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During a warm Pennsylvania night back in 1996, a night that began as a fun, get together of friends on break from college, ended in absolute tragedy. This is the story of Aimee Willard’s final night, a killer who slipped through the system’s cracks, and a legacy that still fights for justice.
On the night of Wednesday, June 19, 1996, 22-year-old Aimee Willard met up with several of her high school friends at Smokey Joe’s Bar on Lancaster Avenue in Wayne, Pennsylvania. She was looking forward to some mindless time with her friends to relax & wind down from the stress of her studies. After arriving at about 10:30 pm, she left the bar alone at 1:25 am. Sadly, this was the last time Aimee was seen alive & she would never make it home. Little did she or her friends realize that by the time she exited the establishment, a stranger had been watching her every move.
Aimee Willard was born on June 8, 1974 to Gail & Paul Willard who divorced sometime after her birth & she was the youngest of three children. Gail worked as a nurse at Riddle Memorial Hospital while Paul was a police officer in Chester. Aimee had an amazing athletic ability & during her time at Notre Dame de Namur, a private all-girls Catholic high school in Villanova, Pennsylvania, she was both a star lacrosse & soccer player. Not only was she a fierce competitor but she was also an exceptionally kind, gentle & loyal person. Those that knew & loved her saw her as an incredible listener & someone who was always there when you needed advice or help.
At the time of her murder, Aimee was a student & lacrosse player at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, about 2.5 hours from home, where she not only broke school records for scoring, but also earned regional All-American honors. She was studying physical education & dreamed of one day coaching high school sports.
Since Aimee was back home on summer break from school, she was excited to catch up with her high school friends who had all gone in separate directions after graduation. Smokey Joe’s was about a twenty minute drive from her home in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania so she headed out that night to see her friends in her mom’s blue 1995 Honda Civic, arriving at about 10:30 pm & leaving about three hours later at close to 1:30 am.
When an emergency ambulance crew was out during the early Thursday morning hours, they noticed an abandoned car on the exit ramp of the interstate that leads to Route 1 in Marple Township, about thirty minutes after Aimee left Smokey Joe’s. Her blue Honda Civic was discovered on the southbound off-ramp of the Springfield-Lima exit on Interstate 476 in Delaware County at about 2 am & right of the bat, painted an alarming picture.
The car’s engine was running, the driver’s side door was open, the radio was playing & the interior lights as well as the headlights were on. There was a visible scuff seen on the back bumper of the car & even more concerning, there were drops of blood on the ground in front of the car that led away from the car. Sitting in the center of the pool of blood was a tire iron. It was clear that something terrible had happened to Aimee after she left the bar.
Meanwhile, that same day, Thursday, June 20, Gail Willard was out on the Jersey shore enjoying the beautiful summer weather when she received the phone call that every parent dreads, her daughter’s car was found abandoned under highly suspicious circumstances. She later reflected that she immediately believed that her daughter was dead.
Later that morning, police found a pair of gym shoes & a pair of female underwear with a sanitary pad attached not far from Aimee’s abandoned Honda. The shoes were later identified as belonging to her & the underwear size was consistent with the size that Aimee wore as well. The police were able to locate tire impressions at the scene.
At 5 pm that evening, tragically, Aimee’s naked body was found by children playing. She was lying face down with two plastic bags covering her head in a trash-ridden, vacant lot on 16th Street & Indiana Avenue in Philadelphia, a distance of less than twenty miles from where Aimee was last seen.
According to her autopsy, Aimee died from at least three strong blunt force injuries to her head, brain & face as well as contusion to her left shoulder & upper chest. There was a rectangular-shaped contusion beneath her left breast & a patterned, angular thermal injury that looked like a flower petal on her right lower chest & upper abdomen. Her neck had been fractured in numerous locations, there was bruising to her lower extremities & defensive wounds to her forearms.
Semen was located in Aimee’s vaginal cavity & investigators were stunned & sickened to find that a tree branch had been forced into her vagina. There was no blood under or around her body which told investigators that she had been murdered at a different location & later moved to this spot.
No one could wrap their heads around who could have possibly hurt Aimee though within two days, police believed they had their suspect.
After Aimee’s body was found, police in North Philadelphia asked anyone with information about Aimee’s murder to come forward. The first person who took police up on that request was someone well-known to authorities, 23-year-old Andrew Michael Kobak, the son of a wealthy stockbroker who lived in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
The man had a criminal history; he was once arrested for impersonating a police officer after he flashed a blue light from his car in an attempt to get a woman to pull over. After he showed the woman a badge, he forced her to get out of her car, but she ultimately reported him to the police when she suspected he wasn’t an actual officer. After his arrest, Kobak was never charged & due to the nature of how Aimee’s car was found, he was a suspect in her case.
Police were suspicious of him after he had an unhealthy interest in her case, having shown up at the scene shortly after her car was located. Kobak worked for a tow truck company situated only three blocks from where Aimee’s body had been found. Police ultimately searched the man’s home & collected blood from him to compare his DNA with what was found at the scene of the crime. With this, they realized they had the wrong man as Kobak’s DNA was not a match.
However, twelve years after Aimee’s murder, a then 35-year-old Kobak was arrested in New Port Richey, Florida in 2008 for having a sex slave agreement with a 19-year-old girl he met on the internet who suffers from bipolar disorder & schizophrenia. Police found a 10-page agreement titled Master Drew’s Slavery Contract which detailed his expectations of their relationship. He initially faced as much as a 90-year prison sentence though somehow got away with only three years of probation after pleading guilty to one count each of deriving proceeds from prostitution, maintaining a place of prostitution & possession of marijuana.
Now with Kobak no longer a suspect in Aimee’s case, her case went cold until a 1997 burglary within an Ardmore, Pennsylvania home which gave investigators a much needed break.
In June of 1997, one year after Aimee was brutally murdered, a woman from Ardmore called 911 & indicated that a man was trying to break into her apartment through a third-floor bathroom window. The man was telling the woman inside that he was lost. She elaborated that he initially began insistently ringing her doorbell at 6:45 am & when she came to the door, she was met with a man she didn’t recognize.
Police arrested the man a short distance away who identified himself as Peter Thomas Love. He had car keys in his pocket that belonged to a 1993 black Honda Civic that was located nearby & when authorities ran the license plates, the car was registered to Arthur Jerome Bomar, Peter Thomas Love’s actual identity.
Just as in Kobak’s case, law enforcement was also familiar with Bomar. Prior to the attempted break-in, a 19-year-old woman named Patty Jordan contacted police regarding a man in a black Honda who had followed her home after she left a nightclub. As she made her way home, the Honda drove up behind her car & began bumping her back bumper as the man motioned for her to pull over. Patty refused to oblige & thankfully, she was able to get away unscathed.
Patty contacted investigators & informed him that the Honda had the plate number AKB 1149. When investigators ran the plates, they learned that the car was registered to Bomar. Because what happened to Patty Jordan sounded eerily similar to what investigators presume happened to Aimee on the night of her murder, investigators wanted to question Bomar about Aimee’s case.
When the license plate was run a second time, police realized that the plate number was not registered to the black Honda in question, but rather a 1993 Ford Escort. They learned that the Honda that Bomar was driving that day was actually registered to Maria Cabuenos, a 25-year-old woman from Juanita Park who was reported missing on March 15, 1997, 8 months after Aimee’s murder, & had yet to be found. However, Bomar tried to tell police that he’d purchased the car from a stranger in Philadelphia.
It wasn’t until New Year’s Day 1998, nearly one year after Maria went missing, when a man took his dog out for a walk in a remote area & stumbled upon a human skull in the woods thirty miles from the highway where she vanished. Not only were Maria’s bloodstains found in her Honda that Bomar was driving, but her watch was also found in his trailer. As in Aimee’s case, it’s believed Maria had been abducted from Interstate 476.
As authorities dove into Bomar’s criminal record, they quickly saw that he had a very dark past & the deaths of both Aimee & Maria could have been prevented. Back in 1978, Bomar murdered a man named Larry Carrier over a parking space in Las Vegas. After he was convicted of second-degree murder, he received a life sentence, but sadly, in 1990, he was released on parole after serving only eleven years behind bars. Before 1991 & 1996, Bomar was arrested four times on assault & related charges, but each time, he continued to be released from jail.
After his release in 1990, Bomar was granted permission from both Nevada as well as Pennsylvania officials to relocate so he was closer to family & became part of Pennsylvania’s parole system upon his move in 1993. That same year, he was arrested for allegedly pulling a woman from a car & assaulting her outside an American Legion hall in Willow Grove. He was also convicted of assault during a fight outside a Horsham Township bar. Each of these arrests should have triggered revocation of his parole violation, but sadly, the man remained free to roam the streets of Pennsylvania. After he failed to meet with his parole supervisor a warrant was issued for his arrest on February 26, 1997.
Horsham police Detective Bernie Schaffer noted, Unfortunately, the system is not perfect. Some things happen that slip through the cracks. If his parole had been revoked, he would have been back in jail at the time.
Parole investigators from both Pennsylvania & Nevada each pointed the finger at the other in terms of blame for allowing Bomar to remain free. A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole indicated that the state notified Nevada of Bomar’s arrest, but had no independent authority to revoke his parole.
On the other side, a spokesman on Nevada’s end indicated that Pennsylvania was the supervising parole authority & after Bomar’s 1993 arrest, Pennsylvania officials recommended that he remain on parole. There were questions as to why Bomar, a violent offender, was allowed to relocate in the first place.
Coincidentally, Bomar ended up being stopped by the police only eight blocks from where Aimee’s body had been found at 11:25 pm on June 20, 1996, a little over six hours after her body was located. He was driving a green 1993 Ford Escort & he was not arrested.
Now, one year later, on June 5, 1997, Bomar was arrested in Ardmore on an outstanding warrant for violating his parole. While in custody, he was questioned about Aimee’s murder as he told investigators that he was driving a 1993 Ford Escort until March of 1997 & he’d been at the same bar that Amy had been at with her friends on the last night of her life. He also mentioned that he routinely traveled along Interstate 476.
The following month, two Pennsylvania State Police troopers met with Bomar’s then girlfriend, Mary Rumer on July 10, 1997 when she told them that Bomar had confessed to murdering Aimee Willard. He told Mary that he watched as Aimee left the bar in the early morning hours of Thursday, June 20, 1996. She got into her car & drove away so he decided to follow.
While Aimee was driving on Interstate 476, Bomar flashed a fake police badge in order to get her to pull over. Once she did, she asked him why she was being stopped & he told her she’d been swerving on the road. When Aimee became angry, Bomar indicated that he began punching her until she was unconscious. He transferred her body into his car & drove her to an abandoned building. He removed her clothing & eventually placed them into a trash bag which he discarded. He told Mary that he killed Aimee by striking her in the head with a hard object & he also admitted to raping her.
Mary told investigators that after his confession, Bomar pointed out where on I-476 he’d abandoned Aimee’s car as well as the vacant lot where her body was located.
After Bomar’s 1993 Ford Escort was tracked down at a repair shop, it was searched on July 11, 1997 & police seized the front Firestone tire, the oil pan from the undercarriage, & the right front door panel that contained several brown spots that later proved to be Amy’s blood. After the tire was examined it proved to be consistent with the wear & pattern of the tire impressions found at the scene of Aimee’s abduction. The cross-rectangular shapes & lines from the oil pan matched the pattern of what was found on the right side of Aimee’s body.
Two days later, investigators had a warrant to obtain Bomar’s DNA which was a match to the DNA from the vaginal swabs taken from Aimee’s body.
That same month, Bomar’s ex-brother-in-law, David O’Donald, who was also incarcerated on unrelated offenses, agreed to help investigators. With this, he was transferred to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility where Bomar was being held & the two were placed on the same cellblock over the course of two weeks.
While Bomar was in O’Donald’s cell on July 17, 1997, he told him, If I had disposed of the body, there would be no problem. No body, no grand jury indictment. He later gave further details from the night of Aimee’s murder & indicated that when he grabbed her she said, Please don’t do this. She begged him not to kill her. He callously told O’Donald about the detail of inserting a tree branch into his victim’s vagina, a detail that had never been released to the public nor told to David O’Donald.
On December 10, 1997, Bomar was charged with the kidnapping, rape & murder of Aimee Willard as well as abusing her corpse. He pleaded not guilty. After Bomar reportedly attempted suicide while in prison, he was appointed a psychiatrist who deemed that he was component to stand trial.
The trial began in September 1998 & the jury was selected from Westmoreland County in western Pennsylvania despite the fact that the case was tried in the Delaware County Court. Evidence was presented regarding various false statements that Bomar made during the investigation to establish an alibi for the night of June 19, 1996. He indicated that he was at a birthday gathering for his stepson, Wayne, along with his ex-wife, stepdaughter & several others. Bomar’s stepson, ex-wife & one other person testified that this was not true. It was true that June 19 was Wayne’s birthday, but there had been no gathering that night.
The prosecution presented the theorized picture of what happened to Aimee Willard on the night of her murder. After she left Smokey Joe’s bar, Bomar followed her & crashed into her car while they drove on Interstate 476. When she pulled her car over & climbed out, he struck her with a tire iron which left some of Aimee’s blood on the guardrail along the highway. He dragged her body into his Ford Escort & placed her in the front seat. Sometime after 4pm, he dumped her body in the vacant lot at 16th Street & Indiana Avenue.
During the trial, Bomar made several inappropriate outbursts & obscene gestures which resulted in him being restrained a number of times.
The defense called no witnesses forward during the trial.
On October 1, 1998, the jury found Arthur Bomar guilty of first-degree murder, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping & abuse of a corpse, while he was found not guilty of posessing an instrument of crime. When the verdict was read, he turned around & flipped his two middle fingers up toward the Willard family. He was later sentenced to death.
As a result of Aimee’s case, on October 28, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Aimee’s Law into law. The bill is intended to deter states from granting early release to convicted murderers, rapists & child molesters.
Arthur Bomar remains on death row at the Greene Correctional Facility in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania & all of his appeals have been denied. Had he not been released on parole or had he been sent back to prison as a result of his parole violation, Aimee Willard & Maria Cabuenos would still be alive today. Despite the fact that he was driving Maria Cabuenos’ car after her disappearance with her blood found inside the trunk, Bomar has never been convicted for her murder.
Bomar has also been investigated in connection with the 1993 murders of two video store clerks in Warminster Township Pennsylvania.
Aimee Willard’s family continue to deeply feel her loss, but it’s not how she died that they remember, rather they embrace the way that she lived during her short 22 years of life. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend, an athlete & a college student. Aimee was a goer, a doer, a receiver & a giver of love who made the best of everything she did.
Aimee Willard’s life was cut tragically short by a predator who should have never been free. She was robbed of the chance to graduate from George Mason University in May 1997 with a major in education & a minor in nutrition as she’d been on course to do. Despite the fact that her promising future was taken from her, her memory lives on in the people whose lives she touched & who have been touched by her even after her death. Yet, Aimee’s legacy isn’t defined by her final moments—it’s in the scholarships bearing her name, the lives she touched with her kindness & the fight to keep others safe.
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References:
- Casetext: Bomar v. Wetzel
- Women’s Congressional Policy Institute: Aimee’s Law approved by House
- Newspapers.com The Daily Intelligencer: Haunted by an unsolved death
- The Washington Post: Convicted killer also suspected in disappearance
- Main Line Times & Suburban: Death warrant issued for Bowman
- South Jersey/Philadelphia Crime: Technical violation: The murder of Aimee Willard & the failure of the parole system
- Daily Times: Bomar is one step closer to death: Aimee Willard’s killer loses latest bid to escape execution
- The Washington Post: GMU star died from head blows
- The Washington Post: Police say man slipped through their hands
- Main Line Times & Suburban: Remembering the life of Aimee Willard a decade later
- UPI: Man who had a teen ‘sex slave’ avoids jail
