Bio 

Terry Lee Lowery was born on July 4, 1961. He was also known by the name Terry Lee Spencer. By 1985, Lowery was 23 years old, married, and living in Indiana. During the sentencing phase, his defense presented mitigating evidence that included mental illness, emotional disturbance, no major prior criminal history, a difficult childhood, and the difference between his punishment and the treatment of his younger accomplice.

Lowery was connected to Johnnie Winners, a 14-year-old boy who was dating Tricia L. Woods. On May 19, 1985, Lowery, Winners, and Woods drove to a wooded area in Allen County. What happened there led to Woods’s death and to Lowery’s murder conviction.

Murder Story

On May 19, 1985, Terry Lee Lowery, 14-year-old Johnnie Winners, and 13-year-old Tricia L. Woods drove to a wooded area in Allen County, Indiana. Woods was Winners’s girlfriend. At trial, Winners testified that Lowery asked Woods to have sex with him. When she refused, Lowery struck her in the head with a 2-by-4 piece of wood. Winners said Lowery then got on top of Woods and had sex with her. Lowery told Winners to return to the car. About 10 to 15 minutes later, Lowery came back with blood on his hands and admitted that he had killed Woods.

Lowery gave a different pretrial statement. He claimed that Winners was the one who forced sex on Woods. Lowery admitted that he struck Woods in the back of the head with the piece of wood, but he claimed that Winners also struck her and committed additional violence against her. The Indiana Supreme Court later found that the evidence was sufficient to support Lowery’s convictions.

Woods’s body was discovered about 30 days after her death. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma from blows with wooden boards. The condition of the body and the evidence at the scene became part of the prosecution’s case against Lowery. Lowery was tried in Allen County Superior Court before Judge Alfred W. Moellering. Prosecutors were Stephen M. Sims and Michael J. McAlexander. His defense attorneys were Barrie C. Tremper and Charles F. Leonard.

A jury found Lowery guilty of murder, felony murder, aiding murder, and battery. The trial court merged the felony-murder, aiding-murder, and battery convictions into the murder conviction and sentenced him to death. The court found that the murder occurred while Lowery was committing or attempting to commit rape, child molesting, or criminal deviate conduct.

Lowery appealed. In 1989, the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence. The court rejected his claims involving the admission of his statement, sufficiency of the evidence, mental-capacity defense, and other trial issues.

Lowery later left death row. Death-row tracking records state that, during post-conviction proceedings in 1994, he entered an agreed disposition and was resentenced to 60 years imprisonment. Later Indiana death-row roster records state that he was discharged from the Indiana Department of Correction on May 25, 2012, after serving about 27 years in custody.