It wasn’t hard for Daytona Beach police to figure out who killed John Hardy Roberts in March 1994: Gary Ray Bowles left a probation document at the scene and also was caught on an ATM camera trying to withdraw money from Roberts’ account. “One of the things that’s always stayed in the back of my mind is how horrible we feel that we didn’t solve it quickly when we were the first,” said Alison Sylvester, a former Daytona Beach police detective who investigated Roberts’ death. Bowles is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison on Thursday for the murder of Walter Hinton — the last of six men whom he confessed to killing over an eight-month period.
