A man who police say stabbed and killed his ex-girlfriend outside her South Jersey home ended his own life.
Michael Eitel, 45, was on the run from authorities since Wednesday night when police say he stabbed Carol Bowne to death in the driveway of her West Berlin, New Jersey home.
Berlin Township Police officers found Eitel's body around 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the garage of a home on Holly Drive in West Berlin, according to investigators. Investigators say he committed suicide by hanging.
Carol Bowne, 39, and Eitel dated for some time after the woman's husband died in a motorcycle crash, but the hairstylist later took out a restraining order against the man after he became violent against her, according to authorities.
A motive for the killing is not yet known, but investigators said Eitel had an argument with another woman at a different home before he came to Bowne's house.
Bowne had recently added security cameras to her Patton Avenue home and, in April, applied for a gun permit, but had yet to receive approval.
New Jersey State Police and U.S. Marshals combed through the woods around Bowne's home by air and the ground trying to find Eitel. A fugitive task force was added to the search Thursday.
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Police say the home where Eitel's body was found belongs to a different ex-girlfriend who had been out of the house for her own safety. Detectives believe Eitel went inside the house overnight and hung himself in the garage with a rope while he was kneeling. Police searched the house after the homeowner asked to return and found Eitel's body.
Two days after Bowne's death, state senators Diane Allen, Jennifer Beck and Dawn Marie Addiego began drafting legislation that would prioritize permitting for those who have a restraining order in place.
"You're still going to have to go through the process, but every step of the way, your particular application will get priority," Addiego said.
Nancy Hutchinson with Camden County Women's Center spoke cautiously about the proposed law, however, concerned it could hurt domestic violence victims.
"[They must ensure] that if a gun is used for victims of violence for self-defense that there are laws in the legal system that help them if they have to resort to that so it doesn't come back and hurt them if a gun is used for their own protection," she said.
On Sunday protesters gathered outside the home of New Jersey State Senator Steven Sweeney in Woodbury calling for the state's gun laws to be repealed and replaced by a new and quicker system.
"If Carol would've been living in another state she'd be alive today," a protester said. "She would've been able to utilize modern background checks and been able to purchase and carry her firearm on her person to protect herself against any type of violent criminal."
While Senator Sweeney agreed Bowne's permit process took too long, he questioned the true intentions of the protesters.
"This woman's tragedy has nothing to do with what they're protesting," Sweeney said. "It's a recall effort over a ten-round magazine clip. That's the issue. Plain and simple. They're a second amendment society. This poor woman was murdered and it's a tragedy. I feel for her family, my heart goes out for her family. I actually was trying to streamline the process to make it more fair to law-abiding citizens when they're trying to get their handguns because the process does take too long. This tragedy of this poor woman losing her life, for them to use that for a purpose opposite of what they're really doing, it's sad."
