CROWN POINT, Ind. – A Maine man was sentenced Tuesday to 50 years in prison for the 1979 sexual torture and slaying of an 8-year-old Gary boy.
David Bowen, 44, of Portland, Maine, pleaded guilty in September to the murder of Kenneth “Butch” Conrick in exchange for a maximum 50-year prison term. He admitted forcing the boy to perform sex acts on him, then strangling the boy and repeatedly plunging a large stick into his chest.
Kenneth, who also had been cut with a piece of glass, was reported missing on Oct. 15, 1979. His nude body was found 13 days later in a wooded area near his family’s Gary home.
Authorities said he was bound to a tree, that a cord had been tied around his neck and that his body showed signs of brutal, prolonged torture.
DNA evidence that was unavailable 29 years ago helped Lake County police link Bowen to Kenneth’s death. He was arrested in December in Maine and extradited to Lake County.
“Mr. Bowen had 29 years of freedom,” Lake Criminal Court Judge Clarence Murray said. “That is justice long delayed. He should have been in prison long ago.”
Bowen told the court that something “was wrong with me when I was 16.”
“Being a father now, I can’t imagine someone doing something like that to my daughter,” he said. “I killed him, I’m sorry.”
Court records show Bowen, who was 16 at the time of the killing, became a suspect after police learned he had been accused more than a year before the homicide of sexually assaulting and beating a 9-year-old boy who lived near Bowen’s home.
The 9-year-old boy’s mother agreed not to press charges against Bowen because Bowen underwent psychiatric treatment, police said.
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