Bars cover the windows and barbed wire lines the imposing white wall around the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Norfolk where Edgar Bowser lives. He has spent the last 25 years of his life paying for his crime in prisons like these.
When he was 16, Bowser killed Shrewsbury Police officer James Lonchiadis, and he said he has regretted it ever since.
When officer Lonchiadis interrupted Bowser attempting to steal a car, Bowser shot him, according to the Worcester County district attorney’s website.
‘I panicked. I fired that bullet,’ Bowser said in an interview at MCI-Norfolk last week. ‘I had no intent to hurt that man. It’s something I’ve regretted since the minute it happened.’
Rather than just sitting in prison regretting his crime, Bowser said he has been doing everything he can to make up for it, and he credits Boston University’s Prison Education Program with helping him change who he is.
Bowser received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in liberal arts from BU’s program and believes education can help prisoners reform as long as they want to.
‘The Prison Education Program in and of itself doesn’t have this magical effect on people,’ Bowser said. ‘People have to want to change.
‘I always had this inner turmoil,’ he said. ‘I had a need to reach out and do something to ease the pain I was going through.’
The program helped Bowser change his view of the world and discover a sense of purpose, he said.
‘When you’re from the ghetto, there’s a different view of the world,’ he said, adding people from the ghetto see the world as being full of ‘dead ends and closed doors wherever they go,’ whereas most see America as a ‘land of opportunity.’
‘Where do you go without a high school education? Right here where I am,’ Bowser said. ‘I realized every individual has a responsibility to society. I take that very seriously.’
Since the Prison Education Program started in 1972, 226 prisoners have received degrees, according to program Director Robert Cadigan, an associate professor of criminal justice and sociology. Currently, 144 students are enrolled.
Bowser also said the program changed the way he acts.
‘The things that I’ve learned from BU gave me the skill and the confidence to attempt other things,’ Bowser said.
Bernice Lerner, acting Director of BU’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character, said education could help a prisoner reform.
‘If [education] helps people think about their actions, their meaning and purpose in this world, then it can help,’ she said.
Yet Lerner agrees that people cannot reform unless they already have the power to change within themselves.
‘It’s not education, per se,’ Lerner said. ‘It’s what the person takes and does with it. It has to have the moral component because otherwise you can learn and know so much, but to what end and for what purpose?’
Bowser said everyone should acknowledge that education is the key to reform.
‘We need for society to recognize the transforming effect of educational opportunities like BU provides,’ Bowser said.
BU spokesman Kevin Carleton, one of Bowser’s teachers in the Prison Education Program, said Bowser stood out in his class and showed an eagerness to learn.
‘Among the students in the BU program, some tend to stand out by virtue or because of how hard they work and how committed they seem to be,’ Carleton said. ‘Ed Bowser’s one of those students who particularly stood out. He was very serious, he did his work, he was engaged in classroom discussions and he did so at a level that stood out from other students.’
Bowser said the skills he learned from BU have helped him complete numerous community service projects and propose even more to prison administrators. One program, called ‘ConVersions,’ brought him into high schools and colleges to talk to students about his crimes.
He is currently working on a proposal for a program that would allow inmates to take other college courses so they could get into the BU program, which currently requires some prior college experience. He said President emeritus John Silber will be the first person he sends the proposal to once he completes it.
Bowser has been denied parole five times as he serves a life sentence, even though Silber testified on his behalf the fourth time. During his testimony, Silber said Bowser had changed and wanted to help others.
‘I want to call your attention to the altered nature of his character, his enlarged capacity for self-knowledge, his developed sensitivity to the needs of others and to the ways he can help others,’ Silber said in his testimony.
Bowser said his and Silber’s correspondence started when Bowser sent a letter thanking him for the opportunity to study in the program. Along with correspondence sent back and forth, Silber visited him once. The most recent letter he received came just days before his most recent parole hearing on Sept. 30.
But Bowser said that as long as the parole board is comprised of former law enforcement officials, he will never be granted parole. However, he is appealing his most recent denial resulting from a 3-2 vote on Oct. 16.
Carleton said he also sees parole hearings as stacked against applicants.
‘The problem with the parole system in this state is that applications result in what is tantamount to a second trial rather than assessing what the person is today,’ Carleton said. ‘They tend to look at what they were when they committed the crime, and they seldom look beyond that.’
Carleton said he believes Bowser, without a doubt, should be afforded parole, especially because his sentence originally included parole eligibility because he was convicted of second-degree murder.
‘I believe that he would not be a threat to the community but that he would work diligently to be a contributing member to the community,’ Carleton said. ‘I think he not only regrets his crime but would do anything he could to make up for it.’
Yet with all the work Bowser has done, he said he does not feel he deserves anything.
‘I’ve never suggested I deserve parole,’ Bowser said. ‘When you’re responsible for the death of another human being, what do you deserve?’
However, he said he has shown he can act responsibly in the community, as evidenced by his 49 unsupervised work furloughs outside the prison with no incidents.
‘I don’t feel my debt to society can ever be paid,’ Bowser said. ‘That’s a work in progress.’
As for his debt to officer Lonchiadis’ family, Bowser said, ‘that’s something you can never make up for.’
In his parole testimony, Silber referenced a letter from a special investigator, Paul Porter, saying that Porter had seen the change in Bowser and his regret for the crime he committed.
‘I can assure everyone at this hearing that the Edgar Bowser of today isn’t the same Edgar Bowser that killed a police officer so long ago,’ Porter wrote, according to Silber’s testimony. ‘Ed has and always will pay for his fatal mistake whether incarcerated or free.’
If he is ever paroled, Bowser said he hopes to continue his work in the community and get a job.
‘I’d like to go out and work with some troubled teens,’ Bowser said.
With everything that Bowser has done, he said he wants people to see that he has changed for the better and the crimes of his past can be forgiven.
‘Sometimes, in some cases, people make terrible, terrible mistakes, but that does not define who and what they are forever,’ Bowser said. ‘I do want to be someone that is looked upon with forgiveness.’