Mowrey, James: 1998
Crimes committed on holidays seem especially tragic. It is startling to consider that as most families were sitting around their tables, giving spoken or silent thanks for the blessings of the previous year, at the same time there would be tragedies occurring. Thanksgiving Day of 1998 was such a day in Altoona.
Things had turned bad in the Mowrey household long before the crime. Tammy Mowrey had separated from her husband, James, around February of 1998. She returned four months later, bearing a baby. The father was William Wright. The Mowreys had reconciled, but things were to turn horrific.
On Thanksgiving, Wright stormed through the back door of the Mowrey house. As Tammy and the couple’s six-year-old son, Jacob, were cowering in the home, Wright pursued James to a bedroom closet, where the victim had hidden. The home filled was filled with screaming and chaos. Tammy cowered in fright while their six-year-old son, Jacob, watched from the bed. Wright shot James in a cold-blooded, execution style murder.
The baby, Wright’s daughter, was born about two months after the shooting.
The trial lasted eight days, and although there were concerns about the interactions of the Mowrey and Wright families in attendance, the county deputies and Judge Hiram Carpenter controlled the courtroom and there were no major incidents.
At the trial, Wright’s attorney, Steve Passarello, tried to convince the jurors that Tammy Mowrey was the killer; that she could have killed her husband for abuse. He produced no witnesses, and the jury did not buy it. Wright was a former truck-driver and pizza delivery man. He had only a ninth grade education. His motive was the child, and that he did not want Mowrey raising the girl. District Attorney David Gorman prosecuted the case, and Tammy Mowrey agreed to allow him to seek the death penalty. Wright was found guilty.
Wright was sentenced in November of 1998. Attorney Kirk Kling asked jurors to sentence Wright to life. He noted Wright’s minor prior record, and his history of drug and alcohol use, along with his distress over the breakup coupled with his own childhood of abuse. Richard Consiglio, for the District Attorney’s office, noted that the murder took place during the commission of another felony, and put two other people in serious jeopardy. The jury took only 100 minutes, including their lunch, to decide for the death penalty. William Mowrey’s family found closure, but not much else. As the victim’s brother, John Mowrey, stated at the time, it the verdict would not bring his brother back. John Mowrey was a Bedford state trooper.
Wright became the Blair County’s only death roll inmate. It was a distinction which did not last long.
Dave Gorman was the prosecutor for Blair County.
Wright went on death row after his sentencing in September of 2000, to Greene SCI in Waynesburg.
From prison, Wright continued to claim he was innocent and handled his own legal issues when he felt his appeal attorney, R. Thomas Forr, was inefficient.
In 2007, he asked the U.S. District Court to order the Supreme Court to make a decision. It did not.
By 2008, Wright wanted his appeal to be halted and his execution to take place. He stated that the State Supreme Court had failed to decide whether a new trial would be held, even though they had had the request for more than five years.
He remains at SCI Greene in Waynesboro, PA. Wright wrote a letter to Governor Ed Rendell asking that his execution date be moved up. The Governor has signed his death warrant; the execution was scheduled for September 3, 2009. Governor Rendell has signed over one hundred during his term in office, but not a single execution has taken place during his time in office.
