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Bolin is guilty, again

Prosecutors wait until closing arguments to reveal key evidence.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published November 3, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Ken Helle] Oscar Ray Bolin, left, talks with his attorney, David Parry, on Thursday, the last day of his murder trial in the 1986 slaying of Stephanie Collins, 17. Judge Barbara Fleischer will sentence Bolin on Monday to life in prison or death. A note found in Stephanie Collins' purse had Bolin's middle name and license plate number on it. . [Times photo: XXXX]

TAMPA - Twenty years after Stephanie Collins' body was found in a ditch wrapped in a quilt, bedsheets and a hospital towel, she spoke.

Her message came in a note she jotted down on a folded piece of paper, one that went unnoticed by detectives, FBI lab analysts and lawyers for two decades.

Once found, it led a jury to convict Oscar Ray Bolin of first-degree murder on Thursday.

"Stephanie had a voice in this," her mother, Donna Witmer, said after the verdict.

The note was a shocking revelation because it never surfaced the past two times Bolin was tried in the death of Collins, 17, who lived in Carrollwood. Revealing it to the jury during closing arguments added to the drama, and attorneys said that strategy was a calculated risk that paid off.

Bolin, 44, had been convicted and sentenced to death twice before in Collins' November 1986 death. Appeals courts vacated both convictions, resulting in the third trial. He has also been convicted of killing two other women, and has fought each through appeal.

Bolin has been tried nine times, the same details being hashed out repeatedly.

But during closing arguments, prosecutor Mike Halkitis pulled out something new. Inside a large silver purse found underneath Collins' body, mixed in with photos, a high school ID and receipts, "you also see this little piece of paper," he told the jurors.

It was homework about the Department of Housing and Urban Development, folded into a square.

The key to the case was scrawled on the back:

"724-BYL. Ray" - Bolin's middle name and the license plate of his Ford truck; the same truck witnesses said he used to dump Collins' body.

The note proved that Bolin knew his victim. The prosecutor surmised she wrote down his license plate after he got in a fender bender with her days before he killed her.

Their encounter allowed him to gain her trust the next time he found her, he said. He abducted her, stabbed her several times and bashed her skull repeatedly with a hammer.

"Folks, it's once been said, 'Out of great danger comes great clarity,' " Halkitis told jurors. "We now have a clear picture of what happened."

Halkitis and Bruce Haldeman, an investigator for the prosecution, found the note a month ago while checking the purse for overlooked clues.

"Lo and behold you find that d--- note," Halkitis said.

Damning, Haldeman said, because it also fits the pattern in Bolin's other slayings.

"He's always had prior contact with the victim," he said.

DNA evidence and witness testimony already fingered Bolin in Collins' death. The note sewed it all up.

"That nailed it for the jury, too," said Kathleen Reeves, mother of one of Bolin's victims, who sat in on the trial. "It just hit me like a bolt out of nowhere."

The note might have led to Bolin's arrest sooner and possibly prevented a rape he committed in 1987 had it been found earlier.

But Collins' mother said she doesn't blame investigators.

"I don't want to look back, and I don't want to second-guess what they did," Witmer said.

Local attorneys, however, scrutinized Halkitis' decision to unveil the note at closing arguments, which was a rare but permissible strategy.

Rick Terrana, a Tampa defense attorney, said it was reckless because it could give Bolin another reason to appeal the case.

"It's kind of strange and very risky," he said.

Tampa attorney Lyann Goudie called it smart. "Those are tactical decisions that you make," she said.

Had Halkitis introduced the note before closing arguments, it would have let Bolin's defense attorney - whose case had focused on evidence being mishandled - make jurors wonder about its validity and discovery.

It was a calculated decision that worked, Bolin's attorney David Parry said.

"There's great effect when you come to a jury at closing and say, 'Why would this man's license plate be found on this piece of paper?' " Parry said.

The new evidence and the verdict buoyed Collins' brother, who felt as if, finally, the long ordeal of sitting through trials was over.

"It's got to be," said Mike Collins, 38. "This is it."

Bolin will be sentenced Monday to either life in prison or death. But knowing Bolin, Parry said, it's never over.

"It will be appealed," he said.

Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 3, 2006, 05:55:09]