The Galveston County Daily News

TEXAS CITY — After two days of deliberation, a Galveston jury returned a guilty verdict Tuesday in the trial of a man accused in a slaying at a Texas City motel.

A tentative punishment hearing for William Henry Perry, 50, who was found guilty of murder, was set for Nov. 20, court officials said.

Perry was one of two people charged in the slaying of Gary Wayne Bell, 39, who died April 12, 2008.

Jurors in Judge John Ellisor’s 122nd District Court heard testimony that Bell was severely beaten and tortured with a restraint, which was repeatedly tightened around his neck to deprive him of air.

Bell had just been released from prison on a drug charge and sought the company of a prostitute, who said he raped her and refused to pay her.

Mary Jowers, the admitted prostitute, told her boyfriend, Brian O’Neal Richardson, 28, of the ordeal and said she rode to Galveston with him to dump Bell’s body. Authorities found Bell’s body, hogtied, bobbing in Galveston Bay near 81st Street.

Bell was alive after Perry left the room, testimony revealed, but Jowers implicated Perry and Richardson in the Bell’s severe beating. Bell was kept in the Comfort Inn and Suites for several hours after Perry left the room.

Perry was convicted, although the state was not able to recover his DNA from inside the hotel room or from inside Bell’s car, which was used to drive the body to the bay.

The hotel’s video-surveillance cameras, however, captured Perry changing shirts in the parking lot.

Jurors heard evidence from two witnesses who left the scene with Perry. Joshua Coleman and his girlfriend, April Mowers, testified Perry had blood on his shirt after leaving the room.