Man pleads guilty in 2022 stabbing death of Buckhead grandmother
She should have been safe in her gated Buckhead community, her family said. But it was in her home where Eleanor Bowles was violently killed when she saw a man trying to steal her SUV, according to investigators.
On Monday, three years after the 77-year-old was found stabbed to death, her killer pleaded guilty to murder, according to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. Antonio Brown avoided a trial, which was set to begin this week.
After Brown’s plea, Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer gave him two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole, though the 26-year-old won’t be eligible for 60 years.
On Dec. 10, 2022, Bowles was found in her garage by one of her sons who had arrived for a holiday visit, according to family and police. She may have interrupted the suspect earlier that day, between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., as the man tried to steal her 2021 Lexus RX 350, investigators previously said.
The following day, investigators released surveillance camera images of a person of interest seen near Bowles’ SUV. Within 24 hours, Brown was in custody. He has remained in the Fulton jail since his arrest, booking records show.
The death of Bowles, a grandmother of two, devastated not only her family and friends, but others in the community less than 2 miles from the Governor’s Mansion.
Known as Ellen, Bowles was remembered for her love of her family and friends, animals and gardening. Donations made to a GoFundMe page created in her honor were given to the Atlanta Humane Society, the family said. She is also survived by two sons.
“The wheels of justice have begun to move for my mother,” Michael Bowles said in a statement released to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after his mother’s death. “This has been a nightmare for our family. My mom should have been safe in her home. If she wasn’t safe, no one is. I grew up in Atlanta, my wife was born here, and my brother and his family live here. We love this city, but we have all been disappointed at the horrific acts of crime that have plagued Atlanta for far too long.”
By the time Brown killed the Buckhead woman, he had already committed other crimes the same day, according to police.
He was allegedly already intoxicated when he tried to buy a bottle of vodka at a Buckhead liquor store, according to an Atlanta police report. When a store employee told Brown no, he grabbed the bottle and left the store, the report states. From there, Brown is accused of walking less than a half-mile to Paces West Terrace, where Eleanor Bowles was killed.
Brown’s criminal record in Fulton dates to March 2019, when he was arrested on a shoplifting charge. Any juvenile crime records, if they existed, are not public record.
In February 2023, a grand jury indicted Brown on 12 charges, including felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery and abuse of an elder person.
Bowles was killed during a particularly violent year for Atlanta. Her killing was the 157th homicide of 2022; the city totaled 170 by the end of that year.
After announcing Brown’s arrest, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens pledged that Atlanta police would continue to find those responsible for the violence.
“Let me be very clear to those who would want to do harm in our community, who would want to perpetrate these crimes,” Dickens said. “If you pull a gun or pull out a knife in our city to hurt, harm or kill someone, you will be arrested and sent to jail. We will use all of the tools of the APD and our friends and our partners, every resource we have, to bring to justice criminals who act in this violent way.”
