08-11-2011, 04:46 PM
thankyou. 
what an awful case. too bad he won't live long enough for Ohio to execute him. he's a horrible twisted creature. why isn't DA seeking death? his age?
video report:
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/video?id=8294210
TOLEDO, Ohio -- TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - A man accused of snatching a teenager on her way home from school in 1967, holding her captive for up to two weeks in his basement and strangling her is about to go on trial in a case that was all but forgotten until five years ago.
Investigators first connected Robert Bowman, now 75, with the killing in the early 1980s, but they didn't have enough evidence before Bowman, once a successful businessman, disappeared into a life on the streets in Florida, Arizona and Nevada.
After a bit of luck, police took another look at the case. A DNA sample linked Bowman to the crime, investigators said, and police in California arrested him in 2008.
He faces life in prison if he's convicted of killing 14-year-old Eileen Adams almost 44 years ago. Her body was found in southern Michigan, a few miles north of her home city of Toledo, Ohio, tied with telephone and drapery cords. A nail had been driven into her head.
Bowman has pleaded not guilty to murder. Jury selection begins Monday in Toledo.
The key witness is likely to be Bowman's former wife, who told investigators a chilling account of finding Adams alive in their basement in the days after she vanished.
Margaret Bowman said she had been married less than a year when she heard moaning while hanging clothes to dry in the basement. She opened the door to a fruit cellar and found the girl naked and bound with ropes.
She testified during a pretrial hearing in May 2010 that she tried to help the girl, but her husband came home and told her that he now had to kill the girl and threatened to kill her as well if she told anyone what she saw.
Margaret Bowman testified that she didn't see him kill the girl, but he made her ride along when he dumped the body in a field.
She said she left her husband as soon as she saved enough money to get away.
Bowman's court-appointed attorneys argued that she shouldn't be allowed to testify because police used hypnosis during one interview with her. A message seeking comment was left for defense attorneys.
Before police investigated Bowman, he had owned a construction company in Ohio and later ran a business that made high-end purses in Florida and sold them in Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue stores.
But when detectives tracked him down in Florida in 1982, he was living in an abandoned restaurant, wearing a tattered shirt and jeans and a scruffy beard.
Hanging from the restaurant ceiling were three dolls, their feet bound with string, investigators said. A nail had been driven into the head of one - eerily similar to how a hunter had found the body of Adams.
Bowman would say only that Adams had been in his home, according to a police report. He said he didn't remember what happened and told police it was up to them to prove he killed the girl.
Three more decades passed until Eileen Adams' ailing father had a chance meeting with a police officer and asked him to take another look at the killing.
Cold-case detectives took DNA samples from Bowman's ex-wife and their daughter and compared those samples with DNA found on Eileen Adams. Investigators said they found a match and charged Bowman even though they had no idea where he was living or even if he was still alive.
All they knew was that he had spent part of the last four decades living on the streets in the southern and western U.S. Bowman was profiled on the "America's Most Wanted" and two more years passed before he finally was arrested when police officers spotted him riding a bicycle in southern California.
![[Image: robert%20bowman%20court.jpg?w=440&h=330&...=nostretch]](http://www.toledoonthemove.com/uploadedImages/wnwo/News/Stories/robert%20bowman%20court.jpg?w=440&h=330&aspect=nostretch)
what an awful case. too bad he won't live long enough for Ohio to execute him. he's a horrible twisted creature. why isn't DA seeking death? his age?
video report:
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/video?id=8294210
TOLEDO, Ohio -- TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - A man accused of snatching a teenager on her way home from school in 1967, holding her captive for up to two weeks in his basement and strangling her is about to go on trial in a case that was all but forgotten until five years ago.
Investigators first connected Robert Bowman, now 75, with the killing in the early 1980s, but they didn't have enough evidence before Bowman, once a successful businessman, disappeared into a life on the streets in Florida, Arizona and Nevada.
After a bit of luck, police took another look at the case. A DNA sample linked Bowman to the crime, investigators said, and police in California arrested him in 2008.
He faces life in prison if he's convicted of killing 14-year-old Eileen Adams almost 44 years ago. Her body was found in southern Michigan, a few miles north of her home city of Toledo, Ohio, tied with telephone and drapery cords. A nail had been driven into her head.
Bowman has pleaded not guilty to murder. Jury selection begins Monday in Toledo.
The key witness is likely to be Bowman's former wife, who told investigators a chilling account of finding Adams alive in their basement in the days after she vanished.
Margaret Bowman said she had been married less than a year when she heard moaning while hanging clothes to dry in the basement. She opened the door to a fruit cellar and found the girl naked and bound with ropes.
She testified during a pretrial hearing in May 2010 that she tried to help the girl, but her husband came home and told her that he now had to kill the girl and threatened to kill her as well if she told anyone what she saw.
Margaret Bowman testified that she didn't see him kill the girl, but he made her ride along when he dumped the body in a field.
She said she left her husband as soon as she saved enough money to get away.
Bowman's court-appointed attorneys argued that she shouldn't be allowed to testify because police used hypnosis during one interview with her. A message seeking comment was left for defense attorneys.
Before police investigated Bowman, he had owned a construction company in Ohio and later ran a business that made high-end purses in Florida and sold them in Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue stores.
But when detectives tracked him down in Florida in 1982, he was living in an abandoned restaurant, wearing a tattered shirt and jeans and a scruffy beard.
Hanging from the restaurant ceiling were three dolls, their feet bound with string, investigators said. A nail had been driven into the head of one - eerily similar to how a hunter had found the body of Adams.
Bowman would say only that Adams had been in his home, according to a police report. He said he didn't remember what happened and told police it was up to them to prove he killed the girl.
Three more decades passed until Eileen Adams' ailing father had a chance meeting with a police officer and asked him to take another look at the killing.
Cold-case detectives took DNA samples from Bowman's ex-wife and their daughter and compared those samples with DNA found on Eileen Adams. Investigators said they found a match and charged Bowman even though they had no idea where he was living or even if he was still alive.
All they knew was that he had spent part of the last four decades living on the streets in the southern and western U.S. Bowman was profiled on the "America's Most Wanted" and two more years passed before he finally was arrested when police officers spotted him riding a bicycle in southern California.