True Crime: Duane Owen murders babysitter Karen Slattery, 14, and mom, 38, as children slept
Victims: Karen Slattery, 14, and Georgianna Worden, 38
Killer: Duane Owen
Where: Slattery in Delray Beach, Worden in Boca Raton
Dates: March 24, 1984 (Slattery); May 29, 1984 (Worden)
Karen Slattery's and Georgianna Worden's killings in 1984 is part of a new True Crime series by The Palm Beach Post.
Karen Slattery, 14, loved being a babysitter and was much in demand. The Pope John Paul High freshman was also a diving star, scheduled to try out for the U.S. team.
She'd just had her braces off in March 1984 when her life ended in horrendous fashion.
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Karen Slattery had just picked up the phone when Duane Owen struck
Duane Owen cut through a bedroom screen at a home where the teen was watching a 7-year-old and 3-year-old and confronted her in the kitchen. She had called her mom at 10 p.m. but was dead by 12:30 when the children's parents found her. Owen had stabbed the girl 18 times then raped her. The children were unharmed.
About two months later, Georgianna Worden, 38, an executive secretary and mother of two children who was separated from her husband, was sleeping when she awoke to a hammer coming down on her head. Owen struck her four more times on the head and face. He also raped her after he got into the Boca Raton home in May 1984. Court documents say she may have been alive up to an hour after the first blow.
Her 13-year-old daughter found Worden, posed, the next morning before she went to school.
Both were not Owens' only victims. Two Boca Raton women were hit in their homes with blunt objects – a plumber's wrench and an clothing iron – but they survived.
In Worden's murder, police found a fingerprint on a copy of Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz, which was lying on her bedside table.
Owen's court journey lasted decades after he was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for Slattery's killing. Representing him were famed defense attorneys Michael Salnick and Barry Krischer, who went on to become Palm Beach County state attorney for 16 years. Owen got the same sentence in 1986 for killing Worden.
Duane Owen claims he was looking for hormones to become a woman
Then the appeals began. Owen said police officers improperly "Mirandized" him. He got a new trial in 1999 in Slattery's death where he claimed he was insane, looking for hormones that night so he could become a woman. The jury didn't buy it and sentenced him again to death.
Owen appealed the verdict in the 1999 trial, saying his lawyer failed to enter into evidence the tale of his childhood with an alcoholic mother who died when he was 11, a father who killed himself when Owen was 13 and his own drinking and drugging since he was 9.
Childhood friends described Owen's alcoholic parents.
"It was the only house I know to have beer delivered by a beer truck," said a neighborhood friend.
As recently as 2017, Owen appealed the Slattery verdict again after a Florida Supreme Court ruling frowning on death sentences that didn't arise from an unanimous jury recommendation.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley in 2018 denied him a new trial. In 2020, the Florida Supreme Court agreed.
Holly Baltz is the investigations at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@pbpost.com. Support local investigative journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida murders: Karen Slattery, only 14, killed by Duane Owen
