THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410100026
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 151 lines
Memories flood back to Jody Stowe in the first cool breeze of autumn - memories of the October night when she learned her mother, the dark-haired woman people sometimes mistook for Jacqueline Onassis, had been murdered.
It was 14 years ago this week, Oct. 9, 1980. Stowe remembers the squad cars and the crime-scene van, the police photographers and the detective who walked Patsy Bray Cowan's three grown children to the street and told them their mother was dead.
``We spent the whole night waiting until the detective could come back and piece together what happened,'' said Stowe, now 35, who lives in Cape Hatteras with her husband and three children.
In the years since, she said, ``We haven't learned any more than we knew that night.''
Her brother and sister replay similar tapes in their minds.
Jason Cowan, Stowe's 39-year-old brother, now president of a construction and design company in Virginia Beach, said the clearest image of that night was of the aging detective who bowed his head as he left the townhouse.
``I thought: `My mom's in there dead,' '' Cowan said. ``It looked like he was leaving a funeral.''
Cowan's children know their mother must have felt comfortable with the murderer - comfortable enough to invite the person in for a glass of wine. Two washed wine glasses were found in the kitchen. It's something the children believe their meticulous mother would have done.
They pray that the killer will come forward or that someone else will reveal the terrible secret.
``I can accept death,'' Stowe said. ``The hardest part is just not knowing who and why.''
Cowan, 51, was found just before midnight in the bathroom of her townhouse in the 4400 block of Smokey Lane Drive in Larkspur Lakes off Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach.
The crime scene was so fresh that when police arrived water vapor rose from the blood as the cool night air rushed in. Cowan's body was still warm. Ropes were tied to the bed in the master bedroom, where the stabbing apparently occurred.
There was blood from the floor to the ceiling of the white kitchen wall. The telephone had been ripped from its mounting.
A struggle had tipped over furniture and left a trail of blood on the light carpet from the kitchen, through the living room and bedroom, and into the bathroom where Cowan's body was propped against the wall.
Cowan's roommate, who stumbled onto the scene, ran screaming for more than a block before she was able to get someone's attention to telephone police for help.
Police arrived quickly.
``I'll probably go to my grave with the image of that scene,'' said Bruce Benson, then a vice and narcotics detective and one of the first officers there. ``There are just one or two of those cases that get under your skin and you can't leave alone. If I were still a cop, I'd still be looking.''
The former detective, who now works as a legal administrator, suspects the murderer may even have been in the house when the roommate arrived.
``This was one of those that we were right on top of and it got away from us,'' he said. ``We just didn't have that one vital piece of evidence that we needed to break it wide open.''
Benson's partner on the vice squad at the time was Kenneth Stolle, now a state senator, who thinks about the case several times a month, even 14 years later.
The night of the murder, Stolle scouted for places where a person might have watched Patsy Cowan. About 50 feet away, he found such a spot.
It offered a clear view of her bedroom. When Stolle looked down, he saw a clue - several freshly extinguished Salem cigarettes.
``I felt like whoever had done it was standing looking in the window a couple hours before I was,'' he said.
``Whoever murdered her was extremely sadistic. Whoever committed this homicide gave her a couple good stabs with the knife and then stayed around and watched her die. . . . It will stay with me forever.''
Authorities found no sign of forced entry, and expensive jewelry lay untouched in plain view. There was no evidence that Cowan had been sexually assaulted.
She had been extra cautious since a man had crawled in through her window two weeks earlier and raped her, threatening to kill her if she screamed.
In that attack, on Sept. 27, 1980, Cowan had reported that she was awakened about 2:45 a.m. by a man trying to pull the sheets off her bed. He hit her several times in the face and tried to choke her. After raping her, the man fled through the front door and drove off in a dark-colored van.
Police have not ruled out a link between the incidents, but because the method of entry was different, they say there is little reason to suspect the same person was responsible.
The case file is 8 inches thick, its contents in three binders.
Detectives have interviewed hundreds of people. But they have no answers.
``I think it's hard for any family of a murder victim to come to closure with the death of a loved one when the case remains unsolved,'' said Mike Carey, a spokesman for the Virginia Beach Police Department.
``It's a case we've always been anxious to solve. Unfortunately, we've exhausted all our leads.''
For Stowe, the reminders are everywhere, if sometimes unexpected.
When Jackie Onassis died, she flashed back to the times when strangers came up to her mother and asked if she was Jackie - so strong was the resemblance.
The children struggle with the loss of the mother they say was also a best friend. They miss her cooking and the daily conversations, her encouragement and laughter. They wish she could know all five of her grandchildren.
Jana Hanbury, 42, Patsy Cowan's older daughter, says she doesn't expect to ever know what happened that night in 1980, but that doesn't make life easier.
``I wonder why no one's been brought to justice,'' she said. ``Why in so many years. I just wonder why.''
It was a year after the murder before Hanbury could walk into her house unescorted by a neighbor. She now lives in Florida on the eighth floor of a condominium with a doorman and tight security. She is married to former Virginia Beach and Portsmouth City Manager George Hanbury, now the city manager in Fort Lauderdale. She is an operating room nurse.
``I don't think I could live on the ground floor,'' she said. ``I could never open the windows and have the cool breeze blowing in again after my mother was raped. I carry a lot of fears with me.''
Jason Cowan also holds scant hope that his mother's killer will be brought to justice.
``I hate thinking there's somebody out there living it up doing the normal things that people do with no conscience,'' he said.
He cringes to think of the terror that filled her final moments.
``Chairs were knocked over,'' he said.
``She was trying to get away from someone evidently chasing her with a knife through her house. It's a horror movie.''
Cowan quickly pushes those thoughts from his mind, saying they are too painful. He refuses to be consumed.
Stowe says she sometimes thinks about the kind of person who could keep murder a secret.
``I can't imagine walking around my whole life carrying such a burden, but I know there are people who don't have a conscience,'' she said.
``I feel like I've got to keep reaching out - searching for answers. You can't just give up.''
But she often struggles.
``It's a mystery,'' Stowe said. ``It's like a book without an ending. There's one person who knows, and we don't know who that person is. I feel like somewhere things will be reconciled - if not on earth, then in heaven.'' MEMO: Anyone with information about the case should call Virginia Beach Police
Sgt. Tommy Baum in the homicide squad at 427-4101 or Virginia Beach
Crime Solvers at 427-0000. Callers to Crime Solvers could be eligible
for a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest. They
do not have to identify themselves or testify in court.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo by DREW C. WILSON, Staff
Jody Stowe, who lives in Cape Hatteras holds a picture of Patsy Bray
Cowan, her mother who was murdered in 1980. ``I can accept death,''
Stowe said. ``The hardest part is just not knowing who and why.''
Photo
Patsy Bray Cowan was killed Oct. 9, 1980, in Virginia Beach. Police
still have not been able to solve the crime.
KEYWORDS: MURDER UNSOLVED CRIME by CNB