Gary has been charged with slaying six men along the East Coast in 1994. On May 28, 1999, a Jacksonville jury recommended the death sentence for 37-year-old Bowles. Once on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list as a serial killer of gay men, Bowles first received the death penalty in 1996 for the 1994 murder of Walter Jammell Hinton. However,the sentence was overturned.
Bowles, of Clifton Forge, Va., was placed on the FBI's list of 10 most-wanted fugitives in 1994 for the slayings of four gay men. When he was arrested late that year, he gave police statements about six killings: Hinton's, another in Nassau County, one in Daytona Beach, two in Georgia and one in Maryland.
Like many serial killers, Bowles left a "signature" with each of his victims: he stuffed in the mouths with something. Bowles was caught -- almost by accident -- in Jacksonville, Florida, when he was using an alias, the name "Tim," which he got from the roommate of one of his victims. When authorities questioned him about using the dead man's credit cards, he told them his real name.
On September 11, 1999, Circuit Judge Jack Schemer followed a jury's recommendation, and sentenced Gary Ray Bowles to die in Florida's electric chair. Bowles, 37, first received the death penalty in 1996 for the 1994 murder of Walter Jammell Hinton, but he was given a new sentencing hearing by the Florida Supreme Court. The high court said prosecutors shouldn't have been allowed to use Bowles' admitted hatred of gays against him because it did not prove it led him to murder.
Hinton, 42, was asleep in his bed in Jacksonville when Bowles slammed a 40-pound stepping stone on his head, said Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda.