Maryland police find remains in freezer/Jasmine 9 & Minnet Bowman 7

[MuffyBee]

Sep 29, 1:28 PM EDT

Maryland police find remains in freezer
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LUSBY, Md. (AP) -- Maryland police say they have found human remains that could be those of two children in a home freezer.

Calvert County authorities say they discovered the remains Saturday while they were investigating a report of a runaway, abused child in Lusby, about 50 miles southeast of Washington, D.C.

Police say a 43-year-old woman who says the girls were her adopted daughters has been arrested. Renee Bowman told deputies that the remains had been frozen for at least seven months.

The sheriff's office says investigators also found the 7-year-old girl runaway. Police say she escaped the home by jumping out the window. Investigators say Bowman told them she beat the girl. She is charged with child abuse and is being held without bond.

No telephone listing was available for Bowman in Lusby.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FROZEN_CORPSES?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

I'm glad the seven year old girl jumped out the window and escaped.  It probably saved her life! 

[Nut44x4]

Dec 17, 2008 1:16 pm US/Eastern
Girls Found In Freezer Died Of Asphyxiation

Jasmine Nicole Bowman and Minnet C. Bowman died of asphyxiation.

Montgomery County police say two Maryland girls whose remains were found in a freezer both died of asphyxiation.

Calvert County sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Jasmine Nicole Bowman and Minnet C. Bowman in September while investigating an abuse complaint regarding a third, surviving child.

The girls' mother, Renee Bowman, has been indicted on attempted murder charges in the abuse of the surviving daughter.
http://wjz.com/local/died.asphyxiation.freezer.2.889528.html

[Nut44x4]

Warrant to be served in freezer murders
March 30, 2009 - 10:05am
ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The mother of two murdered girls found in a Calvert County freezer will likely be be served with murder charges this week.
In January, WTOP first told you that Renee Bowman would be charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of her adopted daughters, Jasmine Nicole Bowman and Minnet Cecila Bowman.

The warrant charges Renee Bowman with killing the girls in May 2006 in Montgomery County. The girls died of asphyxiation. Detectives believe the murders occurred in a home the family leased in Aspen Hill. WTOP reported last October that a cadaver dog indicated something occurred at the home on Vandalia Drive.

Investigators say Bowman kept the girls in the freezer as she moved from Montgomery County to Charles County to Calvert County.

Calvert County deputies found the bodies of the 9-year-old and 11-year-old in a basement freezer Sept. 27, 2007 when they arrested Renee Bowman on charges of beating another adopted daughter. The 7-year-old child had been found wandering her neighborhood.

The warrant charges Bowman with first-degree murder, two counts of child abuse resulting in death and one count of child abuse that relates to the youngest girl.

Before she is tried in Montgomery County, she will be tried in Calvert for attempted murder and related charges.

http://www.wtop.com/index.php?nid=598&sid=1636403

[Nut44x4]

Bowman was indicted on attempted first- and second-degree murder, assault and child abuse in Calvert County. Her jury trial on those charges is scheduled to begin on Sept. 28.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-frozen-bodies-0330,0,7143627.story

[SuzieQ]

Mom of girls found in freezer heads to court
July 2, 2009 - 2:33pm 


ROCKVILLE, Md. - The mother whose two adopted daughters were found dead in a freezer makes her first appearance in a Montgomery County courtroom Thursday.

Court documents say the bodies of the two girls -- Jasmine Nicole Bowman and Minnet Cecila Bowman -- found in Renee Bowman's freezer had signs of abuse before they were killed.

Bowman will be arraigned Thursday.

Police and prosecutors say one child had broken bones in her hand and arms. The other had cuts on her scalp.

Bowman has been indicted on murder charges in Montgomery County. She also faces attempted murder and abuse charges in Calvert County, in connection with her surviving daughter.

The 7-year-old and 9-year-old were found in a basement freezer in Calvert County on Sept. 27, 2008.

(Copyright 2009 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1709316

[Sister]

SQ, do you know if her surviving daughter was also adopted and where she is now?  How horrifying.  My prayers to this little girl and may her sister be at peace with the Lord.

[Nut44x4]

Thursday, July 2, 2009
Woman charged in daughters' deaths to be extradited
Calvert County woman makes first appearance in court, will be moved to Montgomery
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Calvert County woman accused of murdering her two daughters when they lived in Aspen Hill and storing their bodies in a freezer for more than two years is scheduled to be extradited to a Montgomery County prison later this month.

Renee D. Bowman, 43, of Lusby, made her first appearance in Montgomery County Circuit Court this afternoon for an arraignment hearing. Looking dazed and disheveled, she wore an orange prison jumpsuit and did not speak as three attorneys discussed her case.

Montgomery County Chief Public Defender Paul B. DeWolfe Jr., who is representing Bowman, told Judge John W. Debelius III he wanted Bowman transferred to a county prison after a July 10 motions hearing in Calvert County so he can have access to her before the case goes to trial. He said he had no objections to holding Bowman without bond.

Debelius called the request "reasonable" and said he saw no problem in facilitating the transfer.

Deputy State's Attorney John Maloney said he and Montgomery County State's Attorney John J. McCarthy will discuss with DeWolfe whether he plans to use an insanity defense.

Bowman was indicted by a Montgomery County grand jury last month on two counts of murder, one count of theft and three counts of first-degree child abuse.

She also faces first-and second-degree attempted murder charges and child abuse charges resulting from an investigation into the condition of her surviving daughter in Calvert County. Her trial there is scheduled for Sept. 28.

The bodies of Jasmine Bowman, who was 7, and Minnet Bowman, who was 9, were found in a basement freezer Sept. 27 when the Calvert County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant on Bowman's home after a third daughter, then 7, was found wandering around the neighborhood.

The child had jumped 10 feet from a second-floor window after being left home alone and locked in her room, according to charging documents filed Wednesday in Montgomery Circuit Court. She said she feared Bowman was "going to kill her," the documents state.

She told detectives that she and her sisters were locked in their room during the day and forced to go to the bathroom in a bucket, the charging documents state. Bowman also "beat and choked" her and her sisters while living in Aspen Hill, the girl told police.

The girl, whose body police said was covered with cuts and open sores, is being cared for by the Calvert County Department of Social Services.

Bowman adopted all three children in Washington, D.C., and continued to collect remittances from an adoption agency even after the two older girls were dead, McCarthy said.

Although Bowman lived in Prince George's and Charles counties and Washington, D.C., detectives determined that the girls died when the family lived in a rental home on Vandalia Court in Aspen Hill. Bowman lived in the house from 2005 to November 2007, Montgomery County police said.

After Bowman was arrested in Calvert County, Montgomery County police searched the house and yard of the Aspen Hill home where she had lived.

Detectives also interviewed a man who was Bowman's live-in boyfriend at the time, according to the charging documents. He told police that Minnet Bowman went missing just after Mother's Day 2006 and Jasmine Bowman went missing about a month later. When he asked where the girls had gone, Bowman told him they were living in another state with a friend, the charging documents state.

The state Medical Examiner's Office in Baltimore determined in December that the two girls died of asphyxiation. The exam also revealed that Jasmine Bowman had lacerations to her scalp and Minnet Bowman had suffered broken bones in her hand and arms before her death, the charging documents state.

McCarthy called the case "extremely sad" as he stood outside the courthouse after the hearing. He said another hearing to discuss motions and trial dates is scheduled for July 31, but he and Maloney hope to meet with DeWolfe as early as next week.

He said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment on the information contained in the charging documents, but called the young girls "vulnerable" and "helpless."

"I think everybody in the criminal justice system has a great deal of sympathy and maybe [by] taking a little bit of responsibility at all levels we can make sure these things don't happen again," he said.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/07022009/montnew173005_32538.shtml

[Nut44x4]

Md. woman gets 25 years for abusing her daughter
Updated: Jan 08, 2010 5:51 PM EST

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. (AP) - A Maryland woman accused of killing two of her adopted daughters and keeping their bodies in a freezer has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for abusing a third daughter.
The girl was 7 when she was found wandering around her neighborhood in a bloodstained nightshirt after escaping through a window. In court Friday, she read a statement in a soft voice in which she said people "should never do things to a little girl" that 44-four-year-old Renee Bowman did to her.

Judge Marjorie L. Clagett sentenced Bowman to the maximum sentence allowed because of the horrific nature of the crime.

Bowman pleaded guilty in September to first-degree child abuse. She has a separate trial scheduled for February in Montgomery County on murder charges.

http://www.kltv.com/global/story.asp?s=11792055

[Nut44x4]

Mom convicted of killing kids found in freezer
February 22, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A Maryland woman was convicted Monday of murdering two of her adopted daughters, whose bodies were found in a freezer in the woman's home.

Renee Bowman, 44, was found guilty of two first-degree murder charges in the deaths of the young girls. Their bodies were found in a freezer in her Lusby home in September 2008.

Bowman's lawyer argued the killings weren't premeditated and suggested jurors should convict her of lesser second-degree murder charges. However, prosecutors argued Bowman deliberately smothered the children.

She had already pleaded guilty in Calvert County to abusing the surviving girl, also adopted, and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in that case.

Authorities say the older girls, Jasmine and Minnet, were killed in Rockville more than three years ago, but they don't know exactly when. Minnet would have been 12 now, and Jasmine would have turned 11 on Tuesday.

Bowman moved from Rockville to Charles County and later to Lusby. Prosecutors say she brought a large freezer containing the bodies of Jasmine and Minnet with her each time she moved.

The 9-year-old surviving daughter, clutching a Valentine's Day teddy bear, testified last week against Bowman, whom she called her "ex-mother." When she was 7, the girl was found half-naked and covered in blood after escaping from the Bowman home. Afterward, authorities found the frozen bodies.

The girl said she and her sisters were kept in a locked room of their Rockville home.

"There was a bucket where we went to the bathroom because we weren't allowed out of the room," she said.

The girl said Bowman repeatedly beat her and her sisters with a baseball bat and a shoe.

Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy asked her on what part of her body she was beaten the worst. Asked to demonstrate on the bear, she pointed to its backside and its crotch.

When McCarthy asked who hit her, she replied, "ex-mother," and never looked at Bowman, who was seated a few yards away.

Bowman continued to receive subsidies for all three children from the District of Columbia, where the girls were adopted. The subsidies are given to parents who adopt special-needs children from foster care.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2063436,frozen-bodies-children-mom-022210.article

[Sister]

what a sad word for a child to use -- "ex-mother"
this angers me beyond words.

[MuffyBee]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/22/md-woman-gets-life-killing-freezing-girls/
Woman gets life for killing, freezing girls
By Sarah Karush ASSOCIATED PRESS
(Photos at link in article)

A Maryland woman convicted of killing her two adopted daughters and storing their bodies in a home freezer was sentenced Monday to life without parole.

Renee Bowman, 44, was convicted last month of two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree child abuse. A third adopted daughter survived the abuse.

"You sentenced these two young innocent children in the dawn of their lives to a death chamber, and for you that option is not available," Montgomery County Circuit Judge Michael J. Algeo told Bowman before handing down the maximum sentence -- two consecutive life terms plus 75 years in prison for the abuse. The crimes are not eligible for the death penalty in Maryland.

Bowman showed no emotion during the hearing.

"I am very sorry for the abuse of the girls," Bowman told the judge in an even voice. "It haunts me. It haunts me every day."

Bowman's lawyers maintain that she did not kill the girls, though they acknowledge she is guilty of abusing them. Public defender Alan Drew said the defense would appeal the murder convictions, but he declined to comment further.

Bowman kept the two young girls' bodies on ice for months while she continued to collect subsidies paid to parents who adopt special-needs children in the District of Columbia. She received a total of about $150,000 after the adoptions.

In January, Bowman was sentenced in Calvert County to 25 years in prison for abusing her surviving daughter. That girl escaped from Bowman's home in September 2008 and was found wandering the neighborhood. Authorities searched Bowman's home and found the bodies in the freezer.

The survivor, now 9 and living with new foster parents, testified at the trial about the abuse she and her sisters endured -- being beaten with a baseball bat and shoes and choked until they lost consciousness.

The sisters who died, Minnet and Jasmine Bowman, were both younger than 10, though authorities were never able to determine exactly when they were killed. Nobody knew they were missing, and there are no records the children were ever enrolled in school.

Prosecutors said Bowman killed them while the family was living in Rockville and took the freezer with her when the family moved first to Charles County and later to Lusby in Calvert County.