Joseph O’Boyle
A Pennsylvania man who sought treatment for jaw pain, killed his chiropractor by fracturing his skull and hitting him in the jaw with a blunt object.
Joseph O’Boyle, 23, blamed his chiropractor Dr. James Sowa, 64, for worsening his jaw pain, according to his family.
Dr. James Sowa
Surveillance video from November 2020 shows O’Boyle arriving to Dr. Sowa’s office on the day of the murder and fleeing the scene one minute later.
One week after the murder, law enforcement served O’Boyle a search warrant at his home and that’s when he lunged at a detective a repeatedly punched him in the head.
O’Boyle pleaded guilty to criminal homicide and several other charges on Friday.
Fox News reported:
A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to criminal homicide and other charges on Friday for murdering a chiropractor in November 2020.
Joseph O’Boyle, 23, will be sentenced in the coming months for criminal homicide, criminal trespassing, and possession of an instrument of crime. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault, as well as recklessly endangering another person, resisting arrest and simple assault, for punching a detective who was investigating the chiropractor’s murder.
Dr. James Sowa, 64, was found dead inside his home and chiropractic office on Nov. 2 in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, a town about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia.
O’Boyle had been a patient of Sowa’s two months earlier and blamed the chiropractor for worsening his jaw pain, according to his relatives.
O’Boyle struck Sowa three times on the back of the head, fracturing his skull, according to investigators. While Sowa was on the ground, O’Boyle then struck his jaw area with a blunt object multiple times.
Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub called the murder “poetic perverse irony” because O’Boyle attacked Sowa in the same area of the body that he was seeking treatment for, according to Fox 29 Philadelphia.
Following the murder, O’Boyle’s father confronted him about Sowa’s death and the 23-year-old “became agitated and began rubbing his jaw,” according to the district attorney. O’Boyle later admitted to his father that he murdered Sowa.
