Maryland's Bizarre Case of the Bodies in the Freezer

October 23, 2008

"My mother beats me-she just beats me to death," the 7-year-old girl said to a neighbor as she walked down a Lusby, Maryland street near her home on Friday evening, September 26, 2008. 

The girl, adorned in pigtails held in place by pink barrettes, had a number of bruises and cuts on her body that were visible to the neighbor who had called her over to his front yard.  She was wearing only a T-shirt, which was covered with blood and feces.  She claimed that she had escaped from her house by jumping out of a second-story bedroom window, and had been going door-to-door throughout the somewhat secluded and wooded neighborhood seeking help from anyone when she encountered the Good Samaritan.  She told him that she had not eaten for days, and he subsequently ordered a pizza for her. 

Her statement to the man, not to mention the visible signs of abuse that he had seen which included sores and abrasions in the area of her buttocks and thighs, prompted him to call 911 after providing the girl some clothes to wear. The girl also had bruises on her lips and hands, and there were abrasions on her neck that looked like ligature marks that may have been caused by a rope or similar item.  His brief encounter with the girl had been the catalyst that had launched the investigation that would, ultimately, lead to a tragic and horrific discovery inside the house where she had lived.

Lusby, Maryland is located approximately 50 miles southeast of Washington, D.C.

When the sheriff's deputies responded to the home of Renee D. Bowman, 43, formerly of Rockville, Maryland, located in the 200 block of Buckskin Trail, no one appeared to be at home.  However, Bowman showed up at the sheriff's office later that night looking for her daughter as investigators sought a search warrant for her home. She was informed that her daughter was being held in protective custody by the children's services division.

When deputies asked her about the girl's comments alleging the beatings she had sustained at the hands of her adoptive mother, Bowman admitted that she had beaten the girl because she had "lost her temper," according to Calvert County Detective Sgt. Michael Moore Jr.  She also said that she had locked the girl inside a bedroom while she made a trip to Washington, D.C.  During interviews with investigators, Bowman also stated that she had struck the child with a "hard-heeled shoe."  Bowman allegedly told Calvert County investigators that she was angry and stressed out over her daughter's mental capacity, which was why she had purportedly beaten the girl, and stated that she no longer wanted custody of her.  Investigators later learned that the girl was one of three girls that had been adopted by Bowman years earlier.

When the sheriff's department had obtained their warrant to search the house at about 2:30 a.m., they noted that it was dirty and in disarray and was also home to four cats and a dog.  It wasn't until they had reached the basement that they made the grim discovery that none of them would ever forget.  They found what appeared to be the bodies of two children, later determined to be young girls, frozen solid in a block of ice inside a large freezer.  Later, when detectives confronted Bowman with what they had found in the freezer, Bowman told them that they were the bodies of two other adopted daughters.  She said that she had kept their bodies stored in the freezer from the time of her relocation from Rockville to Lusby in February 2008.

Meredith Kercher Murder Update

October 09, 2008

Rudy Hermann Guede, 22, a suspect in the Meredith Kercher murder investigation, is the first person to stand trial in the headline grabbing Perugia, Italy case.  Guede, fearing that the other two suspects in the case, Amanda Knox, 21, and Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, have made a pact between themselves to set him up and pin the blame on him for Meredith's murder, has asked for a "fast-track" trial.  Guede's lawyers, Valter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, apparently agreed with their client in asking for such a trial which, according to Italian law, is held behind closed doors with the evidence presented in the form of documents for a single judge to review and decide the guilt or innocence of the defendant-without hearing testimony from witnesses.

"We feel the urgent need to have our trial heard independently of the other two suspects," Biscotti said.  "In recent weeks a lot of poison has been spread by the defense teams and we feel the necessity to find some form of serenity in a separate hearing.  That's why we have asked for a fast-track hearing, just for our client, and we want that hearing as quickly as possible.  At this hearing we will prove that our client has absolutely nothing to do with the tragic death of Meredith Kercher."

"We have studied the evidence and there is no link between him (Guede) and the weapon found and which is said to be compatible with the wounds on Meredith Kercher," Gentile added.  "It is up to the prosecution to prove that our client is guilty of murder and in this case there is no evidence to back that up...there is the real risk of an innocent man being convicted."

To recap the case, Meredith Kercher was a student at Leeds University in England who was participating in an exchange program at the University for Foreigners in Perugia when she was murdered.  She was found partially nude with her throat slashed in the bedroom of the small Perugia bungalow that she shared with Knox.  Investigators contend that Meredith was killed by the three suspects after they allegedly attempted to force her to take part in kinky sex games.  The police claim that DNA evidence shows that Knox and Sollecito were inside the bungalow at the time Meredith was murdered.  All three suspects have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, sexual violence and robbery.

Serial Killer Ronald James Ward, Jr. Sentenced for Murders in Three States

October 08, 2008

The string of killings that were eventually attributed to self-professed racist Ronald James Ward, Jr. began more than eight years ago in Arkansas.  Known as a drifter, as many serial killers are known, Ward crossed paths with 25-year-old Kristin Laurite on August 25, 2000 in the vicinity of Morrilton, Arkansas, just off Interstate 40 between Plumerville and Kenwood in the northwestern part of the state.  Laurite was traveling cross-country from Scotch Plains, New Jersey to California to begin a new teaching job.  She was driving a 1972 Volkswagen bus, and was traveling with her two dogs when she stopped at a rest area to call home with a progress report of her trip and to exercise her two dogs.  The rest area was the last time that anyone saw her alive.

The following day a man who stopped at the same rest area saw Laurite's dogs running around without any apparent supervision.  He called them over to him and, after noting that they were a long way from home from the information that was on their collars, called the number listed on their tags.  He had reached Kristin Laurite's mother.  A few hours later, after Laurite's frantic mother had notified law enforcement authorities, Laurite's two dogs led the cops to a pond located a few hundred yards from the rest area where they found Laurite's nude body.  Her body was bloody, particularly her upper body near her neck, and the officers could see apparent stab wounds in the area of her neck.  It was later determined that she had been sexually assaulted and had sustained 10 stab wounds to her neck.

Although Laurite's family placed billboards along several highways in Arkansas that depicted Laurite's smiling photograph and the question, "Do you know who killed me," the effort had not produced the desired results.  In the meantime Ward, along with his girlfriend, had fled to Corvallis, Montana, south of Missoula in the western part of the state, where they stayed at an RV park.  It was at the RV park where Ward met Craig Sheldon Petrich, 43.  Petrich, from nearby Hamilton, Montana, a small town located in the Bitterroot Valley, would become Ward's next victim.

According to official documents, Petrich was last seen on October 5, 2000, exiting the RV park with Ward.  According to The Missoulian newspaper, Ward purportedly admitted during an interview with a reporter for the newspaper that he and Petrich had been involved in a fight in which Ward had struck him with a rock.  He also allegedly admitted that he had shot Petrich three times with a single shot rifle.  Such a rifle only holds one round of ammunition, and must be reloaded for each shot fired-giving the shooter, it would seem, sufficient time to think about his actions before delivering the next shot and served to add a more chilling dimension to the case.  Petrich's body was found by hikers on October 15, 2000 in the Sapphire Mountains.  Before authorities could arrest Ward for Petrich's murder, Ward had fled the state.  Unbeknownst to Montana authorities, Ward ended up first in Merced, California, and later in Merced.

Ward bounced around between motels for a while, and was known to have resided at times at locations in Stanislaus County, where Modesto is located, and Merced County.  He eventually met 49-year-old Jackie Travis, a one-legged woman with a drug problem who had been living in a homeless shelter and reportedly was making progress with her addiction.  Travis had lost her leg in a traffic accident when she was much younger-it had been amputated below the knee, and had been replaced with a prosthetic limb.  Of course, the police in Merced and Merced County had no idea-yet-of Travis's killer's identity, and it would be years before they did.  Much later, in putting together Ward's timeline, police eventually believed that it was sometime during the transition that Travis had made between living in a homeless shelter and moving into an apartment in East Merced that Ward had appeared in her life, and that one of the common denominators that brought them into each other's lives had been drugs.

Barely two months after Ward left Montana, Jackie Travis ended up dead.  Travis's roommate found her body when she came home after noticing blood in several locations of the apartment.  It was lying on the bedroom floor, beneath a comforter.  Police later determined that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten, strangled and stabbed, and various symbols had been carved into her skin.  Detectives found Travis's prosthetic leg nearby on a mattress, and were able to obtain blood samples from it.  The artificial leg also had semen on it, causing some people to initially wonder whether Ward had masturbated on it during a sexual fantasy.