland.
As Fox reports:
“Bowles reportedly confessed to beating and strangling another roommate, John Hardy Roberts, in Daytona Beach; strangling David Jarman and then stealing his car in Wheaton Maryland; strangling 72-year-old Milton Bradley and dumping his body on a golf course near his home in Savannah, Georgia; and strangling and shooting Albert Morris in Hillard Florida.”
A recent Florida Supreme Court opinion elaborated more on Bowles’ crimes.
“Bowles confessed and pleaded guilty to the 1994 murder of Walter Hinton, who had allowed Bowles to move into his home in exchange for Bowles’ help in moving personal items. Specifically, Bowles dropped a concrete block on Hinton’s head while Hinton was sleeping, then manually strangled a conscious Hinton, and subsequently ‘stuffed toilet paper into Hinton’s throat and placed a rag into his mouth,’ ” the opinion said, partially quoting an earlier court ruling.
Eventually, the evidence around these serial murders gave the implication that Bowles was specifically targeting gay men.
Now, it seems that Bowles is going to be executed for his killing spree back in the 1990s. Plus, the Florida Supreme Court rejected appeals by the Death Row inmate to block the death sentence, according to News-Press. Justices unanimously denied the request by Bowles that tried to establish that he was intellectually disabled and thus protected from execution.
But the Supreme Court says Bowles waited too long to try for an intellectual disability claim.
“Bowles waited until October 19, 2017 to raise an intellectual disability claim for the first time,” the court’s 10-page main opinion said. “Therefore, the record conclusively shows that Bowles’ intellectual disability claim is untimely under our precedent.”
As such, the execution will continue this Thursday, August 22nd.
Sources: Fox 13, News-Press
what time is the execution??? 6PM???? I do not find it in any of the reports of the execution.