Just In: Executed After a Deadly Killing Spree of 6 Gay Men — Gary Ray Bowles Final Hours, last word
The state of Florida carried out the execution of Gary Ray Bowles on Thursday night, ending the life of a man who terrorized the Interstate 95 corridor for eight months in 1994, murdering six gay men in a spree marked by brutal overkill and a signature act of degradation. Bowles, 57, was pronounced dead at 10:58 p. m.
at Florida State Prison in Starke, after the U. S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal arguing intellectual disability.
He did not speak final words, but left a handwritten statement expressing remorse, a stark contrast to earlier boasts that his victims “got what they deserved.”
The execution ended a 25-year legal odyssey for the families of the victims, some of whom died before seeing justice. Bowles had been on death row since 1996 for the murder of Walter Hinton, the last of his six known victims. But the full scope of his crimes stretched from Florida to Maryland, a trail of bodies that investigators say may never be fully accounted for.
Bowles’s final hours were spent alone. He woke at 4 a. m.
, declined visits from family or a spiritual adviser, and ate a last meal of three cheeseburgers, french fries, and bacon. His attorney was his only visitor. The execution was delayed while the Supreme Court considered arguments that Bowles’s IQ of 74 and troubled childhood made him ineligible for the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.
The court declined to intervene.
In his handwritten statement, read to reporters after his death, Bowles wrote: “I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering I have caused. I hope my death eases your pain. I want to tell my mother that I am also sorry for my actions.
Having to deal with your son being called a monster is terrible. I’m so very sorry. I never wanted this to be my life.
You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a serial killer.”
The apology stood in stark contrast to words he spoke in a 2014 interview on A&E’s “The Killer Speaks,” where he said, “It’s not hard to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 somebody. You can 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 somebody pretty easy if you have the mindset for it.” He added that his victims “all got what they deserved” and that he “just wanted to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 as many people as I could before they caught me.”
Detective Thomas Youngman, who investigated the first murder in Daytona Beach, said after the execution: “Why do you 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 people after the first one? The first one could be a mistake, maybe. But then the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth?
When do you stop? He never stopped. Someone had to stop him.”
The killing spree began in March 1994 in Daytona Beach, Florida. John Hardy Roberts, 59, an insurance salesman, invited Bowles into his beachfront home after meeting him at a gay bar. For a week, Bowles lived with Roberts, then beat him with a glass lamp, strangled him, and stuffed a rag into his throat.
Bowles left his probation documents at the scene, but by the time police identified him, he was already driving north in Roberts’s car.
In April 1994, Bowles struck again in Wheaton, Maryland. David Jarman, 39, a loan officer, met Bowles at a Dupont Circle bar and took him home. Jarman was found beaten, strangled, and with a 𝒔𝒆𝒙 toy crammed into his throat.
The pattern was set: blunt force trauma, manual strangulation, and an object forced into the victim’s mouth.
By late April, Bowles had reached Savannah, Georgia. Milton Bradley, 72, a World War II Navy veteran who had survived a shrapnel wound and subsequent lobotomy, was a regular at a bar called Faces. Bowles offered him a ride home but instead drove to a golf course, beat him to death with a piece of a discarded toilet, and stuffed leaves and dirt into his mouth.
Bradley’s body was found on May 5, 1994.
Eight days later, Alverson Carter Jr. , 47, was found dead in his Atlanta home, stabbed multiple times, beaten, and strangled. Then, in late May, Albert Morris, 37, was killed in Hilliard, Florida.
Bowles bludgeoned him with a marble dish, shot him, strangled him, and stuffed a towel into his throat. Morris’s parents discovered the body.
The FBI added Bowles to its Ten Most Wanted list in June 1994. But Bowles had a plan: he stole the identity of a man named Timothy Whitfield and used it to evade capture for months. He even served brief jail time for minor infractions under that name, sitting in holding cells with police officers who had no idea they had a serial killer in custody.
In November 1994, Bowles, still living as Whitfield, moved in with Walter Hinton, 42, a floral designer in Jacksonville Beach. For weeks, they lived together, smoking marijuana and drinking beer. On the night of November 16, after Hinton’s friend left, Bowles picked up a 40-pound concrete stepping stone, carried it into Hinton’s bedroom, and dropped it on his face as he slept.
Hinton survived the blow, screaming and falling to the floor. Bowles strangled him, then stuffed toilet paper and a rag into his throat.
For two days, Bowles remained in the mobile home, eating from Hinton’s refrigerator and watching television while the body decomposed. Day laborers finally reported Hinton missing, and police arrested Bowles at a labor pool. During hours of interrogation, Bowles finally said, “My name is Gary Ray Bowles, and I’ve killed six people.”
He confessed to all six murders with chilling detachment. When asked why he killed Hinton after weeks of apparent friendship, Bowles replied, “It was time to move on.”
Detective John Best of the Savannah Police Department, who investigated Bradley’s murder, said after the execution that he still suspects Bowles may have killed women. During post-arrest interviews, Bowles became evasive when asked about female victims, saying only, “Let’s change the subject.” Best said, “I still believe there might be other victims out there.”
Bowles’s legal journey was protracted. He pleaded guilty to Hinton’s murder in 1996 and was sentenced to death. In 1997, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Roberts and Morris, receiving life sentences.
But the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence in 1998, ruling that prosecutors improperly introduced evidence of Bowles’s hatred of gay men. A second jury in 1999 deliberated less than an hour before again sentencing him to death.
For 20 years, Bowles sat in a 6-by-9-foot cell on death row, giving occasional interviews and filing appeals. On June 11, 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant. The execution was scheduled for August 22.
Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda, who fought for decades to put Bowles on death row, was present at the execution to represent Hinton’s family. “In this case, the victim’s sister and the victim’s mother are both deceased,” he said. “And that’s part of the tragedy, that it has taken so long to get where we are at.
25 years.”
The victims’ families had waited a quarter-century for closure. Some never saw it. But on Thursday night, the state of Florida ended the life of a man who had shown no remorse for years, only to offer a final apology that many found hollow.
Gary Ray Bowles was born on January 25, 1962, in Clifton Forge, Virginia. His father died of black lung disease six months before he was born. His mother remarried a violent alcoholic who beat the boys and their mother.
At age 13, Bowles grabbed a rock and nearly killed his stepfather. When his mother chose to stay with the abuser, Bowles walked out and never returned.
He became a drifter and a hustler, selling 𝒔𝒆𝒙 to older men at truck stops and gay bars. He insisted he was not gay, telling investigators, “I’d befriend these old guys and have sexual relations with them, but they performed on me. I did not perform on them.”
In 1982, he beat and sexually assaulted his girlfriend, serving six years in prison. After release, he was convicted of robbery and served two more years.
In December 1993, he walked out of prison for the last time. He moved in with a woman in Daytona Beach, and she became pregnant. When she discovered his double life of hustling, she terminated the pregnancy and left.
Bowles later told police, “I blamed gay men for the abortion, and this led me to becoming a murderer.”
The first killing came weeks later.
Bowles’s execution was the 99th in Florida since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Witnesses said he appeared to be talking quietly to himself as the lethal injection began. He did not speak any final words.
In the end, the man who once said killing was easy faced his own death with silence. His final statement, written on paper, offered an apology that came too late for the six men whose lives he destroyed, and for the families who spent decades waiting for justice.
Detective Youngman, reflecting on the case, said: “He probably enjoyed it after a while. Why do you 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 people after the first one? The first one could be a mistake, maybe.
But then the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth? When do you stop?”
Gary Ray Bowles stopped on August 22, 2019, at 10:58 p. m. , when the state of Florida finally ended his life.
But the question of how many more victims he might have claimed, and whether his apology was genuine, will linger long after the chemicals stopped flowing.
The families of John Hardy Roberts, David Jarman, Milton Bradley, Alverson Carter Jr., Albert Morris, and Walter Hinton can now close a chapter that has haunted them for a generation. But the scars of Bowles’s rampage remain, a reminder of the violence that can erupt when a broken childhood meets a society that failed to intervene.
As the execution team completed its work, the prison fell silent. Outside, protesters and supporters of capital punishment gathered, their voices carrying into the Florida night. Inside, a man who had terrorized the East Coast took his last breath, leaving behind a legacy of blood and a final, ambiguous apology.
The story of Gary Ray Bowles is over. But the memory of the six men he killed, and the families they left behind, will endure.