At 6:40 a.m. Wednesday morning, Monroe County resident Dannie Fowler woke up to a call from Columbus Police Department investigators.
The news came completely out of left field for Fowler — the investigator he spoke with told him that after 20 years, an arrest had been made in the murder of his grandfather, 71-year-old Mack Fowler of Columbus.
“I’m definitely shocked,” said Dannie, who thought his grandfather’s murderer must have died by now. “…(But) happy, more than anything.”
He still remembers the day his grandfather’s body was found. He was 6. He, his parents and his 3-year-old sister had driven to Mack’s house early in the morning to ask about borrowing a lawn mower. His dad went in the house to ask, and that’s when he found Mack’s body. His parents called police, and Dannie still remembers sitting in a police cruiser with his sister while investigators combed the scene.
It was July 9, 1996, and it took law enforcement until Tuesday, when U.S. marshals arrested 52-year-old Jackson resident David S. Murray, to find a suspect.
DNA evidence
Murray appeared on authorities’ radar earlier this month when DNA taken from him after being arrested in Jackson for aggravated assault matched DNA taken during the investigation into Mack Fowler’s murder. On Monday, Circuit Court Judge Jim Kitchens issued a warrant for Murray’s arrest, and U.S. Marshals took Murray into custody in Jackson the next day.
Murray has been charged with capital murder and is being held without bond at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center.
Investigators believe Mack Fowler invited Murray into his home the night of July 8, 1998, CPD Capt. Brent Swan said at a press conference Wednesday at the Columbus Municipal Complex. At some point either that night or early the next morning, the two fought. The fight carried from the living room to the back of the house where Mack Fowler was stabbed and beaten to death.
That’s how Dannie’s father found him the next morning. Mack’s daughter-in-law, Angie Fowler, said she vividly remembers that day.
“He came running back out and said, ‘Something’s wrong with Daddy, he’s passed out,'” she said.
Angie ran in the house to call 911 but the telephone wasn’t working, so she had to go to the local auto shop next door.
No one in the family expected an arrest to be made more than 20 years later. Mack’s granddaughter Danielle said the unsolved case always got under her skin — she was nervous around people she met and sometimes wondered if whoever she was talking to had gotten away with a crime.
“It made me question people,” she said. “… (It made me think) maybe he’s a killer.”
Mack’s son died from medical issues in 2003 without ever knowing who may have killed his father.
“He thought it was (always) going to be a cold case,” Danielle said.
‘I know they’re celebrating today’
At the press conference, authorities from CPD, Columbus and Mississippi crime labs and the District Attorney’s Office all said Murray’s arrest was possible only because of the CPD investigators who collected and processed evidence from Fowler’s home in the 1990s.
“A lot of these guys have retired,” Columbus Crime Lab Director Austin Shepherd said. “But I know they’re celebrating today.”
Originally from Arkansas, Murray lived in Columbus from 1986 until 2005 when he moved to the Jackson area, Swan said. Jackson Police Department arrested Murray in October of last year, during which investigators took a DNA swab and submitted it to the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory for examination. The swab matched a DNA profile for the suspect from Fowler’s murder, which Shepherd submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System in 2006.
“I think the cooperation and the hard work between the different agencies is a sign that in Lowndes County and the state of Mississippi, it doesn’t matter how old the case is, we’re going to do what we can to make an arrest and to bring the victim and their family justice,” District Attorney Scott Colom said.
Swan and other CPD officials declined to comment on what Murray has said to investigators about the case.
The Clarion Ledger reported Tuesday that Columbus Mayor Robert Smith said it was his understanding Murray confessed to the murder. Smith later told The Dispatch the report was incorrect.
“I never said he confessed,” Smith said. “I said it was confirmed (Murray was involved in the Fowler case).”
A string of murders
Fowler was one of five elderly victims reported murdered between 1996 and 1998. The five murder victims were all 60 or older and found strangled or stabbed — and sometimes both — in their homes. Swan said at the press conference that Murray has not been implicated in the other murders and each case will be treated as individual, unconnected cases.
“If forensics tie these cases together, then so be it,” Swan said. “But we don’t want to do that from an investigator standpoint.”
In February 2012, CPD arrested Earnest Talley, then 44, for the murder of 70-year-old George Wilbanks in 1997, another of the five victims. A grand jury failed to indict Talley for the murder in August of that year.
But this is the first time anyone has been arrested in Fowler’s murder.
“I was just so happy to hear that an arrest had been made,” Angie said. “We just thought it never would be.
“I’m glad it’s coming to a closure, but I just wish my husband would have been able to see it,” she added. “He would feel great.”
Both Dannie and Angie said Mack’s son — who was also named Dannie — said he would try to forgive the killer, even though it would be hard.
“He just prayed and prayed that we would find out,” Angie said. “He would say, ‘I have to forgive whoever did it.'”
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