Gregory Bowman killed Velda Joy Rumfelt in St. Louis County 32 years ago, jurors decided on Thursday afternoon in a case driven entirely by a DNA match. They return to court at 4 p.m. to decide if he should be executed. It is the third time Bowman, 58, has been convicted of killing a young St. Louis area woman in the late 1970s. He served almost 30 years in prison for the first two, in Belleville, before winning a motion for retrials that are pending. After an Illinois judge let him post bond in 2007, police stepped up efforts to link him with other crimes, and discovered a DNA match to semen in Rumfelt’s underwear. The jury deliberated for more than 14 hours before they convicted Bowman. Rumfelt's brother, Dewey Rumfelt, wept as the court clerk read the verdict. "Velda really was a special person, and justice was served today," Dewey Rumfelt said. "We finally know what happened to her. He can't hurt her anymore." He and his wife, Teresa, spoke with reporters after the verdict. Two of their three sons, Casey, 27, and Shane, 24, stood along side them. Dewey said his children never met Velda, but they know her through stories. "We always talk about her," Dewey Rumfelt said. "You can't help but think of all the things she miss like getting married and having children. But her memory will always be strong." Rumfelt said his sister was a lively and bright girl who loved painting and gymnastics. She was a good student and liked to throw a baseball, family members said. "You couldn't be sad around her because she was going to cheer you up," Dewey Rumfelt said. The murder devastated his mother, who suffered mental health problems since the day Velda was killed, he said. Others were frightened because they didn't know who hurt Velda. "All of a sudden, out whole world fell out from underneath us," said Teresa Rumfelt, who was the same age as Velda and a close friend. Dewey and his wife, who married soon after the murder, moved to the Ozarks to escape their fears. "We wanted to raise a family and we didn't want to be looking over our shoulders," he said. Dewey said he felt sympathy for Bowman's family because "they are suffering too." But he hopes the jury will give his sister's killer the death penalty. "I think it will be a relief for the jurors once they hear some of the other witnesses about his other crimes," Dewey Rumfelt said. "I know it was a tough thing finding him guilty." Bowman's family and defense attorney did not comment after the verdict. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said he'd reserve his remarks until after the penalty phase of the trial. Prosecutors were planning to call Velda Rumfelt's family and several former victims who had been attacked by Bowman in the past, a source said. Investigators never found any other link between Bowman and Rumfelt, 16. But a DNA expert testified Monday that the chances were no more than one in 459 trillion that the stain was left by anyone else. Defense attorney Steve Evans suggested, based on evidence pictures, that the panties tested might not have been the ones Rumfelt wore, and that there was no proof that whoever left the DNA had strangled her. Rumfelt, who had moved from the St. Louis area to Kansas City, disappeared on a visit to family and friends in the Brentwood area and was found dead in a remote area of southwest St. Louis County. A bra was stuffed in her mouth and a clump of grass was still tightly gripped in one hand, according to testimony. Her throat had been cut and two shoestrings were used to choke her. "You know he did this because the evidence says he did it," prosecutor Joe Dueker told the jury in closing arguments Wednesday. "She is not here to tell you." But Evans countered, "If you are not firmly convinced that this is the same underwear, then this case is over." He added, "The family deserves closure ... but not by convicting the wrong person." Dueker said the argument only makes sense if the police secretly slipped someone else’s underwear, with Bowman’s DNA, into the evidence box sometime in the past 32 years. Deliberations began about 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday; the jury returned its verdict about 2: 30 p.m. today. Bowman, has past convictions for abducting women in the 1970s who were either released unhurt or escaped. He also made incriminating statements to a fellow jail inmate regarding the separate killings of Elizabeth West, 14, and Ruth Ann Jany, 21, who disappeared under similar circumstances in Belleville in 1978. A judge convicted him of those murders after Bowman agreed not to contest the evidence in exchange for the prosecution’s not seeking a death penalty.

KSDK