TALLMADGE, OHIO Victim's brother changes mind on death penalty

He no longer supports the death penalty after talking with his sister's killer.
TALLMADGE, Ohio (AP) -- A man who had counted down the days until his sister's killer would be executed said he no longer supports the death penalty.
Rodney Bowser met face-to-face with Glenn L. Benner II, 43, in his holding cell about two hours before Benner died Feb. 7 by injection.
Bowser had requested the meeting, saying he had questions he wanted to ask Benner, a boyhood friend who raped and strangled two women, including Bowser's 21-year-old sister, Trina Bowser.
Their 17-minute discussion through the cell door at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville was the first such meeting between an inmate about to be executed and a victim's family member.
"I almost backed out," recalled Bowser, of Tallmadge, about five miles east of Akron. "I was shaking like a leaf."
After the execution, many of Trina Bowser's family members lashed out against death penalty opponents, saying they don't know what it's like to suffer a heart-wrenching loss.
But Bowser told the Akron Beacon Journal for a story Saturday that he doesn't believe in the death penalty anymore. A life sentence for Benner would have been just fine, he said.
Face-to-face meeting
Earlier this year, the Bowser family had tried to set up a meeting with Benner to get answers to questions they had about why he killed Trina in 1986. He backed out of a Jan. 30 meeting.
But the night before his execution, Benner called Rodney Bowser. The two men spent about 90 minutes on the phone, recalling childhood memories and going over the night of Trina's death.
Bowser, a 48-year-old machinist who had spent two decades cursing his former childhood friend, told Benner that he wanted all the details.
"Don't sugarcoat it," Bowser said he told Benner. "Give it to me straight."
Bowser won't reveal the grim details but said Benner and Trina Bowser ran into each other at a store where Benner was buying cigarettes.
Benner was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing the young woman. He left her body in the trunk of her car along a highway.
A year earlier, he had strangled Cynthia Sedgwick, 26, of Cleveland Heights, in Cuyahoga Falls after a George Thorogood concert.
When Rodney Bowser met Benner the morning of his execution, the two spoke quietly as members of the execution team waited nearby.
Had no explanation
Bowser said Benner didn't know why he killed. Benner didn't blame drugs or alcohol, substances that he had abused.
They shook hands when the meeting was over.
Bowser had been instructed to stay calm so that Benner would not be upset before his execution, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the state prisons agency.
After the meeting, Bowser again tried to reach out to Benner, calling prison officials on a phone. But he was told that Benner was being readied for his execution and couldn't talk. Benner's spiritual adviser passed on Bowser's message -- that Bowser forgave him.
Bowser opted not to witness the execution. He turned over his seat to another family member.
"I didn't want to deal with it," he said. "And I didn't want to take away from what the rest of the family wanted."
Before he died, Benner apologized to the family members of both his victims.
Bowser said he believes that Benner found religion while in prison and became a changed man.