Dallen Forrest Bounds was born on August 9, 1971, in Washington State, but later relocated to the Greenville, South Carolina area after a failed marriage ended in Arizona. His crime spree left four people dead between June and December 1999.
Sometime in early 1998, Bounds and some friends rented an apartment in Greenville. Over the next few months, Bounds found work in a variety of jobs, including being a butcher, working at a local Publix, and even as a deliveryman. The troubled Bounds seemed to be making strides and heading in the right direction when he met a 33-year-old nurse by the name of Sandra “Sandi” Roberts Ott in June 1999. No one knows the extent of the relationship, whether it was strictly friendly or if the pair dated during that time. However, what happened next would forever alter the lives of four families and leave the Easley, South Carolina community, and others from around the state in shock.
The summer of 1999 seemed like a good year for Bounds, who had love on his mind. Bounds pursued Ott, even scattering rose petals across her driveway, but Sandi Ott didn’t share the same excitement or love for Dallen Bounds. These events sent Bounds into a dark, lonely place, as he began recording his feelings in a diary. On multiple occasions, he contemplated suicide, but soon, the 28-year-old would find himself a South Carolina serial killer.
On June 26, 1999, a local Radio Shack employee, Jonathan Lemuel Lara, was found restrained to a chair in the back room of a Radio Shack in Greenville, with neck wounds from a screwdriver. Money had been stolen from the register, and Lara was last seen in the company of an unknown man and woman.
Six months later, on December 22, Karen Moore Hayden was found dead in a back storage room in a tiny flower shop on a busy street. The 30-year-old clerk’s body was found by a delivery man sent from the Greenville-Pelham Florist Shop.
The day after Hayden was found, Bounds broke into the home of his former friend, Sandra Roberts Ott. Bounds killed her with a gunshot to the head and began to chase her ex-husband, 32-year-old Timothy Ott. Timothy ran to the house of a nearby neighbor looking for help, but no one was home. Just like something from a horror movie, Bounds caught the man and shot him to death.
Dallen Bounds made his way to Easley. Police were alerted to his whereabouts, but in the meantime, he had approached several people before taking refuge in a home on South Third Street around 1 P.M. Inside were two women who believed the younger man was an acquaintance of the family. Bounds began to act strangely, as he proceeded to close the blinds and confessed that he had murdered two people.
The daughter alerted a neighbor, as Bounds sat in the living room watching a Christmas show on television. When police arrived, Bounds was distracted by the show, as officers moved in on the troubled man. After realizing that his life of crime was about to come to an abrupt end, Bounds panicked when he saw a police officer standing behind him. Dallen Bounds grabbed his gun, pointed it at his head, and fatally shot himself.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr.