Unsolved Murders In Ohio

Jury selection begins in Bowman murder trial

Seated with his attorneys as prospective jurors were called individually for questioning, Robert Bowman was given a first look Monday at the men and women who will eventually decide his fate.

Jury selection began in Lucas County Common Pleas Court Monday for the murder trial of Bowman, who is charged with the 1967 killing of a Sylvania Township teenager.

Dressed in a khaki T-shirt and slacks, Bowman sat between his attorneys during the start of what is anticipated to be a three-week trial. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

Bowman, 75, is charged with first-degree murder in the 1967 slaying of 14-year-old Eileen Adams, who was last seen Dec. 18, 1967, as she was getting off a bus in West Toledo.

Authorities believe she was held captive in Bowman's former home on West Sylvania Avenue for as long as two weeks before she was killed. Her body was found in a frozen Monroe County field on Jan. 31, 1968.

Although Bowman was once a suspect in the teenager's death, the murder went unsolved for nearly four decades. Cold-case detectives reopened the case in 2006.

An arrest warrant was issued for Bowman in November, 2006, after a reverse paternity test was used to match him to DNA found on the victim's body. He was arrested nearly two years later in Cathedral City, Calif., and extradited to Ohio.

Monday, a pool of 34 prospective jurors was called to the courtroom of Judge Gene Zmuda for the start of selection.

Prospective jurors were then questioned individually and separately throughout the day about the length of the trial, pretrial publicity, and whether they had been a victim of a crime. The jury pool will return Tuesday and general questioning will resume.

Murder on the Way to Sturgis: Hell's Angel James M. Bailey, Jr ...

During the first full week of August for almost every year since 1938, throngs of motorcycle enthusiasts have descended on the Black Hills of South Dakota for the annual Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis.

The Rally can swell the population of the city of 55,000 to as much as 750,000, a figure which nearly doubles the 812,000 population of the entire state.

Bikers from all over the country and world attend. Hundreds of vendors sell motorcycles and accessories, alcohol, food, and clothing.

There are concerts, street dances, and motorcycle competitions, as well as social events like weddings, sometimes of as many as 200 couples a year.

And it’s not uncommon for people to die at the Rally — 11 people died in 1990 during the 50th anniversary of the event — or to be killed in traffic accidents traveling to or from Sturgis.

But in 1975 — the year the event expanded to a full week — a biker was murdered on the way to the Rally.

On August 14, 1975, three members of the “Dirty 30” Hell’s Angels Cleveland Chapter — 32-year-old James M. “Beetle” Bailey, Jr. , 27-year-old Paul Philemon, and 31-year-old Richard Vesey — were riding their motorcycles to Sturgis accompanied by two other club members in a van.

At the Highway 117 I-80 overpass near Colfax in Jasper County, Iowa, gun shots rang out, fatally striking Bailey in the neck and wounding Vesey in the arm.

Investigators believed the shot that struck Bailey was fired from below and the one striking Vesey from atop the overpass, where they found two shotgun shells.

The Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation could not determine if the attack was directed at Bailey and his friends or if it was a random act.

The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes

Who Killed...? Cleveland, Ohio

Unsolved Crimes

The Serial Killer's Apprentice, And 12 Other True Stories of Cleveland's Most Intriguing Unsolved Crimes

True Crime: Ohio, The State's Most Notorious Criminal Cases