Florida executes serial killer who brutally murdered gay men

gary ray bowles florida serial killer gay men murder
Photo: Supplied

American serial killer Gary Ray Bowles, convicted of murdering six gay men over eight months in 1994, will be executed on Thursday evening US time.

The now-57-year-old murderer will receive a lethal injection at Florida State Prison.


On March 15, 1994, Bowles killed his first known victim, John Hardy Roberts, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Roberts had offered him a temporary place to live. Bowles beat and strangled him to death, and then stole his credit card.

Police quickly named Bowles a suspect after identifying his fingerprints and other evidence at the crime scene.

Over the next six months, Bowles violently bashed and murdered five other men – Walter Hinton, David Harman, Milton Bradley, Alverson Carter Jr., and Albert Morris – across three states, Florida, Georgia and Maryland.

Bowles is said to have approached his gay male victims as a sex worker before beating and strangling them, then robbing them.

Finally, on October 22, 1995, police arrested Bowles for the murder of Walter Hinton. Bowles confessed to all six murders.

Gary Ray Bowles was known as the ‘I-95 killer’

Gary Ray Bowles received a death sentence for his conviction in the 1994 murder of Hinton.

The media dubbed Bowles the “I-95 killer” before his capture. This was because many of the victims were found close to the US east coast’s major Interstate 95 highway.

Bowles told police he identified as straight but survived homelessness as a teenager by working as a gay sex worker.

He claimed to police he blamed gay men for the breakdown of an earlier relationship with a pregnant girlfriend.

The man was first sentenced to death in May 1996, after pleading guilty to the murder of Hinton. He was re-sentenced to death in 1999 after his initial death sentence was overturned.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Bowles’ death warrant in June this year, 25 years after his murder spree.

