Antonio Bonham was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Marie Jones McGowen
According to court documents Antonio Bonham would kidnap Marie Jones McGowen. The woman would be brought to a remote location where she would be sexually assaulted and would be run over repeatedly by her own vehicle
Antonio Bonham would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Antonio Bonham would be executed by lethal injection on September 28 1993
Antonio Bonham Photos
Antonio Bonham Case
A man convicted of killing a business college key punch instructor and running over her with her own car was executed early Tuesday, the 15th person put to death in Texas this year.
Antonio Nathaniel Bonham, 32, issued a quiet groan when asked to make a last statement before he was given a lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 12:28 a.m. CDT.
Bonham was convicted of the July 9, 1981 abduction and murder of Marie Jones McGowen, a key punch instructor at Massey Business College in Houston.
McGowen, 62, was abducted outside the college, raped, and then run over by her own car.
Prosecutors said the woman had been hit on the head with a brick and was locked in the trunk of her car before she was run over.
McGowen’s crushed body was found beneath her car on a secluded road in southeast Houston about 11 hours after her abduction.
Bonham, who had been paroled less than two months before the crime, was arrested by Houston police on July 17, 1981.
In July 1978, Bonham was sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbery and auto theft in Harris County. He was paroled on May 5, 1981
Bonham’s attorney, Michael B. Charlton of Houston, said he filed a request for executive clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week.
The board voted Monday afternoon to reject the the plea, leaving Bonham’s fate in the hands of the governor and the courts.
‘He has not only matured in years but has advanced in social and other skills, earning an impeccable record as an inmate and serving as a barber and porter in the prison system,’ Charlton said of his client ‘He has had no disciplinary infractions in prison, a fact that seriously challenges predictions at trial that he had a propensity for future violence.’
Charlton said, ‘The person who existed 12 years ago does not exist now.’
The attorney also claimed that race played a part in Bonham’s death sentence.
‘We argued in federal court that African-Americans were improperly excluded from the jury,’ Charlton said. ‘Mr. Bonham’s appeal for clemency raises again the issue of race discrimination in the application of the death penalty.’
To date, 69 convicts have been executed since December 1982, when the first person died under Texas’s new death statute.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/09/28/Killer-of-business-college-teacher-executed/3437749188800/
