Suspected Middle GA serial killer tied to 9 murders. Here’s a timeline of his crimes
Charles Edward “Bo-Bo” Rowland, 49, pleaded guilty in March to killing a Twiggs County couple last September, receiving consecutive life sentences for his crimes. Recently, the Telegraph reported that investigators have tied Rowland to a total of nine homicides statewide, including the deaths of six people in four separate slayings in Bibb County.
Here’s a timeline of his crimes:
June 27, 1990
Rowland is incarcerated after he reportedly attacks a woman on Forsyth Road during a robbery, punching her and striking her in the head with a glass jar. He pleaded guilty to armed robbery and aggravated assault, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was paroled on July 12, 1999.
April 14, 2001
Rowland assaults Bibb County sheriff’s deputy Michael King at the county jail with a concrete block during an escape attempt. King, a former Macon police officer who died in 2018 at age 65, had to retire because of the injuries Rowland inflicted. He was convicted in the assault and imprisoned until Nov. 21, 2013.
Nov. 7, 2020
Three people are murdered in an east Macon boarding house and a fourth severely injured when someone breaks through the back door sometime before 8 p.m. and attacks them with “a sharp object,” possibly a machete.
The next day, the U.S. Marshal’s Southeast Fugitive Task Force took Ronald Green Jr. into custody, then 51, in a hotel on Arkwright Road. He was charged with three counts of murder, in addition to other charges.
Green had recently been a resident of the boarding house, and had been arrested more than 30 times in Middle Georgia, but not for anything particularly serious or that had likely required prison time.
Green spent the next 17 months in the Bibb County jail and was recently indicted on those charges before he was released April 19 of this year. While Green is no longer in jail, the charges against have not yet been dropped by Bibb County DA Anita Reynolds Howard. Instead, the case has been “dead docketed” — postponed indefinitely.
Sept. 10, 2021
Fred and Peggy White are found murdered near their Twiggs County home, shot in the back of the head. Surveillance video shows a man approaching the back door of their home on Riggins Mill Road near Dry Branch around 7 a.m.
Rowland was soon arrested and charged with their murders.
March 21, 2022
Rowland pleads guilty to murdering the Whites. Prosecutors laid out a series of events that led up to the killings, alleging the following:
Rowland went to the White’s home intent on breaking in, but noticed a nearby security camera and retreated to the woods.
Peggy White had been home alone at the time. Fred soon arrived, and they later left their house.
Rowland was walking along Riggins Mill Road, heading back to his truck, which he’d parked across the street from Stone Creek Baptist Church.
The Whites saw Rowland walking, and figured he needed help, and offered him a ride. Rowland told them his truck had run out of gas.
Fearing the couple had seen him scoping out their house, Rowland then killed the Whites, leaving their bodies in two different nearby locations. The Whites are found the next day.
Rowland was sentenced to consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Initially unaware of the consecutive terms, Rowland, when informed by the judge, replied “One life, two life, it don’t matter. I’m good.”
April 20, 2022
The Telegraph learns that Rowland had been linked to a total of nine homicides in Georgia, including the three at the east Macon boarding house for which Green had been arrested.
After developing a rapport with Twiggs sheriff’s investigator Buddy Long and Sheriff Darren Mitchum during hours of interviews after his arrest, Rowland shared details about unsolved killings that only the perpetrator might know. Rowland has since reportedly met with local investigators at the state prison near Jackson where is incarcerated and confessed to the boarding house slayings.
Rowland also claimed responsibility for a killing in Atlanta and a trio of unsolved deaths in Macon, two shooting episodes and one in which the victim may have been stomped to death, the Twiggs sheriff said.
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
