DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
~ Just Retribution ~
HTML https://justretribution.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Upcoming Executions
*****************************************************
#Post#: 536--------------------------------------------------
~ Leo Boatman, (FL) ~
By: BuzzC Date: November 9, 2022, 10:49 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Leo Boatman, who killed a couple camping in the Ocala forest,
accused of killing again in prison--
November 8th, 2019
[IMG]
HTML https://www.orlandosentinel.com/resizer/lCnL-3KyFWVdaEW2HCkyCJMRCYc=/800x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/EFMX3D5VGVFNNIN7Q5GHSBIVFA[/img]
Convicted killer Leo Boatman is accused of killing a fellow
inmate at the Florida State Prison. He ambushed and killed two
campers in the Ocala National Forest in 2006.
A former Hooters dishwasher convicted of killing two campers in
the Ocala National Forest almost 14 years ago is accused of a
prison murder and could now face the death penalty, a state
attorney said.
Leo Boatman, 33, was one of two Florida State Prison inmates
indicted this week in the fatal stabbing of fellow inmate
William Chapman, 32, known as “Billy” to family and friends.
Chapman’s life ended in July about three months before his
nine-year prison sentence for burglary was supposed to.
The killing was “exceedingly brutal,” said William Cervone,
state attorney in Florida’s 8th Judicial Circuit, which spans
Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Gilchrist and Union counties.
He said Chapman was stabbed “multiple, multiple times” and
strangled in a prison day room by Boatman and William E. Wells,
also a notorious killer serving multiple life terms.
Cervone said the accused killers blocked the door to the room to
prevent corrections officers from intervening in the torturous
assault.
The prosecutor said he hasn’t often sought the death penalty in
his 18 years as state attorney but the facts of this case fit
the statute.
Both Boatman and Wells are serving life sentences for multiple
murders and have been convicted of prison murders and attempted
prison murder.
Wells dubbed himself the “monster” of Mayport when he was first
sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for killing his wife and
four others in a trailer near Naval Station Mayport in
Jacksonville.
Boatman killed Amber Peck and John Parker, both 26-year-old
students at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville.
The couple and Boatman crossed paths in the forest on a hiking
trail in January 2006. Peck and Parker went to the woods to hike
and camp.
After Boatman’s arrest for the murders, Marion County
investigators branded him a budding serial killer.
Investigators said Boatman took a bus from his uncle’s home in
Largo in the Tampa Bay area to Ocala then a taxi to the forest
to kill. He had a stolen rifle with him.
“A lot of people think he was hunting humans,” assistant state
attorney Rock Hooker said at the time.
Boatman was born in a psychiatric hospital, orphaned at age 8 by
a mother who drowned drunk in a ditch, abused by a grandmother
and molested in foster care, according to court records.
A lawyer who represented him in the forest killings said
Boatman’s life "started off bad and only got worse.”
In interviews with detectives, Boatman recalled crouching in
bushes along a remote trail in the forest, aiming the stolen
AK-47 rifle at the young couple he had met a few minutes
earlier.
Their encounter on the trail had been a cordial “hey” and “hi.”
Parker had offered Boatman hiking directions.
“You know I wasn’t gonna pull the trigger,” Boatman told
detectives. But he did.
Peck started screaming. She and Parker, a former Marine, started
running toward a remote campground called Hidden Pond near
Juniper Springs about 65 miles north of downtown Orlando.
Boatman chased them.
[IMG]
HTML https://www.orlandosentinel.com/resizer/xiCl4Sm4zC8EQVYYjfToYFVT9f4=/1440x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70):focal(778x772:788x782)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/XPB5ZVIZZFGR5BJRNUSOMBRWQ4[/img]
Florida prison inmate William "Billy" Chapman was fatally
stabbed and brutalized killed in a prison day room in July 2019.
"The last thing I remember is just trying to make the screaming
stop, " he told the deputy.
The day he was first ordered to serve life in prison, he said,
“I can offer no explanation because there is none.”
In a telephone interview in July with the Orlando Sentinel,
Wanda Cann, Chapman’s sister, said her brother had warned her
and tried to warn prison officials that his life was in danger.
She said he referred to a conflict with Boatman but she declined
to go into details on the record.
Cervone declined to discuss details of the pending criminal
case, including any possible motivation for the obviously
planned attack on Chapman.
He said he would likely file his intent to seek the death
penalty in December when the accused killers are arraigned.
Chapman was sentenced to a total of nine years in prison for
theft-related crimes in Ormond Beach.
According to a police report, he broke into a woman’s home and
stole $6,000 worth of property, including jewelry, a laptop, a
Wii game console and a .38-caliber handgun.
Police said the woman knew him and saw him running from her home
carrying a trash bag filled with stuff.
According to another police report, he and a friend broke into a
parked car and stole a woman’s purse while she was at a fitness
center working out.
Florida State Prison, which also houses the state’s execution
chamber, is located in Starke, Florida, in Bradford County.
It has about 1,460 inmates, including Boatman and Wells.
8)
*****************************************************