Missouri man convicted in teen's 1977 killing dies in prison

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A man convicted in 2009 of raping and killing a St. Louis-area teenager decades earlier has died in prison.

Gregory Bowman, 64, died Tuesday at the Potosi Correctional Center of apparent natural causes, the state Department of Corrections said. He had been dealing with several medical issues in recent years, including a serious and potentially fatal kidney ailment.

Bowman was convicted in 2009 of first-degree murder in the 1977 abduction, rape and killing of 16-year-old Velda Joy Rumfelt in St. Louis County. She had been strangled with a shoestring.

Bowman was sentenced to death, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2011 because jurors had improperly heard that Bowman had been linked to the killing of a woman and girl in Belleville, Illinois, which is about 30 miles east of St. Louis. Although his conviction stood, Bowman was never resentenced due to repeated delays caused by various reasons, including his failing health.

In 1978, Bowman confessed to killing the Belleville woman and girl - 21-year-old Ruth Ann Jany and 14-year-old Elizabeth West - in separate attacks. He quickly recanted, saying his statements had been coerced. A judge granted a new trial in 2001 and he was briefly freed on bond in 2007, before DNA testing linked him to Rumfelt's unsolved killing and he was charged in that case.

Illinois prosecutors had said they did not intend to re-try Bowman for the Belleville killings.