A man accused of tying up a 14-year-old schoolgirl in his Ohio basement in 1967 before killing her and dumping her body was convicted Friday of murder and sentenced to life in prison.Robert Bowman, 75, took the witness stand before his sentencing to deny involvement in the killing after hearing the victim’s sister describe how Eileen Adams’ death tore her family apart.
‘I recognize the pain and suffering I’ve just heard,’ Bowman said, according to the Associated Press, but ‘I’m not responsible for that,’ he added. ‘I feel no remorse.’
Among new DNA evidence used against him, the trial featured interrogation tapes of Bowman neither denying his involvement in the girl’s death or admitting to it.
He promises to not make prosecution too easy for them.
‘All this is just a waste of time. What you want me to do is to confess to something like that which you’re not going to get. I’m not going to say anything that can be held against me. I’m just not going to make it that easy for you,’ Bowman told prosecutors on the tapes, according to WTOL-TV.
Dolls also found in his possession in the 80s featuring nails in the back of their heads, similar to how Eileen’s body was found, were also presented.
Bowman claimed they were there only to play with prosecutors.
When Eileen’s body was found it was rapped in a rug and left in a southern Michigan field after being sexually assaulted, tied up and a nail driven through the back of her head.
Her sister, Maggie Kirschman, who was eight when her sister disappeared a week before Christmas on her way home from school, said there was ‘no forgetting’ for her or their six other siblings.
Two of them, along with their parents, died in recent years, missing the final sentencing.
After hearing previous testimony by Bowman’s ex-wife against him, describing the girl found tied up ‘hanging like Jesus’ in their basement, Ms Kirschman said her family felt hopeless, with the jury not finding enough evidence for his conviction.
‘It was as if there was nothing we could do. It made us all sick,’ she said.
After stumping prosecutors with a lack of hard evidence, the case against Bowman was dismissed before a cold-case squad linked new DNA evidence to Bowman in 2008.
He was charged in the killing, however was unable to be located or known if still alive.
He was profiled on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and police in California arrested him after he was spotted riding a bicycle.
His attorney said he had been living in the desert under a tarp.
During the earlier August trial, Margaret Bowman, one of the key witnesses against her ex-husband, offered a chilling account of discovering the girl after hearing what she thought were rats in the cellar.
She told jurors she opened a wooden door and was stunned to find a naked young girl tied-up and ‘hanging like Jesus’. Her arms were outstretched and she had tape covering her mouth.
Mrs Bowman said she knew the girl was alive because: ‘I looked in her eyes.’
‘I was horrified, I was screaming, I was shaking,’ she added. ‘I didn’t know what to think.’
She said she ran upstairs and that her husband confronted her, saying that she was getting into his business and that he now had to kill the girl.
He also threatened to kill his wife and their newborn daughter if she told anyone, she said.
Mrs Bowman said she never went in the basement again. ‘That was enough,’ she said.
That same night, she testified, Bowman made her go with him as he dumped the body just north of Toledo, across the state line in Michigan.
The defense had previously questioned the credibility of her testimony and why she waited so long to contact authorities.
Mrs Bowman said that at some point she discovered school books on a table in the kitchen. She opened one of the books and saw the name Eileen Adams written inside.
The couple moved several times, including to Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami. Ms Bowman said she didn’t go to police until 1981, after she had saved enough money to leave her husband and return to Toledo.
That was the first time anyone connected Bowman to the killing.
Detectives tracked Bowman down to Miami, Florida in 1982. Once a successful businessman who sold high-end handbags in Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue stores, he was living in an abandoned restaurant near Miami, wearing a tattered shirt, jeans and a scruffy beard.
Bowman’s attorney said he had become involved in an offbeat religion and given up all of his material things.
Three more decades passed until cold-case detectives took DNA samples from Bowman’s ex-wife and their daughter and compared them with DNA found on Adams’ clothing.
Bowman said that he intends to appeal Friday’s conviction.
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