Joseph Bowen

Joseph "Joe-Joe" Bowen (* 1946 ) is one of the most dangerous prisoners in the United States. He is serving a life sentence for the murder of a police officer and two prison guards.

Joseph Bowen was a member of a street gang in Philadelphia as a teenager and joined the Black Liberation Army , and in 1971 he was released after serving a five-year prison term.

Early one morning on February 21, 1971, he tried to steal a vehicle on Paoli Avenue near Umbria Street in Philadelphia, but was caught by the 45-year-old police officer Joseph Kelly. In the ensuing exchange of fire, Kelly was hit twice in the chest and died in his patrol car. Bowen was arrested two days later and sentenced to life imprisonment. The officer left behind a wife and five children, aged six to sixteen. On May 10, 1976, a leisure site in the Roxborough district was named after him, and a plaque was set into the ground at the crime scene.

While he was awaiting an appeal hearing his conviction, he and fellow inmate Fred Burton murdered two prison guards at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia on May 31, 1973 , because a religious meeting they requested had not been approved. The two had gained access to the office of the 51-year-old overseer Robert Fromhold with an elaborately forged identification card, whom they then killed with self-made stabbing weapons. The 47-year-old warden Patrick Curran, alarmed by the noise of the battle, was also stabbed and died on the way to the hospital. 49-year-old warden Leroy Taylor was also attacked, but survived seriously injured. Bowen was again sentenced to two life sentences for these acts. Robert Fromhold and Patrick Curran are the only prison workers murdered on duty in Philadelphia history, and the first in US history to be killed in their own institution. In 1995 a newly built penal institution was named after them ( Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility ), and two memorial plaques were erected in front of the Holmesburg Prison.

On October 28, 1981, Bowen tried to escape with three inmates from Graterford Prison in Montgomery County . The four prisoners got hold of firearms, broke open a kitchen door and tried to get over the prison wall with grappling hooks in the evening, but were discovered by the crew of a watchtower. After a brief exchange of fire, the prisoners withdrew to the prison kitchen, where they took three kitchen staff, three guards and around 30 other inmates hostage. The hostage-taking did not end until five days after the police were ready to comply with some of the demands made; this included the transfer of the hostage takers to a federal prison and financial impunity for damage to property.

He is serving a life sentence with no possibility of early release or pardon. He was previously housed in the United States Penitentiary Marion and in the State Correctional Institution Coal Township in Northumberland County .

Web links

• Police Officer Joseph V. Kelly, Officer Down Memorial Page
• Police Officer Joseph V. Kelly in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved March 3, 2016.
• 37 years later, a salute to an officer's valor (PDF; 232 kB)
• Deputy Warden Robert Frederick Fromhold, Sr., Officer Down Memorial Page
• Warden Patrick N. Curran, Officer Down Memorial Page
• Prison officials killed in 1973 honored
• Camp Hill Riot Recalls 1981 Graterford Crisis