Prosecutors say they again want to try to send Gregory Bowman, 63, to Missouri’s death row. Bowman was convicted in 2009 in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Velda Joy Rumfelt, 16, in the Brentwood area in 1977, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A retrial of the penalty phase of Bowman’s trial was to begin in St. Louis County Circuit Court Monday but was delayed. Bowman is terminally ill, so it remains to be seen if he will ever face execution.
Bowman was was charged with the kidnap-murders of Elizabeth West, 14, and Ruth Jany, 21, in the Belleville, IL, area in 1978. He was given the death sentence for the death of Rumfelt, which the Missouri Supreme Court overturned, saying the proceeding was tainted by the prosecution’s mention of murder convictions in Illinois.
A Post-Dispatch investigation showed that that Bowman had been tricked into giving a confession in the Illinois cases, which was the basis for a life without parole sentence. Bowman was retried then released in 2007. Investigators then found DNA that linked him to semen on Rumfelt’s clothes that helped lead to his conviction in her murder.
Read the full article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.