The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on Wednesday to deny clemency for John Fitzgerald Hanson, who was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of Mary Bowles.
Hanson and Victor Cornell Miller kidnapped Bowles from a Tulsa shopping mall and drove her to a secluded dirt pit in Owasso. Miller shot the dirt pit owner, Jerald Thurman, who saw the kidnappers in Bowles’ car. He died in the local hospital two weeks later. Jake Thurman, his son, addressed the board on Wednesday and said he was 19 when Miller killed his father and he’s now the age his father was when he was killed.
Thurman told the board that rejecting clemency would allow his family to move forward with their lives…