Saugerties man gets 24 to life in slaying
Bowden gets 1 year less than maximum sentence in fatal shooting of ex-girlfriend
KINGSTON, N.Y. >> Ulster County Judge Donald A. Williams had promised he would sentence Karon Bowden to less than the maximum sentence in prison if Bowden pleaded guilty to the second degree murder of Bowden’s estranged girlfriend.
And, on Wednesday, Williams, albeit reluctantly, kept that promise, sentencing the 42-year-old Saugerties man to 24 years to life in state prison — one year less than the maximum sentenced allowed by law — for the May 31, 2016, shooting death Amy Burgher.
“That’s one year I’ve taken off the minimum, and only because the family of the victim wished to avoid the further trauma of a public trial,” Williams said.
Several of the nearly three dozen spectators in the courtroom for the proceedings burst into applause when Williams announced that Bowden
would serve a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Bowden pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder, admitting he shot Burgher in the face while the two were at Bowden’s apartment at 26 Randall St, in Saugerties.
In court, Burgher’s mother, Mindy Williams recalled the day she gave birth to her daughter, “she was the perfect little person in my arms.”
Now, she said, “I cannot hug her, I can no longer laugh with her. I have no more firsts. There is nothing I can look forward to with her.”
“Life as I knew it has changed,” she said. “I am not living, I’m surviving.”
Authorities said Bowden shot Burgher in the face with a handgun during a domestic dispute in the apartment and that the weapon was recovered. Bowden and Burgher had lived together for more than three years and that she had decided to break off the relationship.
Authorities said previously that there was a history of domestic violence between the two and that Bowden had a prior criminal record.
During a preliminary hearing shortly after the shooting, Saugerties Police Officer Ryan Hampel testified that when he arrived at Bowden’s apartment last May 31 in response to a 911 call, he heard “a loud pop” he assumed was a gunshot.
He said there was no traffic in or out of the complex and that he approached the door of the apartment knocked and waited. Bowden, Hampel said, came out of another door of the building with his hands up and a cell phone in his right hand.
Hampel said that when he asked Bowden what was happening, Bowden responded, “Domestic dispute. I had an argument with my girlfriend.”
Hampel said when he entered the apartment, he found Burgher’s lifeless body face up on the floor with a single gunshot wound to the face.
In court Wednesday, Bowden attempted to apologize for his actions, saying he loved Burgher was “truly ashamed and disappointed,” in himself.
“I let you all down,” he said to Burgher’s family and friends gathered in the courtroom. “I let my family down. My parents didn’t raise me to be like that,” he said before Williams interrupted him and began peppering him with questions about his actions and the statements he made to the Probation Department and to a jailhouse informant.
Under questioning by Williams, Bowden admitted that he told the Probation Department that he didn’t intentionally shoot Burgher, but that the gun went off accidentally as he was trying to wrest it from her.
But under the threat of a perjury charge, Bowden admitted to Williams that his statement to the Probation Department was a lie.
“You’re lucky this family asked me to give you some consideration,” said Williams, “because I believe you are deserving of none.”