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Bolin Gets Another Death Sentence

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By THOMAS W. KRAUSE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 1, 2007

TAMPA - Oscar Ray Bolin again was sentenced to death Friday.

It was the eighth time he has received the ultimate penalty.

Three times, Bolin was convicted and sentenced to death for three 1986 murders. All three sentences were overturned on appeal. After three more trials, and three more death sentences, appeals courts overturned the death sentences again.

In 2001, Bolin received the death penalty a third time for the murder of 26-year-old Teri Lynn Matthews. The Florida Supreme Court has upheld that sentence.

In 2005, after a third trial, Bolin was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of 25-year-old Natalie "Blanche" Holley. He was sentenced to life in prison.

On Friday, Circuit Judge Barbara Fleischer sentenced Bolin to death for the murder of 17-year-old Stephanie Anne Collins. Bolin was convicted one year ago.

As Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis walked from the courtroom Friday, a reporter asked if he was worried about future appeals.

"No," he said. "I've had enough of them."

Before imposing the sentence, Fleischer read unemotionally from a written sentencing order. She said that all of Bolin's previous crimes - including an escape attempt from a prison in Ohio and the abduction and rape of an Ohio woman - led her to her decision.

After she read the sentence, Bolin rose from his seat calmly. He thanked his defense attorney, David Parry, shook his hand and was led away in handcuffs.

In January 1986, Holley was abducted after she left work at Church's Chicken in North Tampa. Her stabbed body was found the next day in a Lutz orange grove.

Ten months later, Collins disappeared from a shopping center parking lot in Carrollwood. Collins stopped by the pharmacy where she worked to ask her boss for extra hours. The Christmas holidays were approaching, and she hoped for more shopping money.

After speaking to her boss, she was expected to head to choir practice but never arrived.

Fleischer said Collins' beaten body was found on Dec. 5, 1986. Her skull was crushed to the point where parts were reduced to a powder.

On the same day authorities found Collins' body, they recovered Matthews' body beside railroad tracks in Pasco County. The previous night, Matthews was abducted from the Land O' Lakes post office. She had been beaten, raped and stabbed, authorities said.

At the time of Bolin's arrest in Florida, he was serving a 75-year-prison sentence in Ohio for the abduction and rape of a truck-stop waitress.

Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tkrause@tampatrib.com.

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