An Athlete Murdered Young

Aimee Willard’s athletic accomplishments earned her a scholarship to play lacrosse and soccer at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The twenty-two-year-old tomboy particularly excelled in lacrosse. By her junior year she led the Colonial Athletic Association in scoring and assists and was named one of the top twenty-five female lacrosse players in the United States. Because of a man described as “pure evil,” however, Aimee Willard became an athlete who died young.

In the early morning hours of June 20, 1996, Aimee’s car was found abandoned along Interstate 476 near Philadelphia. That afternoon, her badly beaten body was found in the north part of the city.

Three people emerged as suspects in Aimee Willard’s murder before DNA identified the true culprit.

Aimee Willard

After completing her 1996 spring semester at George Mason, Aimee returned to her Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, home, twenty miles southwest of Philadelphia, in June and enrolled in summer classes at a local college.

 

Home For the Summer

On June 19, eleven days after her twenty-second birthday, Aimee met friends at Smokey Joe’s Tavern in Wayne, just north of Philadelphia. Conversing at the tavern for nearly three hours, the girls had a great time catching up with each other. Aimee drank only a small amount of alcohol and left the bar between 1:30-1:45 a.m. on June 20.

On the day before summer officially started, the warm Pennsylvania morning was about to marred by a chilling crime.

Having Fun with Friends

Shortly after 2:00 a.m., off-duty paramedics found Aimee’s car parked along the shoulder of the Exit 3 off ramp of Interstate 476 in north Philadelphia. The vehicle’s engine was running, the lights were on, and the radio was playing. The driver’s side door was ajar and a trail of fresh blood stains dotted the pavement. A bloody tire iron lay by the side of the car, which was later identified as Aimee’s.

Police were summoned and found more blood along the passenger side of the car and the nearby guardrail. Later that morning they found underwear and tennis shoes, also determined to be Aimee’s, at the top of the ramp. Her other clothes were never found.

Ominous Findings

That afternoon, seventeen miles away in north Philadelphia, two children playing in a vacant lot along 16^th Street and Indiana Avenue discovered a nude body. An autopsy determined it was Aimee Willard. She had been raped and killed by blunt force trauma that crushed her skull. The time of death was estimated at approximately 7:00 a.m. on June 20.

Three men became suspects in the murder of Aimee Willard. Disturbingly, two of them were in law enforcement and the third had previously masqueraded as a lawman.

Raped and Murdered

As police searched the ramp where Aimee’s abandoned car was found, twenty-three-year-old Andrew Kobak approached them saying he had been on the ramp early that morning and had seen the car. Kobak had once worked five blocks from where Aimee’s body was found. More interestingly, he had previously been arrested for impersonating a police officer.

Kobak allowed police to search his car. They found handcuffs and a flashlight similar to those used by law enforcement. A search of his home produced police paraphernalia as well as a magazine which could be used to order police equipment. After the searches, Kobak stopped cooperating with authorities.

Police were convinced they had their man, believing Andrew Kobak had approached Aimee Willard under the guise of a police officer. Two bona fide law enforcement officers, however, also emerged as suspects.

In December, 1997, one-and-a-half years after Aimee’s murder, semen found on her body was matched to thirty-eight-year-old Arthur Bomar, Jr.

Police were led to Bomar after nineteen-year-old Patty Jordan reported an attempted carjacking near Philadelphia. A man had tailed her after she left a local nightclub and purposely struck the back of her vehicle. He tried to get her to pull over, but she refused.

As Patty drove off, she memorized the car’s license plate number. The plate was traced to Bomar. In December 1997, one-and-a-half years after Aimee’s murder, semen found on her body was matched to Bomar.

 

Andrew Kobak

Harold Hutchinson, an off-duty Pennsylvania state trooper, who lived only a few blocks from Aimee’s home, claimed to have seen both Aimee’s car and a police officer parked in a squad car behind it. The trooper said he spoke briefly with the officer, offering his assistance. When told he was not needed, the trooper said he drove away.

All of the police officers who responded to the call of Aimee’s abandoned car, however, said no one identifying himself as a state trooper spoke to them. Furthermore, authorities determined Hutchinson was in a different location at the time. He soon resigned from the Pennsylvania State Patrol.

One week later, David Buggy, a local police officer not involved in the investigation into Aimee’s murder, came forward saying he had come upon her car while the paramedics were on the scene but before the police arrived. The officer said he saw the paramedics parked behind her car and that he spoke with them. The paramedics, however, contradicted Buggy’s account, saying they neither saw nor spoke with him. Like the state trooper, the police officer later admitted to lying to his fellow lawmen. He, too, resigned shortly thereafter.

Investigators had three suspects in the murder of Aimee Willard: Andrew Kobak, who had previously pretended to be an officer, and two of their actual own; Pennsylvania State Trooper Harold Hutchinson and local police officer David Buggy. DNA tests however, exonerated all three men.

The only connection Aimee’s killer had to law enforcement, it would be learned, were his multiple arrests.

Suspects Emerge, but All Are Cleared

In December, 1997, one-and-a-half years after Aimee Willard’s murder, semen found on her body was matched to thirty-eight-year-old Arthur Bomar, Jr.

Police were led to Bomar after nineteen-year-old Patty Jordan reported an attempted carjacking near Philadelphia. A man had tailed her after she left a local nightclub and purposely struck the back of her vehicle. He tried to get her to pull over, but she refused.

As Patty drove off, she memorized the car’s license plate number. The plate was traced to Arthur Bomar, Jr., who was no stranger to authorities.

Arthur Bomar, Jr.

Bomar was no stranger to authorities. He had previously been convicted of several assaults on young women, as well as the second-degree murder of a woman in Nevada in 1978. He had been sentenced to life in prison but was granted parole after serving only eleven years. The parole board evidently thought Bomar had been rehabilitated. They would soon be proven deadly wrong.

In 1990, less than a year after he was paroled, Bomar was charged with the attempted murder of a woman named Theresa Thompson; the charges, however, were dropped after she died of a drug overdose in 1991 before the case was brought to trial. He was also believed to be connected to the rape of a Philadelphia college student, though the evidence was not sufficient to charge him.

The evidence, however, was more than sufficient to charge him with the murder of Aimee Willard.

A Long Rap Sheet

At approximately 8:30 p.m. on the evening of June 19, 1996, Philadelphia police had stopped Bomar for a traffic infraction only six blocks from where Aimee’s car would be found less than five hours later. Following her murder, police sought to question Boma, but they could not initially locate him.

The following week, Bomar was arrested after trying to break into a woman’s apartment. As the three other men had emerged as suspects in Aimee’s murder, authorities turned their attention away from Bomar and did not question him.

Not Initially Questioned

After the DNA evidence linked Bomar to Aimee’s murder, his girlfriend, Mary Rumer, told authorities he was at Smokey Joe’s Tavern on the evening of June 20, 1996. It is believed he noticed Aimee at the bar and followed her along Route 476 after she departed.

Due to the damage found on the front of Bomar’s car and the back of Aimee’s car, police believe he purposefully rammed the back of her car to get her to pull over. When Aimee exited her vehicle to exchange insurance information, Bomar is believed to have struck her with the tire iron later found alongside her car.

After knocking Aimee unconscious, Bomar is believed have taken her to north Philadelphia where he raped her and killed her with three blows to her head from another large object. Afterwards, he is believed to have run over her with his car. A burn pattern found on Aimee’s back was consistent with the oil pan on the bottom of Bomar’s Ford Escort, which was found in a junkyard with slight damage to the front bumper. Its tires matched the impressions found near Aimee’s car. Furthermore, DNA testing showed blood found on the car’s door was Aimee’s.

Bomar Linked

In February, 2003, six-and-half years after Aimee Willard’s murder, Arthur Bomar, Jr. was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. He was also convicted of rape, assault, kidnapping, and abuse of a corpse.

At his sentencing, Bomar professed he was convicted only because he is black. What he did next drew outrage among all in attendance.

Convicted

Bomar then flipped his middle fingers at Aimee’s mother, Gail, and told her to f**k herself.

He also threatened to kill her and her two other children . . . while still insisting he had not killed Aimee.

Aimee and Her Mother, Gail

When Bomar had been arrested for breaking into the woman’s apartment a few days after Aimee’s murder in June, 1996, he had a set of keys for a Honda in his pocket. Police learned he had put his Ford Escort’s license plate on the Honda. This was the license plate Patty Jordan had memorized when the car rammed her.

The license plate was registered to Bomar, but the vehicle belonged to twenty-five-year-old Maria Cabuenos, another Pennsylvania woman who had been reported missing in March, 1996, three months before Aimee Willard’s murder. Maria is also believed to have been abducted on Route 476, near where Aimee’s car was found. Dried blood was found in the trunk of her Honda and both bumpers were slightly scraped, as were the bumpers on Aimee’s car. Moreover, Aimee’s blood and hair were found in Maria’s car.

In January, 1998, three months after Bomar’s conviction for Aimee’s murder, Maria Cabuenos’ remains were found in nearby Bucks County. Like Aimee, she had died of blunt force trauma.

Bomar is the prime suspect in Maria’s murder, but he is not likely to be charged because of his death sentence.

Maria Cabuenos

Over a quarter-of-a-century after Aimee Willard’s murder, Bomar still plays the race card, insisting he was convicted only because he is black. No one of any color is supporting his claim. In 2014, his appeal was rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Authorities continue to investigate Bomar’s possible involvement in other homicides. They believe he may be a serial killer but have not been able to link him to any more murders.

Over twenty years after his conviction for the murder of Aimee Willard, Arthur Bomar, Jr. is still on death row, and he is likely to remain there for a while.  In 2015, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the state’s death penalty. In February, 2023, his successor, Josh Shapiro, announced he would continue the moratorium and called on the Pennsylvania General Assembly to abolish capital punishment.

 

Still on Death Row

The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, AKA “Aimee’s Law,” was introduced by then-Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and was signed into law by President Clinton in 2000.

The act encourages states to keep murderers, rapists, and child molesters behind bars longer and holds a state financially accountable if it fails to do so. In addition, it allows interstate parole violators to be jailed in their state of residence at the expense of the state where the original offense was committed. Furthermore, it permits for offenders to be jailed in another state if circumstances allow.

 

Aimee’s Law

A small roadside memorial on the exit ramp from Interstate 476 to southbound U.S. Route 1 marks the site where Aimee Willard’s car was found.

Memorial to Aimee

US Lacrosse, the national governing body of the sport in the United States, has established the Aimee Willard Award. Created in conjunction with Aimee’s mother, her high school coach, and the Philadelphia Women’s Lacrosse Association, the award is given each year in recognition of the outstanding collegiate athlete participating in the USWLA National Tournament.

George Mason University honors Aimee with the yearly Aimee Willard Commemorative Award, presented to the University’s student-athlete who best exemplifies the standards of quality set by Aimee: intensity, consistency of purpose, achievement, and teamwork.

Aimee Honored

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/205392915/aimee-ellen-willard

SOURCES:

• Cold Case Files
• Forensic Files
• In Memory of Aimee Willard
• The New Detectives
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post