Gary Ray Bowles, a serial killer who preyed on older gay men during an eight-month spree that left six dead, was executed by lethal injection Thursday at Florida State Prison, reports the Associated Press. Bowles received the death penalty for the 1994 murder of Walter Hinton in Jacksonville Beach. Hinton was Bowles’ final known victim in a series that terrorized the Interstate 95 corridor and won him the nickname the “I-95 killer.”
It began in Daytona Beach with the murder of John Hardy Roberts. In between, there were victims in Rockville, Md. Savannah, Ga., Atlanta, and Nassau County, Fl. In each case, Bowles had a signature: He stuffed the victims’ throats with objects — towels, rags, toilet paper, dirt, leaves and even a sex toy. Bowles said in a handwritten statement dated Thursday that he was sorry for his actions. Investigators say if he hadn’t been caught, he would have kept on killing. “He probably enjoyed it after a while,” said Thomas Youngman, a Daytona Beach detective assigned to the Roberts murder. “Why do you kill people after the first one? The first one could be a mistake, maybe. But then the second, all right, I’ll maybe give you that. But the third, fourth fifth and sixth? When do you stop?”