Investigators: DNA evidence links man to '77 murder of teenager

FAIR PLAY, Mo. -- Dewey Rumfelt doesn't want to hear the details about what happened to his little sister on the day she was killed nearly 30 years ago.

But he does want her killer to be executed -- and he wants to be there when it happens.

On Friday, police in St. Louis County arrested Gregory Bowman, 55, after DNA evidence linked him to the slaying of Velda Joy Rumfelt, who was 16 on June 15, 1977, when she was last seen alive. Her body was found the next day in a field in southwest St. Louis County.

A detective called Rumfelt on Friday to tell him that a DNA match to Bowman had only a 1 in 5 trillion chance of being wrong.

"I was shocked," said Rumfelt, 47. "And with a match like that, I was sold."

Bowman was charged Friday with capital murder. He had never been a suspect in her murder until Tuesday, when DNA from semen found in the slain teen's clothing linked him to the crime.

Bowman had been out of jail just more than a week after two murder convictions in Illinois were overturned. He is awaiting new trials in those cases, both of which have similarities to the Velda Rumfelt killing.

As a condition of his bond, Bowman was required to live with his father in the Wabash County, Ill., town of Bellmont -- 130 miles east of Belleville -- until a new trial. The elder Bowman is the longtime mayor of Bellmont.

Held without bail

Gregory Bowman was being held Saturday without bail in the Wabash County Jail in Mount Carmel, Ill., awaiting extradition to Missouri.

Police believe Bowman picked Velda Rumfelt up in his 1977 Grand Prix, slashed her throat, strangled her and dumped her body.

"All of the details, I'm not interested in hearing in a courtroom setting," Rumfelt said. "What I want to know is, when are we frying him? I'll be there."

St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said he will decide later whether to seek the death penalty.

On Jan. 26, Bowman posted $15,020 bond and was freed from jail in St. Clair County. In April 2001, a judge threw out his convictions for the murders of Elizabeth West, 14, and Ruth Ann Jany, 21, and ordered new trials.

The convictions were overturned because a sheriff's deputy admitted to newspaper reporters that he had tricked Bowman into talking about the murders to a career criminal inside the jail.

Investigators got a break in the case after Jim Rokita, with the Belleville, Ill., Police Department, called the St. Louis County Police Department to see if there were any unsolved murders from the 1970s against which he could check Bowman's DNA.

Joe Burgoon, who works with the St. Louis County department's cold-case unit, mentioned Velda Rumfelt's killing. Like Rumfelt, both West and Jany had been strangled and their bodies dumped in remote areas.

"The DNA came back, and bingo!" said Burgoon, a 43-year police veteran who has spent 27 years investigating homicides in St. Louis.

Bowman's attorney, Steve Evans, noted that his client voluntarily provided his DNA in 2001 to clear his name in the West and Jany murders.

"I find it extremely coincidental that within days of posting bond that his name came up" in Rumfelt's killing," Evans said. "Greg volunteered DNA without hesitation to clear himself in two other murders. It makes no sense at all that he would do that if he killed someone else."

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com