Alvin Bowen was a 78-year-old retired Southern Bell executive who was murdered at his Goldsboro, North Carolina home on October 6, 1990. His 75-year-old wife, Thelma Bowen, who was blind, was also killed in the same attack. The intruder, Linwood Earl Forte, was discovered by Alvin and stabbed him multiple times; Thelma was strangled. The attacker then used a flammable liquid to set the house and the couple’s car on fire; neighbors noticed the blaze and firefighters extinguished it before it reached the couple’s bedroom, though the scene suffered heavy damage.

These murders were later linked to a pattern of assaults on elderly residents in Goldsboro. Investigators connected the Bowen killings to an attempted strangulation of 70-year-old Eliza Jones on May 26, 1990, and the suffocation of 79-year-old Hattie Davis Bonner on July 14, 1990. Similarities included elderly victims, late-night timing, homes abutting vacant lots, and female victims strangled or suffocated. The cases went cold until April 30, 2001, when DNA from Forte, taken after a 1996 conviction, matched evidence from the scenes. Forte was charged and convicted in the Bowen and Bonner murders and the assault on Jones, received a death sentence plus additional life terms, and remains incarcerated.

Did anyone in Goldsboro at the time have memories or details about these late-1990 attacks that could add context to the victims or the crime scenes?