Bowling takes plea deal

Victim's family satisfied with outcome

GREENVILLE – After asserting his innocence for more than 20 months, a former Rocky Mount funeral director unexpectedly admitted Monday morning that he plotted with his mistress to murder his wife nearly two years ago.

Six days after court proceedings began, Mark Bowling and his attorneys agreed to a plea bargain that will send him to prison for no less than 15 years and three months.

Bowling stood straight and fidgeted slightly as he entered the plea, expressing no emotion while his mother wept behind him. Prosecutors initially expressed intentions to seek the death penalty against Bowling but entered the trial last week hoping for a life sentence. With the plea deal, Bowling faces a maximum of 19 years and eight months in prison for planning his wife’s slaying.

The plea deal brings to an end a high-profile murder trial that could have lasted several weeks.

Bowling had long dismissed accusations that he plotted to kill his wife, Julie Bowling, 45, who was shot to death in the early hours of Dec. 8, 2006, in her home’s garage on River Glenn. Mark Bowling’s admitted lover Rose Vincent pleaded guilty in February to the shooting and pointed to Mark Bowling as the man who orchestrated the homicide.

Vincent, who was in court on Monday, was to be the state’s lead witness in its case against Bowling, the one-time owner of several area funeral homes.

Bowling declined to speak during sentencing and refused comment afterward as he was escorted by deputies out of the courtroom.

Bowling’s defense team of Tommy Moore and Tom Sallenger earlier had argued diligently for their client’s innocence, saying at one pretrial hearing that this was “a case where we will fight to prove his innocence every step of the way.”

But on Monday, Bowling, 37, and his defense attorneys ended the trial by pleading guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

“We looked at the facts and evidence that had been presented to us by the state and through the witness stand,” Sallenger said afterward. “After looking at that and anticipating what the rest of the evidence would be in the case, we thought that this resolution was the best for Mr. Bowling, and Mr. Bowling strongly agreed.”

'A Strong Case’

Prosecutors said they were prepared to present a comprehensive case that would have proved Bowling convinced his mistress to murder his wife so he could collect on her life insurance policy and save his financially-strained funeral home business.

A deputy last week read aloud Vincent’s confession to authorities, in which she said Bowling asked her several times to kill his wife. Vincent told officials she never would have shot Bowling if “Mark hadn’t told (her) to.” She said Bowling provided her with the weapon and at one point offered her $50,000 to pull the trigger. Vincent, a married mother of three children from Middlesex, said she didn’t care about the money.

“He said this was the only way we could be together,” Vincent said in the statement. “He’s promised me everything under the sun, but all I wanted was to be with him.”

Vincent, 28, was offered softer charges and sentencing in exchange for her future testimony against Bowling. She is serving a minimum 29-year sentence.

Vincent’s testimony – along with the insurance policy taken out by Julie Bowling one month prior to the shooting – was to lay the foundation for the prosecution’s case, officials said. And cell phone records compiled by investigators would have effectively “slammed the door shut,” Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner said.

Bowling was scuba diving in Florida at the time of the shooting. During a phone call played for jurors last week, Bowling never asked authorities how his wife died. Yet, in a conversation that immediately followed, Bowling told a funeral home employee that his wife had been shot to death, Werner said.

Prosecutors were prepared to call nearly 30 witnesses to testify, including former employees of a Rocky Mount escort service who had entertained Bowling on the second floor of his funeral home.