The long wait for justice for the families of three young women brutally murdered in the Tampa Bay area in 1986 is finally over. Serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., 53, was executed last night three decades after his crimes, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Family members of Natalie Blanche Holley, 25; Stephanie Collins, 17; and Teri Lynn Matthews, 26; watched silently as their killer was executed by lethal injection. The families endured decades of legal wrangling as Bolin was tried and found guilty 10 separate times for the three murders. It was the murder of Matthews, the last of his victims in 1986, that resulted in Gov. Rick Scott signing Bolin’s first death warrant in October.
The U.S. Supreme Court spent four hours mulling Bolin’s final appeal well past his scheduled 6 p.m. execution time. The justices denied the appeal just before 10 p.m. His path to Florida’s death row began in 1990, when an anonymous caller to an Indiana Crime Stoppers tip line implicated him in the three unsolved murders of young women.