Dead Kids Found In Freezer

Renee Bowman, 43, of Lusby, Md is now in police custody. While investigating child abuse allegations involving her 7-year-old adopted daughter, authorities made a gruesome find. In her basement was a freezer containing the frozen remains of two other girls, aged 9 and 11, both of whom had been adopted by Bowman. She is charged with first-degree child abuse and is being held without bail while murder charges are being considered.

It all began when a neighbor Phillip Garrett found the 7-year-old girl wandering the neighborhood, injured and hungry in a blood- and feces-soaked nightshirt. She explained that she had escaped from a locked bedroom by jumping out a second-story window of her mother's house.

"I asked if she was OK. She said no," said neighbor Phillip Garrett, who found the girl walking down the street. "She said, 'My mother beats me to death all the time."'

Garrett, 21, who lives two houses down from Bowman, said he brought the girl to a neighbor's house, called 911 and ordered her a pizza. She indicated she had last eaten on Tuesday when her father was at the home, said Garrett, who realized he had met her mother once and described her as "frazzled."

The little girl had open sores and lesions on her buttocks and lower thighs, marks on her neck made by a cord, rope or other item and bruises on her hands and lips, police said. She told investigators her mother beat her with the heel of a blood soaked shoe. She was taken to hospital. The Maryland Department of Human Resources plans to petition the court to gain custody, said Nancy Lineman, an agency spokeswoman.

When police went to Bowman's home, there was no-one there. It wasn't until later that day when Bowman returned to find her daughter missing that she went to the police station. When she arrived at the police station she was questioned about the abuse of her 7-year-old daughter.

Under questioning Bowman admitted that he had beaten her daughter. She said she was angry over her daughter's mental capacity and was stressed out and she (Bowman) was out of control and needed help.

The 7-year-old had previously mentioned that she had two sisters who were both dead, killed by Bowman. When Bowman was questioned about the other girls she admitted that they were in a freezer in her basement. The police got a warrant to search Bowman's house on Pawnee Lane.

They found the bodies of the two girls, one 9-years-old and the other 11-years-old, encased in ice stuffed in the freezer. Police are still piecing together a timeline for the family, but believe the two girls were killed in Montgomery County one to two years ago. Their frozen bodies may have been transported in a freezer when Bowman moved more than an hour away to Lusby in February.



Sheriff Mike Evans said the surviving girl was never enrolled in Calvert County Schools and that no trouble had ever been reported at the house. Bowman's only contact with the sheriff's department since she arrived was a traffic stop.

Evans said Bowman had a boyfriend who was cooperating with investigators. The boyfriend was a potential witness, but Evans would not comment on whether he was a suspect. He said the man did not live with Bowman and was not a father to her children.

Bowman adopted the oldest girl in July 2001, D.C. officials said. Three years later, she adopted the girl who would now be 9 and her 7-year-old sister. She is not biologically related to them.