IL - Gregory Bowman, Belleview and St. Louis County, MO , 1970's

Gregory Bowman started his crime spree by 1972. To my knowledge he was not captured by authorities for 3 decades. He has since passed away in prison. He was known to strangle, and stab/slash the necks of the women he killed. He was responsible for the brutal death of Velda Joy Rumfelt.I learned about him from a On the Case with Paula Zahn. One of his techniques was to come up and put his arm around a young lady, meanwhile holding a knife to her. He was even convincing enough that two teens following behind thought it was innocent courtship. I imagine Gregory traveled and operated during his thirty plus years of freedom.

"Killer of St. Louis County Teen, Once Also Convicted in 2 Belleville Murders, Dies in Prison" https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-39420173/killer-of-st-louis-county-teen-once-also-convicted :
"Bowman, 64, had been ill for some time, which postponed a resentencing that could have reinstated a death sentence in thekilling of Velda Joy Rumfelt in 1977. Bowman died of "apparent natural causes" at 10:10 a.m. at the Potosi Correctional Center in Potosi, officials said.
After being arrested in a failed kidnapping in Belleville in 1978, Bowman was convicted of two separate kidnap-murders earlier that year in that city. Elizabeth West, 14, disappeared while walking home from a school play, and Ruth Ann Jany, 21, disappeared from a downtown ATM. The body of West showed she had been strangled and presumably raped. Little could be gleaned from Jany's skeletal remains.

Bowman had served time in prison already on a 1972 conviction for kidnapping a girl in eastern Illinois. He was convicted in an uncontested bench trial of killing West and Jany on the strength of his confession to a fellow jail inmate."

Gregory Bowman killed Velda Joy Rumfelt in St. Louis County 32 years ago, jurors decided on Thursday afternoon in a case driven entirely by a DNA match. They return to court at 4 p.m. to decide if he should be executed.

It is the third time Bowman, 58, has been convicted of killing a young St. Louis area woman in the late 1970s.

Bowman, has past convictions for abducting women in the 1970s who were either released unhurt or escaped.

He also made incriminating statements to a fellow jail inmate regarding the separate killings of Elizabeth West, 14, and Ruth Ann Jany, 21, who disappeared under similar circumstances in Belleville in 1978.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_0178c0b7-2eda-596f-8987-af8f62177e88.html