A story we knew would never end happily
Gregory Bowman is dead. He never got his date with the executioner’s needle, but he did rot from the inside in what many folks — forgive us — hope was a horribly painful death.
There are generations who don’t know of Bowman, but at a time before pop culture put a serial killer on every show and around every corner, he created terror in this community and left an ugly scar. He died Tuesday, likely of liver cancer, at age 64 on Death Row at the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri.
Bowman was imprisoned in 1972 for abducting a woman, was out and working as a traveling salesman when 14-year-old Elizabeth Kay West disappeared on April 22, 1978. She performed in the girls’ chorus of “Oklahoma” at Belleville West High School, was walking the block and a half on West Main Street to her home on the other side of Union School.
Her clothed body was found two weeks later in the woods south of Millstadt. She’d been raped and strangled.
That moment left a mark. The News-Democrat old-timers remember when it stopped the presses. Her memorial service program is still in our archives: “To her parents from birth, she never seemed to be a part of this world, but merely passing through for a little while.”
Later that summer, nurse’s aide Ruth Ann Jany, 21, was taken after using an ATM on West Main in Belleville. Her skeleton was found a year later in a shallow grave near Hecker by boys playing in a field.
Bowman was caught July 20, 1978, while trying to abduct Jeanne Taylor from a coin laundry on West Main Street. She survived.
The traveling salesman’s route took him through Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Five other St. Louis area women’s deaths remain unsolved after they disappeared and died in similar ways within 10 weeks. Another Belleville area teen and a Missouri teen were also murdered during that time.
Bowman’s convictions for the West and Jany murders were overturned on a technicality and a new trial was ordered. He was released on bond.
Former Belleville Police Chief James Rokita investigated the West and Jany murders, and never let Bowman out of his sights. Rokita got Bowman’s DNA to Missouri cold case detectives and Bowman’s freedom ended after a week in 2008 when he was charged with murdering Velda Joy Rumfelt, 16.
The DNA convicted Bowman and is why he was on Death Row in Missouri. Rokita and the other investigators got what justice they could, but more importantly saved scores of women after putting Bowman in a cage.
Sharrey Case, 17, was another likely victim from the Belleville area. St. Clair County investigators six months ago knew Bowman was dying and tried to get him to tell them about Case and give her family some peace. Bowman gave up nothing. He told investigators he was going to beat cancer and beat the charges.
He died as he lived: a remorseless sociopath.
This story was originally published March 19, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "A story we knew would never end happily."