Roughly one year after Lester Leroy Bower Jr. left Grand Junction in the wake of the oil shale bust of the early 1980s, his life was thrown into chaos.

After four “execution-style” killings in a northern Texas airport hangar in October 1983, state and federal law enforcement arrested the former Coloradan — who had no criminal history — and placed him on trial for capital murder.

Less than four months later, a jury of Bower’s peers sent him to death row.

“We were kind of regretting we left,” Bower’s wife, Shari, told The Daily Sentinel.

After more than two decades of maintaining his innocence as his unsuccessful appeals worked their way through Texas and federal courts, Bower has one last opportunity to escape his death sentence.

Grayson County, Texas, Judge James P. Fallon agreed last week to stay Bower’s execution — scheduled for July 22 — and review whether the state must release DNA evidence that could prove he was not the man who shot the four murder victims in October 1983.

“When the murders occurred 24 years ago,” Shari Bower said, “they vacuumed the hangar where the murders took place.”

She said the DNA on cigarette butts and other evidence left at the scene could prove that her husband was not at the murder scene and, more importantly, who was there.

“We have four suspects that our witnesses have said were the ones who did the killing,” Shari Bower said. “Our attorneys are going to try and match DNA to those people.”

Bower’s legal team, in a motion filed June 24, points to four individuals they believe are connected to the deaths of the murder victims — 51-year-old Bob Tate, 29-year-old Philip Good, 37-year-old Ronald Mayes and 51-year-old Jerry Brown — at the private airplane hangar near Sherman, Texas. The motion, citing a Nov. 29, 1983, FBI memo, says the killings were drug-related.

The court has sealed the new suspects’ names.

Rodney Sundheim, a former Grand Junction resident and friend of Bower’s, said evidence of Bower’s innocence has been floating out there for some time.

“We’ve known about this for a long time,” he said, calling the evidence against Bower circumstantial at best.

According to court filings, the Bower case rested on several circumstances that law enforcement argued made him the sole suspect in the case, including lying to law enforcement when he was interviewed.

At the time of the murders, Bower and one of the murder victims had been negotiating the sale of a recreational, ultralight airplane.

Investigators built their case around a series of phone calls between Good and Bower and the fact Bower had ultralight airplane components linked to Tate in his home.

Court documents also show that Bower lied to federal agents when he told them he had neither bought the ultralight components nor gone to Sherman, Texas, the day of the murder. In fact, he had done both.

Shari Bower said her husband merely was looking to purchase the aircraft as a way of indulging his love of adventure.

She said when the couple lived in Grand Junction, Lester enjoyed camping, rafting and other outdoor activities when he was not working as general manager at the Thompson-Hayward Chemical Co. She said the couple made many friends through the Mesa College outdoors program.

She was, at that time, an employee of the college.

“Basically, when we came to Texas, that’s why he was looking at the ultralights as his next hobby,” Shari Bower said. “We had done the river rafting while we were in Grand Junction, so he was looking for something to do here.”

The prosecution also pointed to Bower’s time in September 1983 at the Arlington Sportsman’s Club, where he fired .22-caliber ammunition.

Court documents show the four murder victims were shot with a semiautomatic .22-caliber pistol. Two of the men were shot with the gun pressed to their heads.

Karla Hackett, a prosecutor with the Grayson County District Attorney’s office, could not be reached for comment. She did, however, tell the Fort Worth Star-Telegram she objects to Bower’s claim of actual innocence, calling his motion asking for the DNA evidence a “delaying tactic.”

“There’s four dead men,” she told the publication, “and all the evidence points straight to Lester Leroy Bower Jr.”

Nancy Guarino, who has been a friend of Bower’s for more than three decades, said at the time he was arrested, the crime did not fit the man she knew.

Guarino said she met Bower in the late 1970s through her then-fiance when the Bowers lived in Fort Collins, and Guarino lived in Laramie, Wyo. Bower and Guarino’s fiance had similar interests in outdoor activities.

When her fiance was in the hospital, fighting an illness that eventually killed him in 1982, Bower called and visited often, Guarino said.

“Les would know when Doug was in the hospital,” Guarino said. “He was just very thoughtful, loving, caring.”

She said she hopes the DNA evidence proves what she and Bower’s friends and family have known since the case began: Bower is innocent.

“There’s been so many disappointments for him and his family over the years. … It’s just been one thing after another,” Guarino said. “We’re hoping and praying that all the evidence is going to come out, and he’ll be cleared.”

Bower’s hearing is scheduled for July 17.

The hearing, Shari Bower said, likely will determine whether Bower has a chance to visit western Colorado to recall the outdoor lifestyle Texas might have wrongly taken away from their family.

In a recent death row interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bower admitted he should not have lied during the course of the investigation, but he expressed hope in light of his latest appeal.

“I’m going to go home one way or another,” Bower told the Star-Telegram. “That’s just the way I feel.

“I have a lot of good people working on my behalf. If it’s meant to be, there will be some way to spare my life. If not, my background says I’m simply going on to some other place. I will not really die.”

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E-mail Mike Saccone at msaccone@gjds.com.

The crime
Four men, 51-year-old Jerry Brown, 29-year-old Philip Good, 37-year-old Ronald Mayes and 51-year-old Bob Tate, were found shot to death Oct. 8, 1983, at a private airplane hangar near Sherman, Texas.
The men were shot “execution-style,” according to prosecutors at the time. Police reported recovering 11 hollow-point .22-caliber bullets from the victims’ bodies.
All of the bullets, forensic teams determined, came from a gun equipped with a silencer.
Mayes’ body was found immediately inside the door of the hangar. The other three victims were found under a pile of carpeting.
All of the victims still had their wallets and jewelry when police arrived.Key dates
• Oct. 8, 1983 — Four men are found murdered, shot execution style, in a private airplane hangar near Sherman, Texas.
• Jan. 20, 1984 — Lester Leroy Bower Jr. is arrested on suspicion he committed the murders.
• April 27, 1984 — A jury convicts Bower of four counts of capital murder.
• April 28, 1984 — The same jury sentences Bower to death in all four murders.
• July 3, 1989 — Bower exhausts his initial set of appeals in Texas’ state court.
• April 16, 2008 — Bower’s execution date is set for July 22, 2008.
• April 21, 2008 — The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Bower’s habeas corpus appeal, ending his chance of relief in federal court.
• June 24, 2008 — Bower’s legal team files a final appeal with Texas Judge James P. Fallon, asking him to allow DNA testing in the case.
• July 2, 2008 — Fallon agrees to allow a hearing on whether to release and test DNA evidence obtained at the crime scene in 1983.