Mum exposes adoptive father of her child as daughter’s secret killer
A mother’s “gut instinct” about her missing daughter’s whereabouts finally solved a decades old cold case – and exposed her killer.
For almost 40 years, a woman who gave up her daughter for adoption when she was just 16 waited for a knock on her front door.
But despite hoping her child would eventually find her, Cathy Terkanian’s dreams were dashed when in she received a letter asking if she could give a DNA sample to the police who were trying to identify a body they had found.
That was how Cathy discovered her child Aundria Bowman, born Alexis Badger, went missing on March 11, 1989 when she was just 14-years-old.
While the body was not Aundria’s, it sparked a 10-year quest by the biological mother to find out what happened to her child after she was adopted by Dennis Bowman and his wife, Brenda.
However nothing could have prepared Cathy for the shocking and disturbing truth she would expose after her motherly instincts kicked in – eventually leading her to solve the cold case and locate her daughter’s brutalised body.
Her staggering story has just been told in a new two-part Netflix docu-series Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter in which Cathy explains how she gave birth to Aundria in 1974 when she was just a young girl.
Teen mum gives up baby for ‘better life’
For nine months she cared for the little girl, until eventually she said she was convinced it would be better for the child if she gave her up, and relinquished her parental rights in a closed adoption.
“My fantasy was she had the best life,” the retired nurse, now 66, told PEOPLE in 2020.
Her hopes were shattered when she discovered Aundria had run away from home as a teenager and never seen again.
As per the missing person report filed by her adoptive father, Dennis Bowman, she fled the family home while he was out dropping his wife at work.
He’d returned home with the couple’s one-year-old biological baby daughter Vanessa, described as their “miracle” child, and claimed he found Aundria “gone”.
She had run away before, he added, and her purple coat was missing, as well as $100 from the house, Today reported.
Police searched for Aundria, and while a few potential leads emerged in the initial months of the investigation, they came to nothing and the case went cold.
“It was such a shock,” Cathy said when remembering the moment she first learnt about her missing biological child, “and then we got to work”.
“I was just absolutely determined to find out what happened.”
Shocking revelations from school friends
After setting up a Facebook page called “Find Aundria Bowman,” Cathy was contacted by several of her school friends who revealed the teenager alleged she’d been molested by her adoptive father.
She also learned that Bowman, a Naval reservist, pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct in a 1980 case involving a 19-year-old woman he tried to lure into the woods at gun point.
“I was like, ‘This guy did this,’” she told PEOPLE. “I had a gut feeling about him.”
With the help of her husband Edward and amateur online investigator Carl Koppelman, an accountant who had solved several cases before Cathy met him after creating a searchable spreadsheet of 19,000 missing persons’ names and histories, the determined mother set out to prove her theory.
During the documentary, she meets many of Aundria’s school friends who paint a troubling picture of her life with her adoptive parents.
One described being over for dinner and the parents eating hamburgers, while Aundria and her friend were given sandwiches with just ketchup, mustard, and relish inside.
The friend recalled that when Aundria told her it was all she was allowed to eat, Bowman came over and hit her so hard she almost fell off her chair, Time reported.
A mother’s instinct
Despite having no evidence, Bowman’s violent criminal past and the claims he molested Aundria made Cathy determined to expose him, and she continued pushing in her quest for answers.
She took out a huge billboard near the Bowman’s home asking people to contact local police with information, and regularly shared her suspicions about her daughter’s adoptive father on Facebook.
She and Koppelman even began obtaining aerial images of the Bowman’s backyard using a drone, with the mum noticing an unusual detail among the brush that left her convinced it was where her daughter was buried.
“I knew,” she explains during the Netflix doco.
“He felt he’d had the right to kill her, that he owned her. And he would keep her close.
“I could just feel it in my bones, and I was becoming obsessed with Dennis Bowman’s backyard.”
But it was only when a detective investigating cold cases in another state re-examined the 1980 rape and murder of a local woman named Kathleen Doyle that there was a breakthrough.
Kathleen, the wife of a US navy pilot, was killed at home while her husband was deployed at sea – but her attacker left semen on a bedspread at the crime scene.
Jon Smith from the Virginia police department noticed the sheet had been preserved and sent it for DNA testing, which hadn’t been available at the time of the attack.
He’d also learnt that Bowman, who was on his radar thanks to Cathy’s campaign, was in the area at the time with the Navy, and suspected he was Kathleen’s killer.
So he called Bowman into the police station under the guise of discussing Cathy’s “harassment” of him, and while he was there, he was offered a cup of water.
After he left, Bowman’s cup was tested against the DNA on the bedspread and proved to be a match.
Bowman’s chilling confession
Bowman pleaded guilty and was convicted of raping and murdering Kathleen and was handed down two life sentences in 2019, according to a plea agreement.
As he settled into his new life behind bars, he admitted a string of other violent sexual crimes, including the 1979 rape and assault of an unnamed 27-year-old woman in Holland, Michigan, according to local reports.
He also broke into a woman’s home and stole lingerie and was arrested for forcing a teenager on her bicycle off the road and firing a gun in her direction.
After two years in prison, Bowman finally admitted to killing his adoptive daughter Aundria, and burying her remains inside a wooden barrel in his backyard 32-years earlier.
When detectives finally found the teenager’s remains, they were exactly where Cathy said they would be, proving just how powerful a mother’s instinct can be.
Bowman claimed Aundria had fallen down the stairs of the family home and broken her neck, so he’d cut up her body with an axe and disposed of her.
But police believe she had threatened to report he was molesting her, a local report stated.
His wife Brenda, who had been married to Bowman for nearly 50 years, said her husband told her “she was right under your nose” during his telephone confession from prison.
"He said, 'so near, so far, right under your nose,' I said, 'what are you talking about?' He said, 'Aundria, is buried in the backyard,'" Brenda Bowman testified about her husband Dennis Bowman confessing that he buried their daughter in their backyard 30 years ago.@wwmtnewspic.twitter.com/aVuFpmDRSR
— Mike KrafcikTV (@Mkrafcik) February 23, 2021
After her body was located, Dr. Jered Cornelison, forensic anthropologist with Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, examined the remains and testified in court there was evidence of sharp force and blunt force trauma, according to reports.
Bowman pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 35 to 50 years in prison for Aundria’s murder, on top of his previous life sentences for the rape and murder of Doyle and 20 years for the burglary of her home.
He’s now 75 and is currently serving out his sentences at the River North Correctional Center, a men’s prison in Virginia.
Netflix viewers have been blown away by the remarkable, yet chilling story, with many commending Cathy for her dedication on social media.
“Cathy Terkanian is my new hero! What a woman,” one wrote on X.
“Into the Fire The Lost Daughter was such a chilling documentary on Netflix. A mother’s intuition is like no other. I feel so sorry for Aundria Bowman my God!!” another agreed.
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