THE KILLING OF REBECCA DOSS BY BRUCE WARD

BRUCE WARD

Found guilty of killing Rebecca Doss as she worked a late-night shift at a Little Rock gas station in August 1989

Scheduled for execution on April 17, 2017
Date of original condemnation: Oct. 17, 1990
County in which crime occurred: Pulaski
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Within an hour of Rebecca Doss' strangulation death, her killer, Bruce Earl Ward, a homeless perfume salesman, was stopped at the gas station where she worked by a Little Rock police officer who had stumbled upon the crime scene.

The officer became concerned after finding the Jackpot Inc. convenience store empty and conducted a check of the building, later finding Doss strangled in the men’s restroom with the door key inches away from her outstretched hand. Authorities believe the teen was also sexually assaulted before her death.

In a videocassette played for jurors midway through his October 1990 trial, Ward could be heard asking the clerk to help him open the restroom door and telling Doss that the key would not fit.

“I’m coming; hold on,” Doss replied in the recording, before the tape went eerily silent. 

A short time after police arrived early Aug. 11, 1989, the officer witnessed Ward walking from the bathrooms on the left side of the gas station on North Rodney Parham Road. Authorities questioned Ward and arrested him as he walked toward his motorcycle.

Weeks before the strangulation, Ward had been selling perfume from a suitcase and living in local homeless shelters. Before that, he had served time in Pennsylvania for the 1977 strangulation of a then-20-year-old woman in Erie, Pa. 

Doss’ killing was one of two at Little Rock gas stations over a three-week span that summer. Another clerk, a 35-year-old man, was killed in a robbery-turned-slaying July 24, 1989, at a convenience store off Interstate 30.

“How can you deal with it? An 18-year-old girl lost her life over absolutely nothing,” David Copeland, co-owner of Jackpot Inc., told an Arkansas Democrat reporter of Doss’ death as he stood feet from the bathroom where the teen’s body was found.



An initial attempt to try Ward in the strangulation death ended in a mistrial April 10, 1990. At the end of the third attempt to reach a verdict, a Pulaski County jury found Ward guilty of capital murder Oct. 16, 1990, in Doss’ slaying. He was sentenced to die after 50 minutes of deliberation the following day.

The Arkansas Supreme Court later overturned that death sentence as well as another imposed on Ward in March 1993. 

On Oct. 28, 1997, jurors imposed the death penalty for a third time. The state’s high court upheld that decision in August 2009.

Earlier this month, Ward’s attorneys said the convicted killer is severely mentally ill and does not understand the process, adding that his confinement conditions –– living for 26 years in a less than 90-square-foot cell –– have exacerbated his mental instability. Ward has not applied for clemency.
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REBECCA DOSS

A Memphis native who later called Little Rock home, 18-year-old Doss was described by relatives and co-workers as a friendly, sweet and innocent teenager.

Doss had goals of getting her GED and going off to college, with a particular interest in attending Ouachita Baptist University. 

“She always said ‘I’m not innocent.’ But she was. She was good-hearted and she trusted everyone.”

— Melissa Doss, Rebecca Doss' older sister in August 1989