TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Convicted Killer Gets 4th Trial In '86 Slaying

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 21, 2009

TAMPA - Death row inmate Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., who is awaiting execution for the murder of two Bay area women in 1986, has won a new trial - his fourth - in the slaying of a third woman that same year.

The state's 2nd District Court of Appeal on Friday ordered a retrial in the killing of Natalie Blanche Holley. The court ruled that the trial judge did not properly instruct jurors.

The decision shocked the victim's mother.

"I'm too stunned to have any comment," said Natalie Holley. "This will be his fourth trial. What words can I use?"

Bolin, a former carnival worker and truck driver, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 in the murder of Holley, 25. The Tampa woman was abducted early one morning after leaving her job as assistant manager of a Church's Chicken in North Tampa. Her body was found a few hours later; she had been stabbed repeatedly.

The Florida Supreme Court overturned Bolin's conviction and ordered a new trial.

In 1999, Bolin again was sentenced to death in Holley's slaying. Two years later, the high court overturned that conviction, too.

At his third trial, in 2005, a Hillsborough County jury found Bolin guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The appellate court on Friday, however, said then-Circuit Judge Barbara Fleischer did not properly instruct jurors on the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Bolin, now 47, was charged in 1990 in the slayings four years earlier of three women: Holley; Stephanie Collins, a 17-year-old Tampa high school student; and Teri Lynn Matthews, 26, of Pasco County.

At the time of his arrest, Bolin was serving a 75-year prison sentence in Ohio for the 1987 kidnapping and rape of a truck-stop clerk and for attempted escape.

Twice, Bolin's convictions and death sentences in the slayings of Collins and Matthews were overturned.

In 2001, he was sentenced to death a third time for Matthews' murder. The state high court has upheld that sentence.

In 2007, he was sentenced to death a third time for Collins' murder.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT