Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
All right. Ladies and gentlemen,
we're gonna step out for a minute.
Hi, Mrs. Bowman.
I'm Lieutenant Squyres
from the Norfolk,
VA Police Department in Homicide.
This is Detective Smith.
I'm sorry we have to meet you
under these circumstances.
I know it's very tragic,
and it's very hard for you.
I can tell you about the crime
that he's charged with at this point?
It's so very long ago.
I think I can take you back
to the place where this happened.
We'd been married nine years.
Now we've been married 47.
And for 47 years,
you've been being a very dedicated wife,
giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But it appears to me
that he betrayed that trust,
that loyalty that you extended to him.
And you being a good person
would never imagine
that he could do something this horrific.
He's gonna be indicted
for murder and rape.
When I found out that there might
be somebody else that he murdered,
it was a total curveball.
But not surprised.
It wasn't my time yet.
It wasn't my daughter's time yet.
But I'm going to find out what happened
in Virginia to Kathleen Doyle.
This is Kathleen on our sailboat.
She loved to sail.
She was a good sailor
because her father was a sailor,
and he had built a sailboat
when she was a little girl.
She was independent.
And she was brave.
She definitely wanted to travel a lot.
She just decided she wanted to see
and experience as much as she could.
Thank God she did all that.
She had a very, very full life.
She was 25.
She had turned 25 in April.
Kathleen's mother, Bert,
is my older sister,
but there's only seven years
between Kathleen and I.
So we were very, very close.
And we were somewhat brought up
as sisters.
Kathleen was physically very beautiful.
Long, shiny, auburn hair
and sparkly green eyes
and that beautiful Irish complexion.
She was 4 foot 11,
and she always added,
"And three quarters."
She did have a great giggle.
We would
giggle very often together.
But she had a lot of charisma.
And that was part of her,
but then also was the quiet, cerebral side
that allowed her to be
so good at academics.
She went to college
in Woodstock, Connecticut
because she wanted to be a writer.
And she graduated magna cum laude.
There was a page left on her desk
when she died.
"I have often wondered
what prompts writers to write."
"Somewhere along the line,
I developed the urge too."
"I know I'm not ready
for the written word."
"I feel I must have
many more years of living yet
before I write something worthwhile."
That's what she wrote
the week before she died.
I actually didn't know
how she died for 20 years
because I wouldn't let anybody tell me
because if I didn't know
then I couldn't imagine anything.
Kathleen Doyle lived in a small
Cape Cod house in Norfolk, Virginia.
It was a quaint little house,
it was in a quiet area of the city.
To the immediate left of the house
was a Methodist church.
So it was like the perfect dream home
for a young newly-married couple
within the military community.
Kathleen was married
in December of 1979.
Her husband, who was in the Navy,
was deployed the following summer.
And she, at that time, was on her own
in the house with her kitten.
The evening of September 9th, 1980,
one of her good friends, Vivian,
came over that night.
They had a couple glasses of wine.
Vivian said she stayed a couple of hours
and left somewhere around 9:30.
The next day,
Vivian started to get concerned
because she couldn't get in touch
with Kathleen.
Vivian asked her husband Jim
if he would take a ride over
to Kathleen's house.
So as Vivian slightly pushes
on the front door,
she realizes that it's essentially open.
When Vivian comes in the house,
she notices the two wine glasses
that are on the coffee table
that were still there
from the night before.
So she found that odd.
So as she walks around the corner,
she opens the door to Kathleen's bedroom
and finds her on the floor
deceased in her bedroom.
And a murder investigation is initiated
from that point onward.
Her father Tim
Tim had phoned.
And he just said, "Kathleen was killed."
I remember leaning against the wall
and thinking,
"Who's screaming?
Why is this person screaming?"
Then realizing it was me.
And I just couldn't stop.
Here we have a woman
who was killed in her own home.
And she was assaulted
in the most brutal way.
This was overkill.
The room was torn up.
The mattress had been pushed off
the box spring
as if there had been
some sort of a struggle there.
Kathleen was laying
on top of the bedspread on the floor.
She didn't have any clothes on.
They found
she had been sexually assaulted.
And the cause of death
was mechanical asphyxiation,
essentially a strangulation.
And she had a circular burn mark
on her right cheek.
Would have been the diameter
equivalent to, like, the end of a cigar.
Or a Lincoln Log.
Lincoln Logs were a childhood toy
that a child could build
what looked to be a log cabin,
but even stranger was the fact
that Kathleen had no children.
So these items were found
in Kathleen's bathroom in her trash can.
The interesting part,
this Lincoln Log is charred on the end.
And it's consistent with the burn mark
that Kathleen had on her cheek.
So obviously that paints a picture of
an offender that was very, very violent.
There were too many factors
that the killer was comfortable doing
by way of violence to Kathleen
to suggest that this was the first time
he had committed such an offense.
When Vivian
and her husband Jim found Kathleen
and tried to call the police department,
they could hear the dispatcher,
but the dispatcher could not hear them.
When the police
forensically processed the phone,
they realized that
the mouthpiece had been removed.
It essentially disables
that function of the phone,
keeping someone from calling for help.
But the scene immediately started
to give the police some frustrations
because they didn't have anything
that would allow them to start
to look for the person
that had so viciously attacked Kathleen.
We were looking to see if there were
any fingerprints that could be identified,
and there were none.
The only fingerprints we found
were from Vivian and Kathleen Doyle,
consistent with them having been together
on Tuesday night.
There were a couple of latent fingerprints
that were from Kathleen's husband.
He was deployed in the middle of
the Indian Ocean on an aircraft carrier,
so the police knew where he was.
The police had to focus
on the men
that did not go out on deployment
with Kathleen's husband.
And they focused on the neighbors.
So once they were able
to rule those people out,
there was nothing more to follow up on
that they had access to
or knew about at that time.
The case was essentially cold
for 40 years.
My life's upside down right now.
What my impression is,
what my experience tells me,
is that your husband has been doing
a lot of bad things for a very long time.
He's out here hurting people,
raping people,
and killing people.
And it's terrible, and I wish I was not
here having to talk to you about this.
But he did a very brutal thing.
And I want you to think about
how he betrayed you and your family.
I can't take anymore.
Okay. I understand.
I heard her down there.
You arrested my wife?
She's here.
Now, you brought all this to your family.
I didn't bring anything to my family.
-Yeah you did.
-I did not.
A monster.
An absolute monster.
But it was like Bowman to the slaughter.
Now the truth is going to come out.
Cathy called. She said,
"They got him! They got him!"
"They're arresting him now,"
and I'm like, "Hold on. What's going on?"
So that's when I called Brenda.
She was all upset and she said,
"We're getting a lawyer."
"He didn't do anything.
They've got the wrong guy."
"Yeah, they're arresting him
for something that happened in Virginia."
"He didn't He wasn't even there."
She told me they lived in Michigan
at the time when Kathleen was murdered.
So it would have not been Dennis.
Kathleen's family becomes
incredibly involved in the case.
Her father, Captain O'Brien,
was a member of the United States Navy.
Captain O'Brien,
very much like Aundria's birth mother,
doubled down on his efforts to get
the police department to investigate.
Really do something.
Don't just pay me lip service.
Tim felt like you have to do something.
There has to be action.
He was looking into
who this person could be that hurt her.
Where, with my sister,
Kathleen's mother, and me,
it was hard
to even get out of bed each day.
The world no longer felt safe.
My sister took Kathleen's kitten.
He was with her when she died.
She often said, "If he could just talk"
She kept him until he was so ill.
And so we took him to the vet,
and he died in our arms on the way.
And she was inconsolable.
Tim said to me, "Your sister feels like
she's losing her daughter all over again."
Though I know he has
the same trauma and sadness,
for Tim, it may be more difficult
to voice these things.
So it was Tim who decided to act.
He needed answers.
He needed justice.
He continued to push
the investigation until he passed in 2016.
Police unfortunately
didn't get any answers.
I feel so sorry for him.
Poor baby. I hope they're together.
He and I would have been connected
like just kindred souls.
After Tim died, I had reached
out to the police in Norfolk.
The family wanted to make sure
that they knew that,
though he wasn't here anymore,
we wanted to carry on
and make sure that the case was resolved.
But we're left without answers.
That was a point
of great frustration for me
because we need advances in science
as a way to try to advance
finding his daughter's killer.
I transitioned
to the Cold Case unit in August of 2018.
I started reviewing Kathleen's case file.
And I found out there were two specimens
of DNA left behind by the offender.
Seminal fluid on the bedspread
and seminal fluid from the rape kit.
And that DNA on the bedspread,
it was preserved over the years.
Genetic genealogy is
the next great advance that occurred.
Ancestry DNA became a very fun tool
to see your family tree,
but that science was also able
to be useful in forensic DNA work.
So, with those new advances,
the bedspread was submitted
to the state lab for DNA testing,
and the lab developed
a male DNA profile to the offender.
Question was,
"All right. Who is this guy?"
Using genetic genealogy,
the lab ultimately yielded 31 names.
These are individuals
who could either be the potential suspect,
or they may be
a family member of the suspect.
So what I had to do was go on
and try to track down all these 31 people.
And go to different states.
And if the person is willing to do it,
give a sample of their DNA
with a mouth swab,
so that we can find the offender.
I'm like
"Okay, yeah."
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
Right? How am I going to do this?
That same first week
in November 2019,
the Norfolk area was the site
for a regional homicide investigators
association meeting.
And so Detective Smith went from
the Norfolk police to this conference.
So, at the conference,
I continued
to go through this list of 31 names.
All the way at the bottom
is Dennis Bowman.
When I searched Dennis Bowman,
a number of red flags popped up.
I was like, this dude's a a suspect
in the disappearance
of his adopted daughter from '89.
And there was another article
about an offense in Michigan in 1980.
I think he was charged
with attempted murder.
I was like,
"That's a pretty serious offense."
And then at the cold case conference
in Virginia,
I met someone from Michigan.
And coincidentally,
it was Bryan Fuller.
I was like, "Look, man, this is who I am.
This is what I'm doing."
I said, "I did some searches.
This guy pops up."
"An offender in Michigan."
He's like, "Yeah. What's the guy's name?"
I said, "Dennis Lee Bowman."
He said, "I know Dennis."
"I know his family,
and that's probably your guy."
I was shocked.
Not only was it ironic that
that's the name that he brought to me,
but that I was there
attending this conference
and that I was involved
in the investigation of Aundria Bowman.
And look. I don't have good luck.
All right?
If there's a dark thunderstorm and cloud,
I'm gonna be right in the middle of it,
but it was absolute luck that
I met Bryan Fuller at that conference.
And from that point on,
the rest of the conference,
it was Detective Smith and I
discussing case strategy
and how we were gonna move forward.
The first thing I had to do is
I had to either prove or disprove
that this man
was in Norfolk, Virginia in 1980.
Reading more about the other case
that he had been arrested for,
I learned that Dennis had attempted
to take her into a secluded area
and fired two rounds at her.
The judge in the court records said that
Dennis Bowman is a danger to women.
And this offense
was in May of 1980 in Michigan.
Kathleen's murder
was in September of 1980 in Norfolk.
And it was 596 miles away from Michigan.
So I'm sure they're not gonna let this guy
out of jail for a serious offense.
There's no way this same offender
would be responsible for Kathleen.
But then I was able to get
a court transcript
from the 1980 arrest of Dennis Lee Bowman.
"Your honor, my client is not here."
"He is a member of the US Navy
and is away on his two-week
summer camp requirement
in Norfolk, Virginia."
It's dated September 16th, 1980.
Dennis was in Norfolk, Virginia
when Kathleen was killed.
At that point, I knew it was him.
I just had to get a known
sample from him to do that DNA comparison.
Dennis and Brenda
would get frustrated
with the things
that were being said about them by Cathy.
She's calling us
four times a night, you know,
like 12, one in the morning, saying,
"Oh, we're gonna get ya.
You murdered her."
But that would allow us to have
that line of communication open
to facilitate getting the Bowmans to come
in to discuss their concerns about Cathy.
It's just like the Wild West.
And I just herded them in.
Dennis and Brenda came
to the Sheriff's Department.
We offered everybody something to drink
during our meeting with them.
Mr. Bowman drank the whole time.
A year and a half of hassles
by some crazy lady
calling us murderers and spreading rumors
all over Allegan County.
Cathy hears something
that's been misconstrued,
and then she misconstrues it more.
And then it goes back
to Aundria's lies about,
"My dad did this. My mom did this.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
To this day, through all of this,
I can't stand a liar.
I had harassed them so badly
that they were so desperate
that I chased them
into the arms of the police.
And criminally savvy Dennis Bowman
took that cup and drank out of it.
And set it back down, then Haverdink went,
"Thank you very much."
We test his DNA
and get the results.
The report says that DNA on the bedspread,
that is 100% Dennis Bowman's DNA.
We're heading out
to the prison.
I'm going to go up
to attempt to talk to Dennis Bowman.
Dennis is a weird character at times,
and it it all depends on
what mood he's in today
if he's going to talk to me or not.
Hey, Dennis.
What's your name?
Jon.
I wanted to remove "Detective"
from my title. I didn't wear a badge.
I wanted him to know I'm Jon Smith.
I'm not Detective Smith. I'm Jon Smith.
I was gonna come and ask you
if you want anything anything else to eat.
No.
I was there when he didn't
want to eat their food to say,
"Is there anything I can get you?"
And he was very specific with his request.
Black coffee, almonds, non-salted.
He wanted to be the one to control
the tone and the tenor of the interview
through the tactics
and the games he would play.
So there was a bit
of a cat and mouse game.
Hey, Dennis,
you want to be in control?
You're the captain of your ship.
Oh, he's not even in here.
No, he took my cuffs off
and shut the door and walked out.
He got me a Starbucks, deep roast.
Right now I'm drinking it.
He said we could talk
while I was drinking my coffee.
He's been real good, honey.
The ultimate goal
was a confession.
I want to know what you did
in Norfolk, Virginia in September 1980.
But the goal to get to that point was
let's focus on, "I'm here to help you
as much as I can help you."
"I'm here to be a listening ear."
"And it doesn't have to be
about the case."
I said, "We can talk about anything."
And I just let the man talk.
I mean, for for hours
and hours and hours.
How's your knees doing? I remember
My knees are all right.
My back's killing me.
Back's killing you?
I've been collecting bladed weapons
since I was 12.
I've got 115, all right?
Not one time in my life have I ever heard
my mother say, "I love you."
And the last thing my dad told me was,
he said,
"Your mom's got a heart of gold.
Hard and cold."
I was able to build that rapport with him
such that he would ultimately say,
"Hey, this guy understands me."
"This guy understands
why I did the things I did."
And that was when Dennis
finally talked to me about the case.
I go to the the two weeks reserve.
And I'm there for about a week and a half.
I'm 600 miles away from anybody I know.
I'm wound up like an eight-day clock.
So after about a week and a half,
I said, "Fuck it."
"I gotta get off this ship."
And I went out, and I wandered around.
And I walked into a little bar.
And I sat down,
and I ordered a double bourbon and Coke.
Well, I got stupid drunk.
I mean, just crazy, stupid drunk.
It's dark.
Didn't know where I was.
And I'm walking down the street.
And I walk past this house.
All the lights are out.
There's no car in the drive.
And I said, "I wonder if they got
some loose money laying around."
So I went around the back of the house.
And I went up to a window.
And the window had
a hook and latch on it to lock it.
So I got out a pocket knife.
Opened up the window.
I almost fell in the house. I was drunk.
I mean, I was just drunk.
I went into the house,
and it's the living room.
I'm looking for money. All right?
I went in the kitchen.
And I looked in the cookie jar.
Nothing there.
There was another door.
But when I opened the door,
she
sat up and started to scream,
and I covered her mouth with my left hand.
I went to push her back down
with my right.
I still had that little pen knife
in my hand.
Right.
And when I went to push her back down,
she grabbed that hand.
And it went in right there.
So as he's telling me this
and describing this,
he's also doing that motion
to make it seem like,
well, this is her fault.
She's the one that drove him to hurt her.
When I started to calm down,
she was still lying on the bed,
and she was moving.
And I said, "Lady, I'm leaving."
And I walked out the front door.
And he just completely ignores
all the other key details
but remembers when he left
and that she was sitting up
and he said, "Lady, I'm leaving."
And I knew from that point on
that he was setting the stage
to minimize everything
that he did that night.
Let me ask you this, Dennis.
Would you be able
to put into words and describe
what you felt at that moment?
This will
humanize your feelings.
It was the demon.
Tell me about that demon.
That's when he completely changed
his voice, his demeanor.
He became really soft-spoken,
almost possessed-like.
And then he starts drawing the demon
on the paper.
Here's Dennis.
And the demon used to be
right out here in front.
So as he's talking,
the circle gets bigger, bigger, bigger.
And had a little pointy beard
and horns,
and claws.
The demon's in here.
And it still tries to get out.
But I won't let it.
I mean, he was completely different
when he's talking about that demon.
So it was a good time to confront him
with the glaring issues.
Do you remember having sex with her?
No.
-That's the thing, Dennis. We have to
-I don't see it. I
I'm looking. All right? I'm looking.
Or are you denying
that you had sex with her?
No, I'm not denying,
I'm just looking. And
-You can see her sat up in the bed.
-I can see her stomach.
Okay.
When I put the knife
So she obviously
didn't have any clothes on.
No, she had clothes on.
Well, she must not have had clothes on
here if you can see her stomach.
You beat the hell out of that girl.
No!
You beat the hell out of that girl.
And you stabbed the hell out of that girl.
I did not.
I only stabbed her one time.
How do you know?
-One time!
-If you were so
drunk, how do you know?
Because I can still see that in my mind.
-But you can't see anything else
-No, I can't.
So you don't know.
Kathleen had been stabbed in the chest.
Also in the back.
Her hands were tied
behind her back with a cord.
She had an electrical cord
tied around her neck.
She had been gagged.
There were a number of bruises
throughout her body
from pretty much head all the way down
through the abdominal area.
After hearing that, he completely changed.
He wouldn't look at me.
He didn't want to talk to me anymore.
He wouldn't face me.
And that was completely unlike him.
Very childlike in a way.
I didn't do that.
Well, you think about it,
and I'm gonna get you back downtown, okay?
I didn't do that.
Give me a couple minutes, Dennis.
I didn't
I didn't do that.
I didn't do that.
I've done it again.
I've done it again.
At that point into it,
I was satisfied with what I got from him
because I knew it was going to be hard
for him to overcome
that confession in court.
I didn't do that.
You ready to go back?
-Yeah.
-All right.
You okay?
No.
Now that you know that
Denny committed a murder
in Virginia, do you have any
concerns about Aundria?
I don't know what to believe right now.
I really don't.
Do you believe us
that we tell you that he did this?
Or do you still hope in your heart
that he didn't?
There's always that hope.
There's always that hope
that Aundria's not dead.
I know.
Dennis Bowman's known criminal history
and the fact his daughter's missing
and he is the one to report her missing.
He definitely is top of the list
as far as a person of interest.
Also in our mind then,
the woman who's lived with him
for those 30 years
that Aundria has been missing.
The question is,
if there is anything to know,
does she know it?
There is a significant
portion of this story,
which is really about Brenda.
Hello,
this is a prepaid call from
Dennis Bowman.
To accept this call, press zero.
Hey, did you get something today?
You shouldn't have.
You made me cry.
Made me cry when I ordered it.
His only lifeline
to anybody in the world was Brenda.
He has nobody else.
We should have done something
when you got out the first time.
We should've gone to counseling.
We should've gotten to
the bottom of everything.
She was a devoted wife
and stuck by him and believed in him
that he could be better
and would be better.
I love you.
I love you too.
Even though I damn you at times.
And I don't blame you a bit,
sweetie. I should be home. I'm not.
We were kind of monitoring
the phone calls they would have.
It became clear
that he was still seeking her favor.
He still loved her.
He hoped that Brenda still loved him.
I love you.
Forty years ago,
you should've thought of that.
Forty years ago,
I was going nuts though.
Forty years ago, I wish to hell
you never would have went to Virginia.
Yeah, me too.
That just blows my mind. Blows my mind.
What kind of person
What kind of woman stays with that?
Thinking about Brenda
just lights me on fire more than Dennis.
You know, I blame her just as much.
I really do.
She had plenty of time
to think it through,
and she didn't care about anybody
but herself and Dennis.
So she deserves my wrath.
You don't want to believe that
of the person you married and you loved
and you want to spend
the rest of your life with.
But when you have this proof
that he's done these things,
how can you just not hear it?
Even though Dennis
is arrested for a brutal homicide
that took place in Virginia,
still our goal in Michigan
is to find Aundria.
We did know that Dennis wanted
to be able to stay in Michigan.
We knew that
he was gonna be extradited to Virginia.
That's when we came up
with the plan, with the ruse.
Virginia's gonna be impossible
for an actual visit.
I know.
Sue asked me if I was gonna pack up
and go live in Virginia for a while.
I said, "No, I can't do that."
Brenda is here in Michigan.
So if, in his mind, he knows he's gonna
spend the rest of his life in prison,
then where would he rather
spend that time?
And we theorized that
he'd rather spend that time in Michigan,
so that Brenda could drive to visit him.
We decided
to make a tentative offer to Dennis Bowman
if he agreed to be honest about Aundria,
that we would consider
allowing him to stay in Michigan.
Here's what
I could do
and I've already got permission to do.
Is if that, if I know where Aundria is
and I can find Aundria,
and I can have closure for Brenda,
and for you,
I can keep you here in Michigan.
I can keep you closer
to Brenda and Vanessa.
There's nothing I can do
about that though.
He was difficult.
He was stubborn
because he had a support group
in his corner.
Brenda Bowman was supporting of him.
His daughter was supporting of him.
Well, it'd be nice to keep you in state,
but you're not gonna admit
to something you didn't do.
I keep telling 'em. I keep telling 'em.
And he said, "Well,
you know there's been accidents."
No!
I said, I told him yesterday, I said,
"You don't kill family. You don't."
I said, "You get mad at 'em.
You scream at 'em."
"Sometimes you fight with 'em."
I said, "But you don't kill 'em."
And they said,
"Well, you don't kill anybody."
Jesus.
They have no idea
what real family is, I think.
Oh! They've completely
dug huge holes all through Shadow's area.
Yeah so all right.
So they dug up the backyard?
All throughout the backyard.
Oh, geez.
I don't know what they're looking for.
I really don't.
When the Norfolk Police
Department came to arrest Mr. Bowman
on the Kathleen Doyle homicide,
we assisted them
with a search of the property
with ground-penetrating radar
and the cadaver dogs.
Not only were we looking for evidence
in the Kathleen Doyle case,
but we were also looking for any remnants
or remains of Aundria on his property.
This is this really strange
feeling I can't hardly describe,
like sad and sick to my stomach
and you know,
"You mean you haven't gotten her
out of the ground yet?"
I was sure of myself.
I was sure that they were gonna find
what I told them they were gonna find.
But that was not successful.
We found nothing.
We had been
putting pressure on Dennis about Aundria.
I do not know where my daughter is.
I keep telling you this,
and you keep coming back to,
"Well, you know,
maybe there was an accident,
or maybe you lost your temper or"
You don't lose your temper
with your kid to kill 'em.
You don't!
He was having to spin
his own tale.
So I knew that at some point,
he was going to start bargaining
about Alexis.
And all of a sudden,
Dennis had expressed
that he wanted to meet with Brenda.
And that's a very unique ask,
so we got approval
from the sheriff's department
to have a meeting
between Dennis and Brenda
that was supervised
by myself and Detective Haverdink.
When Dennis was brought out
back into the interview room,
I met him in the hallway.
And the first thing he said is,
"I hope you have your cameras rolling."
Hi, baby.
This is special. They don't do this.
And the only reason they did
Honey,
I've done some stuff
that I'm really ashamed of.
Honest to God.
Aundria's dead.
She's been dead from the start.
I came home that day
with the baby, and the baby was sleeping.
And I took the baby in the living room
and laid her on the couch.
And I went up to the top of the stairs.
Aundria was coming out of our bedroom.
And I said, "What are you doing?"
And she said she was leaving.
We got into an argument.
And I said, "No, you're not leaving.
You're not going anywhere."
And she said, "Well, I'll just
tell the counselors again
that you molested me."
And I said, "No, you won't."
And I hit her.
She fell backwards
down the stairwell.
No! No!
Don't admit to something you didn't do!
I ran down the stairs.
And I checked,
and she didn't have a pulse.
And she wasn't breathing.
And she had a big
It just didn't feel right, her neck.
Her neck was just bad.
And her head rolled over,
and she just stared,
like doll eyes going into nowhere.
She was gone.
I couldn't lose you.
And Vanessa. She was only 14 months old.
And I didn't know what to do.
'Cause I knew if I called
and told them anything
that they'd put me back in prison.
I wrapped her in a blanket
and then took her out
and hid her body in the barn.
And I called the police
and said she was missing.
She laid out there for a couple of days.
And I found a cardboard barrel.
And I tried to stick her body
in the barrel.
It wouldn't fit.
Honey, in order to make it fit,
I had to cut her legs off.
And then, maybe a day or two,
when the neighbors
set their garbage cans out,
I rolled the barrel down
and set it next to them.
And the next morning she was gone.
Thirty-somethin' years.
Yes.
Thirty-one years.
As long as I didn't tell you
you had hope.
And I'm sorry for deceiving you.
And I know what your fear was.
But it was our daughter.
You should've got her help.
I've defended you so much against Cathy.
I know.
Oh my God.
I can't even get close to thinking about
what he did to my daughter.
I mean, the reality of it
is just pretty harsh, pretty harsh.
But his story, it's all bullshit.
Everything he said is bullshit.
I don't believe that that
14-year-old girl fell down the stairs.
It became more and more her fault.
I didn't hear any of this was his fault.
If anything,
he threw my daughter down the stairs.
He chopped her up. Chopping.
I'm gonna tell you he's a fucking coward.
That's what a coward would do.
All this time searching for her,
putting up flyers, you knew that was
I knew that was BS.
And you said the money
Was missing.
I burned the bag and her coat
that was laying there.
And I believe what happened was
I never checked in the bag.
The money might've been there.
I might've burned it.
I don't know. But it was gone.
When did you wind up
burning the bag?
After I picked her up
and carried her outside.
Before you called the police?
Yes.
It was probably still burning
in the barrel when he got there.
They had a warrant out for her.
She was the suspect,
and Dennis was the victim
because he claimed
she stole money from him.
I'm just
You know. You can't imagine
the anger that brings up in me.
And then when somebody said
they saw her in Holland,
I didn't tell them that.
And somebody else said,
"Oh we saw her down in Indiana."
"She was at a bar."
What did you think of that?
Good.
'Cause it took the heat off me.
We knew
that in order for Dennis to have
a higher likelihood
of being charged and convicted,
it would be very beneficial
to have Aundria's remains.
And we knew
our window of time was shrinking
because he was gonna be heading off
to Virginia to answer to those charges.
Just because she broke her neck didn't,
that doesn't mean I didn't love her.
all right?
Oh, he didn't have me fooled.
I don't think he had anybody fooled.
Brenda. He had Brenda fooled.
I do believe
that she still loves Dennis,
and that's somewhat hard to understand
because of what he's admitted to doing.
No one knows the truth but you.
- Mm-hmm.
- And God.
And God.
Brenda is a staunch supporter
of her husband.
On the phone, she said,
"The only thing that matters
is our love for each other."
I got a big song and dance
from Sue.
"We just can't wrap our minds around
how hurt and"
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She worded it like
you chopped Aundria up when she was alive.
- Yeah, I'm sure she did.
- That's the way she worded it.
And I started writing back
a couple of times,
"You don't know half the truth
of what you think you know."
That's what gets Craig and I.
You can't even think about Aundria
and what she went through?
Or Kathleen?
Are you not appalled?
Like, how did she miss it?
You know, it's like right in your face.
How'd you miss it?
You're not innocent in this.
Don't try to play it.
You're not a victim.
You can't tell me that woman
didn't know what the hell was going on.
After seeing him
come across that table at her like that,
he that's not
the first time that happened.
And for her to sit there
and not do a damn thing about it.
Nah, she she needs to go too.
She needs to be sitting right in prison
as an accomplice.
I don't understand
how she's not as culpable as he is.
I can only tell you
what I was told that day
and have believed in for all these years.
I got my Philippians 4:13 in one corner.
And I got Isaiah 41:10 at the bottom.
Yep.
You're not gonna take my love
away from me or anything or my God.
And this is the way I am.
If you don't like it, oh well!
I think Dennis
was a master manipulator.
The best lie is one that's mostly true,
all right?
And I think he spun every story,
and for whatever reason,
Brenda believed it.
Oh, she was just a pawn in the marriage.
Just look at some of the things he did.
He covered it up well.
And he worked hard at doing it, evidently.
I mean, he was
smarter than we gave him credit for.
The whole story about him
putting her out with the neighbor's trash
It's possible,
but it just seemed too risky.
And so now we're intercepting letters
he's writing out to Brenda
that are contradicting some of the things
Dennis told us in his confession.
"December 12th, 2019."
"Dearest Love."
"I want you to know something
between you and me, just us."
"Aundria did fall."
"She did break her neck,
and I did hide her body,
but I did not throw her body
in the trash."
"I placed her body in a proper grave
next to a private graveyard."
"She was wearing jeans
and her favorite sweater."
"She has a gold necklace
with a heart and a cross on it."
"I wrapped her in a clean white sheet."
"Neat and tight like a mummy."
"I also wrapped her hands and feet
with a red ribbon."
"She liked that color."
"Then I placed her in
a new six-foot by eight-foot silver tarp,
sprinkled cedar chips,
cloves, and pieces of cinnamon
between her and the tarp,
and then filled in the grave,
watered down the dirt."
"Two weeks later,
you could almost see where she was."
"Two months later, you couldn't."
"In 30 years,
I have passed her more than 100 times."
"I'm sure she's with God."
"Now, you say you don't know the truth."
"The truth is I love you. I love Vanessa."
"And I loved Aundria."
"You've known me for 50 years,
and you say you don't know me anymore?"
"Well, then,
you'll have to make up your own mind."
"I will never forget you."
"I have you forever carved on my heart."
"Denny."
And we took these letters seriously too.
I mean, we we went and searched
the perimeters of graveyards in the area
with ground-penetrating radar
and cadaver dogs,
and we've treated every single letter
like maybe he's telling the truth now.
You know that
we've listened to calls and letters.
Yep, and letters.
How many stories are we up to?
Probably three or four.
Yeah, so which one's true?
Which one's the truth?
That's the one you gotta figure out.
You're the one person
that knows where she's at.
That's right.
And I'm the one person that's gonna
keep that for the rest of my life.
I think for him, it was a game.
What's he going to lose?
Tell them a little this,
tell them a little that.
Gets him out of the cell.
He's not going to spill his guts
right away.
He's criminally savvy enough to know
that he can let this out in dribbles
and just play them.
Just play them.
But the cops didn't swallow it.
Thank goodness, huh?
And so the police used Brenda
to get to Bowman.
We're aware that
you told your wife another story.
The problem that's created now, Dennis,
because of that is
it's kind of wrapped her up into this,
and she doesn't need to be. Okay?
That's a problem for Brenda.
And I know you don't wanna have
a problem for your wife.
You say you care about Brenda,
but look who you're protecting.
I'm not gonna tell you
where my daughter's buried.
So part
of the psychological investigation
now becomes to try to talk to
and to use his wife Brenda
against Dennis Bowman.
And so we met with her at her house.
We told her, "You got to let Dennis know
that he owes you this."
"He's taken her for this long.
He owes you this."
This is a call from
Dennis.
an inmate at
Allegan County Correction Center.
This call is subject
to recording and monitoring.
You may not want to listen
to what I have to say, but
Go ahead. Say it.
The prosecutor here
still will not charge without her body.
All right.
If it came to the time that you
decide to tell me what I need to know,
you would stay in Michigan for life,
which would enable us visits.
That's not guaranteed,
but I have to hang on
to any thread I can have.
She still does not have
a resolution of Aundria.
She, from our standpoint,
has to be questioning
her own thoughts in her mind.
This is a call from
Dennis.
This call is subject to
recording and monitoring.
I can't pull myself together.
I have dreams of it.
Dreams of what?
Aundria!
You! Everything!
I still want closure
with knowing where she is.
I want our baby girl home with me
in a very pretty urn.
Then I can finally realize
that she's home where she belongs
after all the years she's been gone.
It's clear that
he's trying to give Brenda a story
that is marginally acceptable to her.
I buried her in a real grave
So I live like this
the rest of my life?
You don't have to live
like nothing the rest of your life.
If we can't get past this
I can't!
I can't get it totally past!
I tried to explain that to you!
The only help we'll get
from now on is from God.
The whole thing is illogical
and psychotic.
But in his mind,
he was still trying to control her.
And so we wanted Brenda
to fight Dennis back.
I don't care anymore, Denny,
one way or another,
whatever happened,
I will still love you no matter what.
There's a possibility we could have
somewhat of a life here in Michigan.
I wanna hear you say
you believe there's hope.
It's all we got.
I believe you, honey.
I'm beginning to believe Dennis is
never gonna admit where her body is.
You know, I was kind of at my wit's end.
After a long day, Bryan and I,
we go to the brewery there in Grand Rapids
and have a couple of beers,
and Todd Workman calls Bryan
and says, "Hey."
"Brenda just had a jail call with Dennis.
You guys need to listen to it."
I will tell you exactly
where Aundria is.
She's very close.
I hope so.
Oh, she is.
Brenda,
Aundria is buried in our backyard.
We didn't live here! We weren't
even We didn't even know this place.
Brenda, she's there.
Where we were at the old house,
I had the barrel buried.
When we found out we were moving,
I took the barrel over to our house.
I dug the hole,
and I put the barrel in it, all right?
Then, I covered it all up.
She's been right there
the whole time.
Now you know.
It was bitterly cold.
Our anthropology unit came to the scene.
And then we just slowly started
scaling back earth away from the area.
But we still don't know
if this is the right information
or just another fairy tale of Dennis's.
Metta told me.
"They're back out there."
"And now they got the bulldozer
and the tent."
Finally, they're exactly where she's at.
At some point,
the claw of the bucket pulled up
the ring of a barrel.
And we stopped.
Time seemed
to have slowed down so much.
The anthropologists went into the hole
with their toothbrushes
and small, little picks and shovels
just so that they didn't miss anything.
And sure enough,
the next scoop,
the anthropologists had stopped.
There's a bone right there.
Oh God.
It was sad
we took a child
out of the ground
that had been there for 30 years.
It was sad that Brenda,
who's inside the home
at the time that we're doing this,
is about to learn that it was true,
what Dennis had just said,
and that her daughter was buried
in the backyard.
They weren't saying exactly
that it was Aundria.
They just said, "We found remains."
And after I stood over
for a few minutes.
I turned and
Todd walked me back to the house.
And all I could say to him is,
"He didn't lie to me this time."
"He didn't lie, Todd."
Her remains were found
within four different bags
inside the remnants of that barrel.
And when we found her,
she was found in a trash bag of diapers.
Probably to mask the smell.
That's who Dennis Bowman is.
There was
a Peppermint Pattie candy wrapper
in the trash with her,
and it had the date 1989 on it.
So I think
that really became clear to us
when you when you saw that date of 1989,
that she hadn't been missing.
She hadn't run away.
She'd been in that barrel
since that day in March.
How was the letter that you wrote
so convincing about the cemetery and
That was more bullshit for them,
and I thought it'd make you feel better.
But you haven't felt better.
You've only been bitching about
how you wanted her right there with ya
in a can, sittin' on a shelf.
I thought maybe
if you thought she was buried decently,
properly, with respect,
then maybe you'd say,
"Okay, that was enough."
But no.
I don't want you mad.
At least you'll have her
in a tin jar on a shelf.
So now here I am.
Now you know
I'm a rotten, stinkin' son of a bitch.
Nothing's changed.
I still love you.
You have one minute remaining
for this call.
Denny! Did you hear me?
Yes, I heard you.
It's gonna be over, baby.
Bye-bye.
Now this is the autopsy report, huh?
We needed confirmation
that it was truly Aundria.
The only way to do that was through DNA.
So we had that DNA sample from Cathy.
"Examination conducted."
"The complete coordinates
between the samples
confirms a maternal
daughter-mother relationship," Jesus
"between the skeletal remains
and Catherine Terkanian."
I got her out of the ground.
I got her bones.
It's like she's been screaming
from that backyard for years.
For Cathy
to have this suspicion
all along that Dennis is responsible
and that Aundria is buried in the backyard
and that both those turned out to be true
is almost unexplainable.
That was her mother's instinct.
She's been saying
that exact spot for years.
You know, I was flabbergasted
that that's where she turned out to be.
Now, did it sound crazy at the time?
Yeah, it surely did. But she was right.
Apparently it's not impossible,
but very improbable I would say.
Brenda, there are some other things
that Denny has admitted to us
that he'd done in the past.
Would you like to hear about those?
Evidently, he didn't want me
to hear about 'em otherwise.
I'm gonna tell you
'cause I think you deserve to know.
He said that
when he was stationed out in San Diego
before you guys were married,
that he sexually assaulted a woman.
And then he said that
very shortly after you two were married
that he had sexually assaulted two women
out in San Diego.
And then, in the early '80s,
that he had sexually assaulted a woman
up in a trailer park.
I don't know that man.
I don't know that man.
When I sat there
and told them that morning
that the man they were talking about,
I had no idea who he was,
I didn't realize
I'd actually be saying how true that was.
I'm sorry.
We had briefly talked
before about the Metta girl
that was abducted
from the Windmill gas station
and was brought down
to Silver Creek Campground.
No, I don't know anything about that.
He's the one that did it,
but they didn't have the evidence or proof
to show that he did,
but he did.
He did a lot of damage
in our sweet little town.
And I know there's
other potential victims of Dennis Bowman
that might be out there.
So that's all the dark stuff
in your closet?
That's all the dark stuff in my closet.
He is a serial violent sexual offender.
So you're left with that nagging,
disturbing thing that sticks in your craw.
It is hard to imagine
that all those actions
against Kathleen Doyle
were taken by someone
who had never taken a life before.
We know it didn't start
with Kathleen in 1980.
If he's admitting
numerous acts of violence upon women
to include at least two homicides,
what are the ones we don't know?
Who knows the things that he's done?
He's a monster.
The word needs to get out
because there's more victims out there.
I want to help solve other crimes.
That's that's what my heart's telling me.
Maybe I'm filled with the spirit
of every woman he raped,
every woman he killed,
every child he abused.
Maybe I'm full of the spirit
of all those people,
and that makes me his worst nightmare.
Dennis will be sentenced today,
second-degree murder.
It's really first-degree murder,
but, you know,
I'm gonna be all right with it.
Second-degree murder of my child.
And that he did this to her enrages me.
But I you know,
it's a different kind of rage.
And maybe it's some peacefulness
I'm feeling for Alexis, you know?
Maybe it's that.
Metta, let's do this.
The People are ready, your honor.
Aundria was in that burial site
for 30 years,
unable to tell anyone
what truly had happened to her.
The defendant took her life
and hid her body to save his own.
In this case, Aundria lost
not only her voice, but her life.
She would never enjoy growing up
and growing old,
surrounded by family and friends
who did indeed love her.
I've been in this business
for 40 years almost.
And I've prosecuted cold case murders.
I don't think I've ever read anything
this disturbing.
I believe a sentence guideline
that keeps you away from our community
of a minimum of 35 years to 50 years
is more appropriate in this case.
And that is this Court's order.
The last thing
our team wanted to do
was to allow him to have
that last measure of control
by staying in the prison
he wanted to stay in
because it was convenient for him.
And I will do everything in my power
to make sure Dennis Bowman
doesn't control one damn thing.
Today marks the sentence
of Dennis Lee Bowman
for the 1989 murder and dismemberment
of his 14-year-old adopted daughter
Aundria Michelle Bowman.
Mr. Bowman will be returned to Virginia
to complete his life sentences.
So we made the decision as a team
that we would not allow him
to have that control,
and we would send him back to Virginia
for the murder of Kathleen Doyle.
He fell for it like a the fool he is.
Except for the fact
that he took her from us,
he's superfluous to her story.
Kathleen's story is about her life.
She was our girl.
She belonged to us.
And that's what I feel.
Every single day of my life,
I touch her photo and say, "I love you."
We would buy each other lilacs
as presents.
It was our flower.
And every time the lilacs bloom in spring,
I tell her,
"Kathleen, the lilacs are out."
And I smell the blooms,
and I tell her how much I miss her.
And do you know
something very odd happened?
After they had found this person
who'd murdered Kathleen,
which was in the autumn,
my lilac bush bloomed,
which is very unusual.
It usually only blooms in the spring.
Don't let the person
who did this awful thing
be the person everybody remembers.
Let them remember
the young women who have died.
Todd, thank you for everything.
It was a team effort.
Thank you.
- Can we have a word?
- Yes.
Brenda has the remains.
She had the remains cremated.
And she wants to give you
half of Aundria's body.
I can't deal with this.
I can't deal
with this right now.
What'd she give me,
the top half or the bottom half?
How dare her!
We have those here today
to give to you,
if you want to accept them.
Of course I do.
My little girl is right here, you guys.
Right here.
She knows the monster is gone.
Give you half a guess what this is.
- No.
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Half of her.
"I am sharing equally with you
because you were her mother first."
"I pray God can help you find some peace
with all this. Brenda."
All that is is just chopping her up more.
I'm just
I'm just beyond pissed off about that.
I just can't believe Brenda would
take her body and split it up again.
And I want all of her ashes back.
And then maybe that maternal piece
of me will be at peace.
How's she gonna fight it?
Any judge in the world
would turn around and say,
"You're lucky you're getting
what you're getting,
cause she's sharing with you."
Yeah, well,
remember, she threw her away.
I'm so angry.
I'm so freaking angry.
I mean, I'm relieved, but I'm still angry.
I thought the angry would go away.
Brenda has the audacity
to call herself my daughter's mother.
I don't know if Alexis was
left-handed or right-handed.
I don't know what her voice sounded like.
I never heard her voice.
She never said, "I love you, Mommy."
She never called me Mommy,
but I am her mommy
all the way to the bone.
I feel a little haunted by Alexis.
She's not completely gone.
You know. I mean, I'm as close
as you're gonna get to her spirit.
I almost became her.
A more mature, more angry her.
It's like walking into a fire,
and that transformed me.
It's a very intense, hot,
burning-the-flesh-off-of-me fire
that nobody can see, that only I can feel.
But I think I need to go through this.
I need to find the other side of the fire.
I need to find the other side of the fire.