Dead drifter may be linked to 'killing fields'

Bobby Jack Fowler is shown in this 1995 booking photo taken in Newport, Ore.,provided by the Lincoln County Sheriff's office. An Oregon prosecutor says officers are looking at Fowler who died in prison six years ago in the killings of four teenage girls along the Oregon coast in the 1990s.(AP Photo/Lincoln County Sheriff, ho) less Bobby Jack Fowler is shown in this 1995 booking photo taken in Newport, Ore.,provided by the Lincoln County Sheriff's office. An Oregon prosecutor says officers are looking at Fowler who died in prison six ... more Photo: Anonymous Photo: Anonymous Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Dead drifter may be linked to 'killing fields' 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Houston-area investigators are combing through old case files to see if an itinerant laborer who once lived on the Bolivar Peninsula could be responsible for unsolved murders that terrorized the region decades ago.

This transient figure already has been linked through DNA to one of 18 unsolved killings known as the "Highway of Tears" in Canada.

Galveston County court records show the laborer, Bobby Jack Fowler, listed his address as a rundown trailer in the 1400 block of Cade Avenue in High Island or a post office address in Gilchrist. He used these addresses when he was charged with five crimes, from theft to drunken driving, in 1986 and 1994.

At that time, Fowler was in his late 40s and mid-50s.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced this week that it connected Fowler to a Highway of Tears case. Fowler died from lung cancer in 2006 at an Oregon prison. He had been imprisoned there for the 1996 kidnap, assault and attempted rape of a 35-year-old woman whom he'd met in a bar and taken to his hotel.

The victim managed to escape by biting her assailant and jumping naked through a motel window.

DNA test results indicate a 16-year-old Canadian hitchhiker, Colleen MacMillen, was not as lucky when she encountered Fowler. She was one of 18 women who vanished or were found murdered while hitchhiking along Canadian roads.

She was murdered in 1974 after she left home to hitchhike to a nearby friend's house.

A DNA match was finally made this year when her attacker's profile was submitted to Interpol, which includes databases from the U.S.

2 deaths in Oregon

While Fowler was eliminated as a suspect in eight of the remaining unsolved Canadian cases, he remains a person of interest in the rest, said Gary Shinkaruk with the mounted police.

In Oregon, he is also a suspect in the deaths of two 16-year-old girls who were walking along a highway in 1995. Their bodies were found dumped in a wooded area near Newport, Ore.

According to Galveston records, Fowler was living in Galveston County when he was arrested three times in 1986 for a Class C misdemeanor traffic violation, expired driver's license and another unspecified misdemeanor. The charges were either dismissed or he failed to appear and forfeited his bond.

Then in 1994, he had two more charges filed in Galveston County against him, for theft and drunk driving. But again, a warrant had to be issued because he failed to appear when the cases came to trial.

The drunk driving case involved a confrontation with Texas City police, said Detective Brian Goetschius.

Tests later found that Fowler's blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit when he sped away after colliding with a flatbed truck. The driver of the truck pursued Fowler, attempting to force him to pull over, until both vehicles wound up crashing into a drainage ditch before police arrived, the report said.

Fowler tried to flee again as an officer clung to his car door and resorted to using pepper spray to finally stop him.

Goetschius, with Texas City police, was one of the detectives recently portrayed in the "Texas Killing Fields," a film about dozens of unsolved murders of Houston-area women from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Nothing fits the mold

He and other area investigators are taking a hard look at Fowler as a potential suspect. But to date, no connection has been found.

"There was not much physical evidence collected back then. So it's hard to make any links," Goetschius said. "That was before DNA became a tool."

Galveston County sheriff's Major Ray Tuttoilmondo agreed: "We've not found anything yet that fits the mold."

In 1986, when Fowler was living in Galveston County, an unknown killer dumped the naked bodies of two of the four young women found in a League City pasture later dubbed the "killing fields."

"We wish we'd been able to talk to Fowler when he was still alive," said Marty Grant, lead detective for League City police. "But we don't believe he's responsible for any of our cases here."

Grant is still waiting for DNA testing to possibly reveal the identity of "Jane Doe," found in a pasture in 1986. The other 1986 victim was Laura Miller, 16, whose father, Tim Miller, now heads a national search organization for the missing.

Miller is emphatic that Fowler is not his daughter's killer for reasons he said he could not disclose. But he wants investigators to keep digging in hopes other cases might be resolved.

cindy.horswell@chron.com