Funeral home hookers add another salacious element to a murder case already rife with sex and money, according to sources close to the investigation.

Mark Bowling, the funeral home director accused of plotting with mistress Rose Vincent in the December shooting death of his wife, Julie, allegedly had an appetite for strippers.

"His wife even knew," said Jackie Graves, the owner of Diamond Escorts who provided Bowling with strippers.

A group of five strippers from the Greenville-based business attended multiple parties thrown by Mark Bowling since Bowling Funeral Home & Crematory opened eight years ago, Graves said. The parties took place in the apartment on the second floor of the funeral home, he said.

Graves was convicted in 1997 of conspiracy to commit prostitution in connection with Diamond Escorts.

But contrary to sources close to Bowling's murder case who say the women exchanged sex for money, the women were not hookers, said Graves, who described them as strippers, dancers or masseuses.

"There was nothing illegal," Graves said of the events that went on above the chapel and funeral parlors.

Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner, the prosecutor in Bowling and Vincent's murder cases, would neither confirm nor deny whether prostitution charges are pending.

The trials for Bowling and Vincent are likely still months away. The district attorney's office is still processing and delivering its discovery to both defense teams, Werner said.

"I haven't sat down to get it ready for a trial," Werner said. "I would hope to be getting it ready, querying a court and the other attorneys for a fall, early winter type schedule."

Nash County deputies arrested Vincent and Bowling on Dec. 9, the day after a coworker found Julie Bowling – dressed to go to work at Nash Health Care Systems – shot four times in the torso in the Bowlings' garage on River Glenn.

Vincent confessed to the crime on the day of her arrest, according to search warrants. Bowling – who was on a scuba diving trip in Crystal River, Fla., at the time of the shooting – was arrested when he returned to Rocky Mount.

Bowling and Vincent were reportedly having an affair for roughly a year before Julie Bowling's death, reigniting a romance that started when he met Vincent in 1998 while directing her stepmother's funeral.

Records from Julie Bowling's estate show more than $2.5 million in debt, and sources close to the murder case confirmed a $1 million life insurance policy taken out on her a month before her death.

Video recorders for the Bowling home's security system had been disabled before her death. Otherwise, the shooting may have been caught on tape.

Central Prison in Raleigh is keeping Bowling in its mental health ward, where he was initially sent because he was deemed suicidal.

A court order allows Bowling contact with only his defense attorneys and mental health professionals.

Vincent is being held in the Nash County Correctional Facility.

Both suspects have been declared indigent.

Their court-appointed attorneys, have announced they will seek a change of venue because they say a fair trial in Nash County is impossible.