A federal appeals court Monday rejected a stay of execution for convicted murderer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday at Florida State Prison.
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Oscar Ray Bolin was sentenced to death for beating and stabbing Teri Lynn Matthews to death in 1986.
One hundred and thirty miles away, brightly colored artificial flowers adorn a grave site at Florida Hills Memorial Gardens in Springhill where Teri Lynn Matthews is buried.
A former carnival worker and long-distance truck driver, Bolin, 53, was also convicted of the 1986 murders of 17-year-old Tampa high school student Stephanie Collins and 25-year-old Natalie “Blanche” Holley, also of Tampa.
He once again received the death penalty in the Matthews’ and Collins’ killings, but a new jury in the Holley slaying found Bolin guilty of second-degree murder, converting his previous death sentence to a sentence of life in prison.
Despite being found guilty 10 times by juries in the three cases, Bolin maintained his innocence in a television interview on Wednesday. “It’s my release. My punishment’s over”. By the time her parents got to the post office, the sheriff had grim news: an unidentified girl’s body had been found in a nearby rural area.
“She was an exceptionally outgoing person”, Reeves said.
The arrest was made Tuesday at the couple’s two-story apartment where they lived with their three children, police said. After 28 years of this, being in this box for 28 years, it’s a release.
Over the years, Bolin had several trials, retrials and courtroom drama – even marrying one of his defense attorneys. Rosalie Martinez had been a paralegal at the Hillsborough Public Defender’s office who was married to a prominent Tampa attorney.
Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., will be the first inmate to be executed in Florida this year.
When he was charged in 1990, Bolin was serving a 22- to 75-year prison sentence in OH for kidnapping and raping a 20-year-old waitress near Toledo.
“I hope to have a big bonfire in my pit out here when this is all over”, she said. “They’re not getting any peace by executing me tomorrow”.
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Prosecutors successfully argued that the alleged confession of another OH killer, Steven Kasler, who killed himself before a hearing could be held, was unlikely to lead to Bolin’s exoneration – in part because Kasler had falsely confessed to other crimes. Bolin also said he is innocent in the slayings of two other women as well.
