Jury calls for death sentence for Bowman

A jury that took about 15 hours to decide Gregory Bowman was guilty of killing a teenage girl 30 years ago has now called for his execution.

A St. Louis County jury last week convicted Bowman of murder in the 1977 death of 16-year-old Velda Rumfelt. On Friday evening, the jury recommended he be put to death for the crime. The jury deliberated over his sentence for about four and a half hours on Friday.

Bowman’s formal sentencing is set for Dec. 11.

The prosecution’s case against Bowman was wholly based on DNA evidence. A crime lab technician testified about sperm found in the victim’s underwear. The chance of it being left by anyone but Bowman was 1 in more than 459 trillion, she told jurors. The teenager was strangled with shoelaces. Those weren’t tested for DNA, the technician said, because they weren’t carefully handled decades ago and could be contaminated.

Bowman’s defense attorney argued the evidence had been mixed up, saying the underwear with the DNA didn’t appear the same as the pair in autopsy photos from the time of the killing.