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In jail missives, she adored killer
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- Two months after Hank Earl Carr killed himself and Bernice Bowen's 4-year-old son, Bowen penned a poem titled, I Miss You. It reads, in part: "I felt so hopeless while you laid there bleeding ... My love for you will always be true/For I can't escape the ghost of you." It isn't clear whether the lines refer to her son Joey, or her boyfriend Carr. A jury this week found she lied to protect Carr. But in a series of letters Bowen composed from jail in the months after May 19, 1998 -- the day Carr killed the boy, three law officers and himself -- the ghost that seems to dominate Bowen's thoughts is Carr. Bowen's correspondence, far from settling the controversy about her motives in protecting Carr, provides yet more grist for the dispute. The letters to pen pal Roger Bunger, released this week, reveal a Bowen who adored Carr to the point of worship, even after he became the most hated man in Tampa Bay. She wrote of how Carr, whom she called "Boo," taught her to survive. She reminisced about their favorite songs: Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, Open Arms by Journey, and Who'll Stop the Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival. She spoke admiringly of Carr's fighting prowess, recalling that she once saw him "take on seven m-----f------ at one time." Had she been a "fake," she wrote, "Boo would never of let me be his girl. Because he was as real as they came and I hope some day I will find someone as real as he." One thing is missing from the correspondence, however: sympathy for Tampa police Detectives Randy Bell and Ricky Childers, and Highway Patrol Trooper James Crooks, all of whom Carr murdered. At Bowen's trial this week, in which she was convicted as an accessory after the fact to the detectives' murders, prosecutors painted Bowen and Carr as a lethal couple living out a twisted Bonnie and Clyde fantasy replete with stockpiled guns and body armor. Prosecutor Curt Allen, who used portions of the letters to incriminate Bowen, argued that she lied about Carr's real name to abet his attempted getaway. The defense acknowledged she lied but said she was in the grip of Carr's brutal influence, fearing his beatings. The prosecutor called Bowen's correspondence the work of a cold, hard woman whose "number one priority in life was Hank Earl Carr," even to the exclusion of her children. The defense said they are the letters of a woman at the lowest point of her life, revealing a psychological slavery to Carr that extended beyond his death. "She's drowning, and she's looking for a rock," said her lawyer, Claude Tison. "She's repelled to think she was ever under the thumb of a creature like that." Tison said Bowen now remembers Carr "with a shudder." Bowen, 28, will be sentenced next month. She is already serving 15 years for allowing her children to be around Carr. Tison said, "Sad as it is, prison is the only time in her life where she has not been brutalized and degraded." -- Christopher Goffard can be reached at (813) 226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com.
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