No castration, but defendant will serve 2 life terms in sex-torture case
A man who abducted, then raped and tortured a woman in Daytona Beach at his home for 17 hours was sentenced Tuesday to two life terms in prison.
A prosecution request to have Elmer Keith Bowman, 47, chemically castrated was denied because Bowman will never get out of prison, said Klare Ly, a spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office that handles Volusia and Putnam county cases.
Bowman planned the crime and went looking for his victim, who got into his car voluntarily, Assistant State Attorney Christina Opsahl said. He then put a knife to her throat, Opsahl said.
A jury on Feb. 26 convicted Bowman, who goes by “Keith,” of sexual battery and kidnapping.
He took the 25-year-old woman, a crackaddicted prostitute, to his mobile home in Pomona Park in Putnam County on April11, 2011, hogtied her and threatened to kill her if she screamed, the victim testified.
He told her that “she needed to feel the pain that his ex-wife made him feel,” court documents show.
The woman told investigators she was sure Bowman was going to kill her and that she has flashbacks of the torture.
Once at his home, Bowman hanged the woman from a beam, kicked out a footstool beneath her feet and threatened to kill and bury her in a tarp he had placed below her.
Over nearly a day, Bowman beat the woman with a cord, a pipe and a belt, burned her with cigarettes, tortured her with clamps and forced her to watch violent pornography. He also forced her to perform sex acts and made her view the torture on a computer monitor and a TV, which he had hooked up to a camera.
The woman told investigators she ran away and got help from neighbors when Bowman fell asleep.