Sheila Bowler
England (Hove CC)
Date of Alleged Crime: May 13, 1992
Sheila Bowler was convicted of murdering her late husband's
89-year-old aunt, Florence Jackson. While Bowler was driving Jackson one
night, a tire on her car became deflated and Bowler stopped on Route A259
near Station Road in Winchelsea. She left Jackson in the car and went to
seek help. She knocked on the door of a residence and met a Mr. Soan. She
used his telephone to call for roadside assistance. When she came back to
her car with Mr. and Mrs. Soan, Jackson was missing. In the search for Jackson that followed, Bowler
told others not to look far away, as she did not think Jackson was mobile
enough to have wandered very far. Jackson's body was found the next
day 600 yards away in the River Brede. She had drowned.
At trial the prosecution alleged that Bowler had pushed
Jackson off a cliff into the river in order to gain a modest inheritance
from her. It was alleged that Bowler then staged her story by stopping
on the A259, letting the air out of one of her tires, and enlisting the
Soans in a search for a woman she knew was dead. The trial judge
instructed the jury that Jackson was too immobile to have walked to the
river on her own. Thus they only had to decide whether Bowler killed
Jackson or somebody else did. Since there was no evidence that another
person was involved in Jackson's death, the jury convicted Bowler.
However, evidence acquired after trial indicated the
following: (1) A policeman had put air in Bowler's deflated tire and
measured the air pressure in the tire before and after taking her car for
tests. He noted the air pressure in the tire had dropped. (2)
Jackson could not have been pushed off the cliff as she would have had
wounds from hitting a ledge that was beneath it. (3) Jackson only
appeared immobile because her assisted living facility was accustomed to
keeping its residents immobile, bringing food to them, escorting them to the
lavatory, and even ferrying them in wheelchairs when they wanted to send
them quickly to bed.
Jackson had a history of relative mobility months before her
death when she lived on her own. She had only entered the assisted
living facility because of a stomach ailment which had since cleared up. Although Jackson used a cane to walk, medical records showed she had no
muscular or skeletal degeneration that prevented her from walking large
distances. It is thought that Jackson's fear of being left alone and
her mild dementia caused her to walk away from Bowler's car. She later
crossed a bridge over the river, and not being able to see that its railing
ended abruptly, fell into the river.
Because of the new evidence, Bowler's conviction was
overturned and she was acquitted at retrial in 1998. She had served
four years in prison. A book about her case was published the same
year entitled Anybody's Nightmare: The Sheila Bowler Story by
Angela and Tim Devlin. [2/11]
________________________________
References:
Innocent,
Regina v. Bowler
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
United Kingdom Cases
|