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Clips from stories about the charges and conviction of Kevin Dowling are seen here, compiled from the LNP | LancasterOnline archives.
This story ran in the Intelligencer Journal on October 31, 1997.
The Lancaster New Era ran this story on November 10, 1998, four days after Kevin Dowling was convicted of first-degree murder.
In this story, published in the Lancaster New Era on Nov. 5, 1998, one day before being convicted, Dowling reads a letter he had wrote to Myers, apologizing for assaulting her in 1996 and highlighting his Christianity.
Clips from stories about the charges and conviction of Kevin Dowling are seen here, compiled from the LNP | LancasterOnline archives.
Dr. Joyce Smedley remembered seeing a vacant rental rowboat beached on the shores of Muddy Run Lake in October 1997 as she paddled on the lake in a canoe.
She recalled her thoughts in court during a preliminary hearing two months later.
“I wondered why somebody would pay $6 an hour to rent a boat and not use it,” she said during a preliminary hearing for Kevin Dowling, who was charged with murder.
Dowling, then 39, from East Petersburg, was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering 44-year-old Jennifer Myers inside her art and frame shop in Spring Grove, York County, on October 20, 1997, the jury determined.
Nearly 25 years after the killing, Lebanon County Judge Robert J. Eby awarded Dowling a new trial. Eby ruled that Dowling’s defense attorney was ineffective, that prosecutors didn’t turn over exculpatory evidence and that false testimony was presented about the timestamp on a receipt from a nearby supermarket, where the sole eye-witness had been moments before she said she saw Dowling at the murder scene.
Editor note: A previous version gave the wrong location of the killing. It is Spring Grove.
At the time, a York County assistant district attorney called it "...one of the most heinous crimes York County has seen," according to an Oct. 31, 1997, Intelligencer Journal article.
Here’s a look through the LNP | LancasterOnline archives at how the events were reported as Dowling’s case proceeded through York County Court.
Two days after Myers was shot to death, state police were still without a suspect.
"Police would only say they questioned Dowling because he has had prior contact with Myers," The Lancaster New Era reported two days after the woman's death, Oct. 22, 1997.
That day, Dowling appeared in York County Court on charges that he sexually assaulted Myers in 1996 at a different art gallery on Route 30 in York. He was charged with robbery, criminal attempt to commit rape and indecent assault.
Later that day, he posted $25,000 bail and went free.
"I was mortified," Joanne Dowling told an Intelligencer Journal reporter. "I would have never thought Kevin could do it."
This story ran in the Intelligencer Journal on October 31, 1997.
It was 11 days since Myers was shot in a "cold-blooded execution killing," York County assistant district attorney John Thompson said, according to the Intelligencer Journal article that ran on Oct. 31, 1997.
Dowling was arrested at his family's East Petersburg townhouse on Franklin Drive on Oct. 29.
His wife of 12 years said she felt crushed, and after answering questions from state police in the early morning hours a day or so after the murder, she voluntarily turned over the clothes Kevin was wearing that day, the clothes he wore to go fishing.
"I thought it would clear him," she said. But gunpowder residue was found on the blue flannel shirt.
Dowling said there was no way he could've killed anyone around noon on Oct. 20, 1997. He even offered up evidence for an alibi — an 11-minute long VHS-C videotape showing him in a boat at Muddy Creek, according to the Intelligencer Journal article on Oct. 31.
He claimed that he was making the tape for his then-2-year-old child, since he could possibly end up in prison for the 1996 attack and robbery.
But, an astronomy and physics professor told the jury during the murder trial that it was a "flimsy hoax," the Lancaster New Era reported on Oct. 29, 1998.
Dowling later admitted that he changed the time on the video to hide the fact that he got bored fishing and decided to go to a strip club in Harrisburg.
Robert Boyle, a professor at Dickinson College who was associated with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, measured the sun's movement, dimensions of the lake and boat "and even the shadows cast by the boat and Dowling's baseball hat," the New Era reported.
By the third day of the trial, which began in Oct. 1998, multiple people testified to what they saw the day Jennifer Myers was shot and killed.
A man with long stringy black hair had been seeing going into Myers frame shop around the time of the killing.
"I saw a person walking who had on what looked to be a wig," Cindy Freet testified, according to an Oct. 29, 1998 Intelligencer Journal article. "It was eerie the way it looked — string, black. Just sort of stuck in my mind."
Another woman, testified that a "pale man wearing a black wig" cut her off on Route 116, the Lancaster New Era reported.
She told police he resembled Howard Stern, the article said.
No one who testified could positively identify Dowling, who was described in a November 10, 1998, Intelligencer Journal article as "a balding man with a fringe of strawberry blond hair."
During the trial, assistant district attorney Thomas Kelley asked Dowling to read a letter that he wrote but never mailed to Myers before he was released on bail for the 1996 assault.
Dowling said he did not remember the robbery and begged for her forgiveness, the Lancaster New Era reported on Nov. 5, 1998.
In this story, published in the Lancaster New Era on Nov. 5, 1998, one day before being convicted, Dowling reads a letter he had wrote to Myers, apologizing for assaulting her in 1996 and highlighting his Christianity.
"I am so truly sorry, Miss Myers, for what I did to you. I realized that what I did was sinful and I did not take any pleasure in it. I am a Christian and I have been praying hard to God to try to find the answers to why this happened," Dowling read. "I beg you, Miss Myers, to show me the mercy I should have shown you."
A jury convicted Dowling of first-degree murder on Friday, Nov. 6, 1998.
He "showed no reaction when the jury returned after half an hour of deliberations," the Lancaster New Era reported.
The Lancaster New Era ran this story on November 10, 1998, four days after Kevin Dowling was convicted of first-degree murder.
The husband of the woman he was convicted of killing, Steve Myers, said he was "happy with the way things turned out. He'll never get out to hurt somebody else," the New Era reported.
Dowling said he was framed for the murder.
In a "short, rambling speech," the Intelligencer Journal reported that Dowling claimed his attorney, Gerald Lord, didn't call witnesses to the stand who could have helped him and that he wished he had represented himself.
"There is no justice in York County," Dowling said. "This is all a sham. I did not kill Jennifer Myers."
Dowling, now 63, is currently in Phoenix state prison, in Montgomery County.
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Excerpts and summaries of news stories from the former Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and Sunday News that focus on the events in th…
Excerpts and summaries of news stories from the former Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and Sunday News that focus on the events in th…
Excerpts and summaries of news stories from the former Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and Sunday News that focus on the events in th…
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