First Impressions: His Florida Victim's Autopsy Reports

The autopsy reports are here, all three of them. These will be scanned and posted as soon as possible.

Of particular interest in these three reports are the body diagrams and the head diagrams. Also there are several key phrases with the report that catch one's attention when scanning over them. Key phrases like -- "This is the unembalmed body of a normally developed and nourished white female measuring 5'1", weighing 110 pounds, and appearing younger than the recorded age of 25 years."

Yeah, that's right Bolin the Butcher prays on the younger girls.

Another phrase -- "There are no undergarments." -- "One such wound on the medial lower left breast has a doubly incised configuration" -- "there are a total of 8 stab wounds to the chest, 2 stab wounds of the neck, and 1 incised wound of the neck." -- and it goes on and on.

The second report is even more gruesome having been so decomposed -- "x-rays of the whole body reveal numerous fractures in the skull" -- the diagrams of the skull are shocking -- this is where they found the tool mark. That tool mark we will revisit, once we start digging through the court documents and huge amount of information you can get on Bolin the Butcher's cases using the Florida Open Records Act.

The neck was completely skeletonized, so no mention of stab wounds there but there is 6 in the victim's shirt and once again like in the previous report the left breast was stabbed. This is evident from the hole in the bra. She was only 17 years old.

The third report will have to wait.

While sitting in the cell naked, he informed us that he wasn't going to court because he couldn't wear his Brooks Brothers jockey shorts

Aug 14, 1996

It was like a reunion.

Kathleen Reeves, Donna Witmer and Natalie Holley met five years ago at the trials of the man accused of killing their three daughters.

But as Oscar Ray Bolin Jr.'s retrial Tuesday brought them together again under the same grim circumstances, the accused serial killer's big concern was his desire to wear designer underwear.

The controversy started off a day that included jury selection and accusations by a prosecutor of a "close relationship" between Bolin and defense team member Rosalie Martinez, who calls herself Bolin's "guardian angel."

"It's disrespectful," said Reeves, whose daughter, 26-year-old Teri Lynn Matthews, was killed in 1986. Like the other women, Reeves wore a golden angel pin on her lapel as a show of solidarity.

"We have our own angel," Witmer explained. Her daughter, Stephanie Ann Collins, was 17 when she was killed in 1986.

The underwear incident started over an outfit Bolin got from Martinez, who has spent the past 18 months trying to prove Bolin not guilty of the three murders.

For the trial Tuesday, Martinez brought Bolin a glen plaid Armani suit - a hand-me-down from her husband, prominent Tampa attorney Victor Martinez - and a handkerchief, tie, belt and socks. The suit had been tailored for Bolin.

Included in the package was a pair of Brooks Brothers cotton briefs.

Pasco corrections officers gave Bolin the clothes but refused to let Bolin wear the briefs. Sheriff's spokesman Jon Powers said underwear is a "personal effect" that inmates are not allowed to receive from friends or family members.

Bolin then took off his own standard-issue white cotton jail boxers and tore them up, Powers said.

"While sitting in the cell naked, he informed us that he wasn't going to court because he couldn't wear his Brooks Brothers jockey shorts," Powers said.

When Judge William R. Webb learned of the situation, he moved quickly to put a stop to the "foolishness."

"I'm going to order the Sheriff's Office to use all reasonable force necessary to dress the defendant," Webb said. "That can include no underwear as far as I'm concerned. I'm only concerned with what the jury sees."

Bolin complied peacefully when corrections officers went back to confront him, Powers said, putting on his suit and tie - minus underwear.

"I'm sure he will avail himself of some new underwear as soon as he gets back to jail," Powers said.

The incident also led to questions about Martinez after Assistant Public Defender Paul Firmani asked Webb to allow Martinez to sit at the defense table.

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis said he was worried about the "close relationship" between Martinez and Bolin, mentioning a story about them that appeared in the Times in June.

"There's a little concern I have for safety reasons if we allow Ms. Martinez to be in close contact with Mr. Bolin," he said.

In an interview after Webb denied the motion, Martinez lashed out, calling Halkitis a liar.

"I'm embarrassed for him that he would take a lady with a family and insinuate such horrible things," said Martinez, who vowed to file a Bar complaint against Halkitis.

"He slandered my good name," she said. "I'm not a witness and I'm not on trial."

She realized then that the murder weapon was the small club her husband loaned Bolin

Aug 25, 1996

Rosemary Kahles was selling cars at a Pinellas dealership when the loudspeaker summoned her to the office. Her husband was on the phone.

Bob Kahles sounded tired, depressed.

"Honey, I love you," he said. "But I just can't take it anymore. I shouldn't have had that boy working for us."

Then Rosemary Kahles heard a bang.

It was March 25, 1991. Oscar Ray Bolin Jr. had just claimed another victim.

Bob and Rosie Kahles moved to Tampa from Minnesota in 1981 with $300 between them and a family of seven to feed.

They worked a series of jobs until they got the money to open their own wrecking service on north Florida Avenue. Bob labored to make it work.

"He was real strong," said Mrs. Kahles, now 37. "He had a lot of tenacity."

Then, sometime in November 1986, the Kahleses hired a new driver named Oscar Ray Bolin Jr. It didn't take long to know there was something strange about the man nicknamed "Needles."

"He was always playing with knives, acting tough," Mrs. Kahles said.

On Dec. 4, 1986, the Kahleses got a job up in Pasco County. Bolin begged to take it alone. He needed the money.

Kahles didn't want to let him go. Rules were rules. A driver had to spend six weeks in training before he could go out alone. But Mrs. Kahles wanted to give the boy a chance. Bob Kahles relented.

Bolin took out a one-ton wrecker with dual rear wheels. Kahles thought one of the inner wheels looked a little flat, so he had Bolin take a small club that Mrs. Kahles kept in her car.

It was wooden, 2-feet long, with a metal tip at the end. One of Mrs. Kahles' sons had made it for her protection back in Minnesota. Bolin could use it to bang on the tire to make sure it was inflated.

Within a few hours, the Kahleses knew they had made a mistake. They couldn't raise Bolin on the radio. At first, they thought he had stolen the wrecker.

Late that night, they got a call on the radio they kept in their home. It was fading in and out, but they heard Bolin. He said he was lost in Pasco County.

When he finally showed up about 10 the next morning, Kahles fired him.

"He was in real bad shape," Mrs. Kahles said. "You could see he was afraid."

It was not the last strange thing that happened, though. Bob Kahles briefly rehired Bolin, at Rosie's urging, then fired him again after another confrontation.

During that time, Mrs. Kahles distinctly remembers sitting in the office when a television show came on about the murders of Teri Lynn Matthews and Stephanie Collins.

Bolin, she says, saw the broadcast and grew excited. He ran to the back of the shop and called several of the other drivers to come watch the show.

"Aren't they pretty?" she recalls Bolin asking. "Aren't they petite?"

She remembers wondering how Bolin knew the women were small. The full import didn't strike her until many years later.

In July 1990, Bolin's ex-wife called a police tip line in Indiana.

Within a short time, Bolin was indicted for murdering three women: Natalie Blanche Holley, 25, Stephanie Collins, 17, and Teri Lynn Matthews, 26.

When investigators found that Bolin, now accused as a serial killer, had worked for the Kahleses, they seized almost all the couple's wreckers in a search for clues.

Mrs. Kahles can't remember how long the police had them, but it was long enough to hurt.

"It seemed like forever," she said. "The trucks supplied the business. They brought in the work to the body shop, the towing. We had payments to make, and they weren't making any money."

Unable to keep up with bills, the couple turned the business over to their sons, but it later folded.

Then, came another blow. Investigators determined that Bolin used the Kahleses' wrecker to dump Teri Lynn Matthews' body in woods in central Pasco County.

Bob Kahles videotaped news reports about the three dead women. He sat at home for hours, playing the tape again and again. He began to sink into a depression he never escaped.

"I tried to get him to get medical help, but he absolutely refused," Mrs. Kahles said. "There was nothing I could do.

"He took the responsibility for Bolin on his own back. He thought that if the guy hadn't worked for him and if it wasn't for him being in that truck, that little girl wouldn't have died.

"He talked about (Matthews) as if she was a little girl. He hated Oscar. He took it real hard."

On March 25, 1991, according to Hillsborough sheriff's reports, Kahles put a .25-caliber gun to his head and called his wife. As he was talking, he shot himself once in the head.

He lingered for several days in a vegetative state. Finally, Mrs. Kahles ordered life support ended. Even then, it wasn't the end. Her grandmother died of a heart attack a day after hearing the news.

Mrs. Kahles, entombed in her own depression, locked herself in her room, putting tin foil over the windows to allow no light in.

Toward the end of 1991, she gave away many possessions, stored what was left and simply drove away.

She ended up Gulfport, Miss. Recovery was still down the road.

Mrs. Kahles now works at an auto dealership in Gulfport running special promotions. She also brokers real estate deals in the burgeoning casino business.

She has started to turn her life around.

The last hurdle was testifying at the murder trial that ended last week with Bolin's conviction for Matthews' murder.

"It all hit me like a ton of bricks," she said. "It's over and over, and it's done."

Unlike her husband, Mrs. Kahles was never convinced Bolin was the killer. During Bolin's first trial in 1992, she was too withdrawn to pay much attention to the evidence.

This time, she learned something new: n eyewitness testified to seeing Bolin beat Matthews 10 to 15 times in the head with a small, 2-foot wooden club with a metal tip.

She realized then that the murder weapon was the small club her husband loaned Bolin, the club she had taken back and carried in the back of her car the past 10 years. Investigators had never thought to ask her for it. It was not introduced at last week's trial.

Mrs. Kahles returned to Gulfport after her testimony. Then she erased her last link to Oscar Ray Bolin Jr.

"I went back to the car and I just trashed that thing," she said. "I dumped it. I didn't want any part of that thing."

she has pledged to cash in on her notoriety by "making millions" that she will use to defend Bolin

. Sep 10, 1996

Amid rumors of jail house romance, Rosalie Martinez lost status, wealth and her husband while defending accused serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr.

Now, she has pledged to cash in on her notoriety by "making millions" that she will use to defend Bolin, convicted last month in the Pasco County murder retrial of Teri Lynn Matthews, 26.

"It really isn't right how the media has portrayed this," said Martinez, who said she has several book and movie deals in the works. "It makes for a juicy story, and it's going to make me millions of dollars."

Bolin "will be afforded rich man's justice one day," Martinez said.

Martinez, a member of Bolin's defense team, spoke after appearing Monday on the debut of the nationally syndicated talk show In Person with Maureen O'Boyle.

On the show, Martinez was cast as being "in love with a serial killer." Although both Martinez and Bolin professed their love for each other, each denied any physical aspect to it.

"I love her dearly," Bolin said during a telephone interview on the show. "I just don't know how to describe it."

"It's true love," said Martinez, who turned 38 on Sept. 3. "He can't offer me anything. He can't give me anything. He can't put his arms around me and tell me it's all right. It's a love that's pure and true. It's not marred by, "We can't pay the electric bill.' "

Martinez, who has moved from Tampa and is attending classes at the University of Florida in hopes of becoming a lawyer, said she was disappointed at how she was portrayed on the program.

But if it helps sell her story and make money, she will use it to help prove Bolin innocent, she said.

"If people think it's lewd and lascivious because I'm trying to help him, then let them," said Martinez, whose husband filed for divorce during the middle of last month's murder trial. "I think it's cruel and malicious for people to continue this."

In the early 1990s, Bolin was sentenced to death for killing Matthews and two Hillsborough women, but won new trials after the state Supreme Court overturned the verdicts.

A Pasco County jury recommended electrocution after he was convicted again last month of Matthews' stabbing and beating death. He has not yet been sentenced.

she bragged that her notoriety would make her enough money to give Bolin rich man's justice

Sep 29, 1996

Kay Reeves, Diane Witmer and Natalie Holley, three women united in grief and fury, were calm enough to make one rule.

As long as Oscar Ray Bolin's murder retrial was under way, they weren't going to talk about her.

Her. Rosalie Martinez.

Her. The woman with the movie deal in the works. The networks and the tabloids calling. The reporters spilling so much ink in her honor, from Tampa to L.A.

Rosalie Martinez, the rich man's wife who gave up virtually all she had for this accused serial killer who terrorized Tampa a decade ago. And who gives new meaning to the complaint that crime victims are often forgotten.

Kathleen Reeves, Donna Witmer and Natalie Holley, victims in their own way, are the mothers of the three young women Bolin is accused of killing in 1986 in Hillsborough and Pasco counties. They made their rule during Bolin's August retrial in the murder of Reeves' daughter, Teri Lynn Matthews, and they stuck to it.

They stuck to it when Rosalie Martinez gave Bolin one of her husband's Armani suits and some Brooks Brothers underpants to wear in court. When she bragged that her notoriety would make her enough money to give Bolin rich man's justice. When her husband filed for divorce.

The three women stuck to their rule because violating it would only add to what Rosalie Martinez, with the help of the media, was already doing. Namely, diverting attention from what counted.

What counted was what Bolin did to 26-year-old Teri Lynn early on the morning of Dec. 5, 1986.

He kidnapped her as she stopped at the Land O'Lakes post office to pick up her mother's mail on her way home from a night job at a bank.

He stabbed her. Even cut her jugular.

He stuffed a garden hose down her throat to drown her.

He beat her head in with a lead-tipped club.

Last week, Bolin and his jail house groupie proclaimed they were going to get married. Teri Lynn's mother learned about it on the TV news. By then the jury had said again he was guilty, had again recommended somebody at Starke pull the big switch on Bolin. Kay Reeves could let her anger spill then when I called. So could the other two women.

As if with one voice, they used the same adjective to describe Rosalie Martinez.

"Pathetic."

Again, they responded as if with one voice when asked if they wanted to say anything to her.

"No." She wouldn't understand.

She wouldn't understand what it means to wake up every day with the palpable sense of their daughters' absence, like a perfume scent that never leaves the air. Every day for a decade. Through trials, verdicts, death sentences, appeals. For 10 years, they have asked themselves what the sickness in Bolin's heart must be.

And now they are forced to ask what moves the heart of Rosalie Martinez.

And what moves the minds of the reporters and editors who think her story is more important than theirs.

The days of Bolin's retrial, the spotlight trained on Martinez, have been like "bringing up the breakfast you have in the morning," Kay Reeves said. "Three girls are murdered, and the most interesting thing is the killer and this woman?"

She was so angry she called 20/20, the ABC news magazine that Mrs. Reeves said is doing a story about Rosalie Martinez. A producer there got on the phone and told her, she said, that they were struck by all Martinez was giving up by leaving her family for Bolin.

"It isn't what she's giving up," Reeves said. "It's what she's taking away."

Taking away from her children, that is. Whatever will happen, Kay Reeves wondered, to Rosalie Martinez's four children?

Children, children. That's all Reeves thinks about.