![history of gay bars jacksonville fl history of gay bars jacksonville fl](https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox13news.com/www.fox13news.com/content/uploads/2020/09/1280/720/strip-club.jpg)
![history of gay bars jacksonville fl history of gay bars jacksonville fl](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/200x200/PRPII2VUIQ1GPFXVK3ER0RMTRYY5D3QJYRY0OIJAU2HB0ML2.jpg)
"From what Gary told me, he has felt a lot of rejection in his life," Long wrote. She urged the officer to relay that message to Bowles. In a letter to Bowles's probation officer after he disappeared, Long said she had lost touch with Bowles unintentionally. I'd like to help him, but there's nothing I can do." "I know he did this because of me," she said. Reached by telephone at the fast-food restaurant in Kentucky where she now works, Long expressed fears that her sudden departure may have pushed Bowles to violence. "Gary told me his heart was broken," Taylor said. Taylor said Bowles seemed stunned by Long's sudden departure when he came by the pink stucco building to fetch his few belongings. Then about March 10, Taylor and Daytona Beach police said Long suddenly left Florida and moved out of state, citing a family crisis. "He wanted her to go to Missouri to meet his parents." "Mary said that he wanted to get married," Taylor said. Sometime in January or February, police said, Bowles moved into Long's one-room apartment above a T-shirt shop on Main Street, less than a block from the Beachside Club.īuilding manager Susie Taylor said the relationship between Bowles and Long seemed to blossom quickly, and the two were seen walking hand in hand and "giggling like schoolchildren." Gradually, Kester said, Bowles began drinking heavily and making money by allowing older men to perform oral sex on him.įBI investigators said this had been Bowles's pattern for years, from Florida to the gay bars and strip joints near 14th Street and Dupont Circle in Washington.īowles did well as a hustler because he could project the image of a clean-cut, friendly and outgoing man, numerous police officials said.Īgainst this backdrop, Bowles soon drifted into the life of Mary Long, a woman 10 or more years his elder who worked in a fast-food restaurant. Kester said Bowles drank 7-Up in the first weeks after his release from prison. In the three months after his release, one of Bowles's regular haunts on the Main Street strip was the Beachside Club, a gay bar well known in the area for its drag shows and wet jockey shorts contests.īartender Danny Kester said Bowles often sat in the dark, wood-paneled bar in the morning hours, when the clientele consisted mostly of a few older men looking for conversation and occasional liaisons with twenty-something hustlers. He wasn't dumb he was a smart kid, but he threw it all away."
![history of gay bars jacksonville fl history of gay bars jacksonville fl](https://downtownjacksonville.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ScreenShot2019-11-21at10_44_04AM-1.png)
"It really frustrates me because the guy had so much potential," the friend said. The friend, a Daytona Beach retiree who asked not to be identified, said Bowles at first seemed almost giddy at his freedom, but within a month he was drinking heavily. Initially after his release, Bowles took a small apartment and spent time with a friend who picked him up from prison. Investigators from several agencies said prostitution - quick $10 or $20 tricks, usually for older men in bars - has been Bowles's main source of income during a life spent drifting through southeastern states. His probation officer said he made all his appointments, and his only frustration seemed to be his difficulty in getting a decent-paying job.
HISTORY OF GAY BARS JACKSONVILLE FL SERIES
Now, six months after his release from prison, Bowles is a suspect in a series of slayings.įor a while after his release, friends said Bowles seemed sincere about cleaning up his life. Several police agencies and Bowles's acquaintances said Bowles has been turning sexual tricks in gay bars since he ran away from home after the eighth grade - but never with violent results. In each of the four killings, investigators suspect that Bowles beat or strangled gay men he befriended in bars. He is being sought by the FBI and police all along the East Coast. Warrants have been issued charging Bowles with three of the killings, and they have identified him as the chief suspect in the other one. then another 14 days later near Jacksonville, Fla. then another 21 days after that in Savannah, Ga. Then another man was killed 30 days later in Wheaton, Md. That changed after March 15, when a 59-year-old insurance agent Bowles met in a Daytona Beach bar was found dead on his living room floor with his skull smashed. He was convicted of beating a woman in 1982, but police otherwise considered Bowles a street hustler, a smooth-talking petty criminal. It was a typical crime in the 32-year-old drifter's long history of robbery, car theft and prostitution. Gary Ray Bowles returned to the postcard Florida shores of Daytona Beach last December, fresh from three years in prison for robbing a cocktail waitress of $70 and her sunglasses.