[fire crackling]
[crickets chirping]
[bird hooting]
Put another piece on the fire.
I think right there will be good.
Yeah.
[woman] Careful.
That looks good.
[pensive music playing]
[woman] This story is not about me.
This is about a missing child.
My missing child.
All my life I was looking for her.
But I didn't know what happened to her.
She just, like, disappeared.
[woman sighing]
[woman] It's been a long, difficult journey.
Because, here's the thing,
my daughter's case wasn't unsolved.
It was uninvestigated.
And that enraged me.
But anger is a motivator.
I got to the point that I got to find this kid alive.
I don't care if I have to walk over God's green earth to do it.
You can't run on anything else. You can run on anger.
It doesn't need to be fed. It doesn't need to sleep.
It might kill you. [chuckling]
You want to get something done, get good and angry.
There's going to be an answer to this.
I am going to find her.
[dramatic music swelling]
[music fades]
[birds chirping]
[woman] You get the naughty one.
-That's good? -Yeah.
I'm ready.
[mugs clanking]
I met Ed in '91. The old-fashioned way in the bar.
[chuckling]
-[contemplative music playing] -[Edward] Cathy was in her scrubs.
She worked professionally as a nurse in New Orleans.
And she left the bar, and neither of us thought we'd see each other again.
Three days later, we crossed paths again, and after that we never separated.
She quit her job, rented a U-Haul trailer,
loaded up all her stuff and her dog,
and drove from New Orleans up here to this house in Massachusetts.
And along the way, we stopped at the chapel at the University of Virginia,
and we were married about ten weeks after we met.
And that was 32 years ago.
[music fades]
[Edward] We were married for about a month
when she mentioned that she'd had a child,
and she'd given the child up for adoption.
It's heart-wrenching, all my life, that I did this,
that I allowed this to happen to her and I.
[somber music playing]
[Cathy] She was the prettiest baby I ever saw.
Extremely bald-headed. [chuckling]
Beautiful eyes.
I was only 16 years old when I had my daughter in 1974.
And it was becoming a reality that I was going to have to get her out of a diaper.
I was gonna have to teach her how to feed herself.
I was gonna have to do all the things that an adult does
that I wasn't sure I could do.
And I was very vulnerable.
And my mother cornered me.
And she said, "You need to give her up for adoption."
"You can't take care of this baby."
"You don't know what you're doing."
So I didn't know how to prove I was worthy of my child.
And I got talked into...
She was going to get the best parents that adoption could offer,
as long as I gave her up as an infant.
If I couldn't do anything else for her, I was going to do this.
She deserves this.
And I just stepped back.
And I let my daughter go into the adoption system in Norfolk, Virginia,
so that she could have a better life.
She was just nine months old.
Throughout my life, she was always on my mind.
But it was a closed adoption,
so I don't know what happened to her. She never came looking for me.
[music fades]
[birds chirping]
[Cathy] Thirty-five years later, in 2010,
I get this letter from the adoption agency.
I thought it was a letter telling me my daughter was looking for me.
And I was just like, "Wow. This is happening."
[tense music playing]
[Cathy] Instead, I found out that my daughter went missing 21 years ago,
in 1989, when she was 14 years old.
And I was told that an unidentified body found next to a cornfield...
might be my daughter's body.
I just... everything just, like, went blank.
[camera shutter clicking]
And the adoption agency immediately tells me
that a detective has been to see them about this Jane Doe
and that the police needed my DNA to help identify her.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Cathy] So I gave them my DNA,
and they told me I have to just wait for some time.
I didn't know what to do.
She had been missing 21 years when they finally found me.
And so I couldn't sit at that computer and just wait for my DNA to be verified
that they were her remains.
So I got in touch with the police and the adoption agency.
But they would not tell me what my daughter's adopted name was,
where she went missing from.
Because I put her up for adoption, I had no standing.
So I can't go and say, "This is my daughter."
You know, I... I don't have the right to do that.
So that kind of made me go, "I'm going to find out about my daughter myself."
I only had my daughter's birthday.
And so I said to Eddie,
"Look on the computer and look for a missing child close to her birthday."
[Edward] I don't think I spent ten minutes looking at this website,
when I found this missing person with the same birth date as her daughter.
June 23rd, 1974.
[Cathy] She was the first one listed on the missing person's section
of the Michigan State Police Department.
I named her Alexis Miranda Badger.
I learned that her name had changed to Aundria Michelle Bowman.
And I found out that she lived in Hamilton, Michigan.
[music fades]
I mean, looking at her, I was just like, "I don't know that person."
I remember an infant.
But when I started looking at her eyes and just...
She looks like me. She is mine. My little girl.
[somber piano music playing]
But I was looking on the internet trying to find her.
I couldn't find her or the adopted parents anywhere.
Nothing.
[keyboard clacking]
[Cathy] And so I just decided to open a Facebook "Find Aundria M Bowman" page.
Because I knew that kids go looking for each other
that went to high school together.
Roll up my sleeves for some work.
Why is this not loading?
Listen, I knew nothing about computers when this all started.
"Welcome, members."
"If any of you were close friends of Aundria,
we'd love to hear from you."
"Please drop us a line via Private Message
to this Find Aundria M Bowman Facebook page. Thanks."
[pensive music playing]
Suddenly, everything just started happening.
[pensive music swelling]
I contacted her immediately to give Cathy more information.
Aundria was adopted by Brenda and Dennis Bowman.
[contemplative music playing]
[Sue] Our family just absolutely loved her.
Brenda is my husband's cousin.
We went to the same school together over in Muskegon, Michigan.
[Craig] Brenda was more quiet
and was just sort of to herself a lot.
[Sue] Brenda and Dennis met when she was in high school.
And they fell for each other.
That was probably Brenda's first boyfriend.
Yeah. When she graduated from high school,
Dennis was in the Navy at that time.
[Dennis Bowman] But before I ever went into the service,
I had told Brenda,
I'd met her about a year before I went in,
I told her, I said, "Look, when I get out of boot camp,"
I said, "And I come home for leave," I said, "Will you accept my ring?"
And I knew she was the one just as soon as I met her.
[Brenda Bowman] We got married in '71.
And he got stationed in San Diego.
We lived there for six months.
[Dennis] And I had my choice of duty station.
We came to Norfolk, Virginia.
[Sue] And they were trying to start a family.
[Brenda] And at that time,
they told me there was a double uterus.
"Chances of you getting pregnant are probably very slim."
And that's when we were applying for adoption.
[Dennis] And it took us, like...
[sighing]
[Dennis] I can't think how many years.
[phone ringing]
[Brenda] The social worker called one morning,
and she goes, "We have a baby for you."
"Six months old."
She called the next day,
and she goes, "Brenda, I made a mistake."
I says, "We can't have her?"
And she goes, "She's ten months old."
And I go, "Okay."
[phone clicking]
[Brenda] We adopted Aundria.
I was never supposed to have any, and we got the miracle of adopting.
[emotional music playing]
[Dennis] She had always been Daddy's girl.
She was the sweetest kid that ever walked.
Yeah, Aundria was a... a sweet little girl,
uh, a gift from God to this family who couldn't have children.
Brenda and Dennis eventually moved from Virginia
back to the west side of Michigan.
Hamilton, it's a smaller community.
[woman] Hamilton is a quiet, sleepy town
close to Holland.
[contemplative music playing]
You don't have anything bad in Hamilton happen.
Basically, gas station, tons of churches, the school, and a grocery store.
That's about Hamilton, back in the day, summed right up.
Small town living. Everybody knew everybody's business.
And you had to go to church.
If you were out of that norm, you were looked at different.
[Sue] Brenda and Denny went to church every Sunday.
Both of them were Sunday school teachers,
and they wanted to grow their family.
[Brenda] And then years later,
I was constantly sick.
And Denny just come home from work one day and threw a pregnancy test down.
And I go, "Yeah, right.
We got a 13-year-old adopted daughter."
And I got up in the middle of the night and I says, "Well, may as well take it."
And then I just go... [exhaling]
In fact, it was Father's Day weekend
because I come back to bed, and I go, "Wake up, Daddy."
And Aundria was ecstatic when Vanessa was born.
How wonderful. Now they have a family.
[music fades]
[Sue] And then in 1989, Aundria was in high school.
[Michelle] Our high school, it was small.
It was tight-knit, just like the community.
[Kim] You had your jocks, and then you had your really Christian group,
and then you had your, like, stoner kids,
and then you had your, like, shunned and nobodies.
[chuckling] I was the crowd kind of pushed away.
['80s style music playing]
Boy, there were some bad hairstyles in the '80s, good heavens.
I can remember, like, washing my hair the night before
and then you have to spray it with Rave hair spray, like tease it, curl it,
spray it again, and then get up and do it again the next morning.
Our hair was, like, huge. It was... oh, it was terrible.
[Kim] Aundria was a lot of fun.
I remember being at her house,
being in her bedroom, and listening to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.
[inaudible]
[Kim] Of course, you know, you're in a room, you turn the radio up,
and you just start dancing around a lot,
trying to sing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." [chuckling]
[music fades]
[Kim] Aundria was definitely outgoing.
For the most part, Aundria just wanted to be around people.
-[somber music playing] -[children's laughter echoing]
[Michelle] She was funny.
I remember hanging out in school.
I can remember her smile.
I can remember that.
[Jennifer] She tried really, really hard to go out of her way to make you happy.
I guess you could say chameleon because she'd change
to fit the person she was talking to or with.
So I think that might have caused her some problems
in some relationships at times
because she would try really hard to fit in with this person
and then change the way she was behaving or what she said to fit in
and make herself be like the other person.
She just wanted to fit in just like every teenage person does.
[Michelle] She was just, I would say, just a normal teenager.
She didn't do good in school.
A few times talked back to the teachers.
She was just a... a normal teenager.
[Dennis] But when she turned 12, 13,
it was like somebody just flipped a switch.
[pensive music playing]
[Dennis] And all of a sudden, she's running away from home.
She's taking drugs from kids at school.
She's shoplifting.
She's lying.
One day she got mad at my wife
and stuck her fist through the front window of the door.
I mean, we were taking her to counselors and this and that.
[officer] The day Aundria went missing...
what do you remember happening?
[Brenda] Denny had taken her to school that morning.
There was a band thing.
He went and picked her up.
And Aundria was just very quiet with us.
And then I had to go to work. I worked second shift at Lincolnshire.
[tense music playing]
[Brenda] We bundled up the baby and take the baby,
so Aundria could do homework and not use the excuse,
"Well, I was watching the baby."
And Denny dropped me off.
[Dennis] When I came home,
I walked through the front door.
The house was unlocked.
[switch clicks]
I took the baby in, and I laid her on the couch.
I went upstairs.
I called for her.
The door to our bedroom, which was locked, was busted open.
We had little carry bags for overnight.
We had a set of 'em, and one was gone.
[Brenda] We had gotten our income tax money.
Some of it was in the bank, but there was cash in an envelope.
And he kept it hidden in his dresser.
She took that.
She took all the change whatsoever she could get out of the baby's bank.
And her purple coat.
[Dennis] So I called the police right away,
and I said, "Look, my kid's missing."
They came down. They came in. Took the report.
-[somber vocalizing] -[crickets chirping]
[Dennis] She was gone.
[tense music playing]
In the first few days when Aundria was reported missing,
people were looking out for her.
[Dennis] We hunted and hunted.
We borrowed people's cars
and went down through Holland at night so she didn't recognize our car.
[Myrene] There were reports of her being seen in the Holland area and areas nearby.
There were tips of people seeing her at a roller skating rink, at grocery stores.
[man] A family friend said that they had seen her in the checkout line,
that her hair had been bleached,
and that she appeared that she could have possibly been pregnant.
[man 2] There were reports of her working in a adult-entertainment-type industry
down in Indiana.
[Jennifer] I remember hearing she ran away to the truck stop,
got a trucker to pick her up, and she took off from there
and was living somewhere else.
[Michelle] So it was pretty official, you know, that she had run away.
[Myrene] The problem was there were no other leads to go forward on.
There was no information There was nothing to look for.
I mean, the trail really went cold.
[Brenda] I would get off of work at 11:30 or whatever, and I would...
I would go around the streets looking for her.
[breathes deeply]
[Brenda] Until it got to a point that Denny says, "You gotta stop."
"You have a baby at home. You have got to stop."
We were two grieving parents, and our daughter was missing.
[Dennis] Aundria disappeared. She was gone.
She was just gone.
[music fades]
[birds chirping]
[Cathy] Oh, wow.
That's how she looked, just about like that last time I saw her.
So cute. Beautiful eyes. Oh my God.
I miss that little girl.
[contemplative music playing]
[Cathy] When I had Alexis, I was a runaway.
My mother was very physical.
I mean, she just smacked me around one too many times,
and I just got sick of the physical abuse
and ran off to New Orleans with the clothes on my back.
I was 14.
I got pregnant maybe a year or so after that.
And Alexis was 14 when she ran away.
When you're a runaway, you're seen as a delinquent.
They're just not going to look for these runaway kids.
They didn't look for me.
So I knew the police, back in the '80s, they never looked for her.
They dropped the ball on this case years ago.
So it took this web sleuth guy in California in 2010
to get the police started on Alexis's case.
Twenty years after the fact.
So Carl was the game changer.
[Carl] I first started getting involved in the missing and unidentified in 2009.
There was a site called "Websleuths"
that dealt with all kinds of unsolved mysteries,
but in particular, there were unidentified John Doe and Jane Doe cases,
where amateur sleuths could collaborate online to try to solve these cases.
When I started working on this,
I was finding that none of the websites that showed missing persons
had very good means of searching through all their cases.
So what I decided to do is put together this spreadsheet of missing persons.
By the time I got done with this,
it was probably close to 19,000 names on the list.
Well, I'm an accountant, so I had very good spreadsheet skills.
And so there were several instances where
I was able to solve a missing person case from various states.
[Cathy] He kind of spooked me at first.
How does this become your hobby?
Who is this dead person, who's that dead person?
Could it be this person? Because it's... it's armchair sleuthing, right?
But it was Carl that sort of was like the catalyst
that kicked that whole thing into gear.
[mouse clicking]
[Carl] There she is.
This is the post-mortem photo that was distributed for the Racine Jane Doe case.
[tense music playing]
[Carl] I came across this case from 1999 from Racine, Wisconsin.
[anchor] The brutal murder is one investigators say they will never forget.
[anchor 2] ...when law enforcement found the body of a badly abused woman.
[anchor 3] ...in a cornfield on the side of the road in Racine County.
[anchor 4] Jane Doe showed signs of being sexually abused.
[anchor 2] Who did it and who is Jane Doe?
[Carl] So I went through my spreadsheet here.
Let's see if we have a female,
uh, maybe from Wisconsin, Michigan, or Illinois.
And she would have been born around the early '70s.
And using these filter mechanisms and I was able to come up with 13 cases.
And you can see the second one here is Aundria Michelle Bowman.
[mouse clicking]
[Carl] Aundria Bowman was listed as missing from Hamilton, Michigan in 1989.
The Jane Doe was found in Racine, Wisconsin in 1999.
Aundria was 14 at around the time she disappeared,
and Racine Jane Doe was in her mid-twenties.
The age was about right.
So I created the facial reconstruction drawing.
There are a lot of similarities between the facial characteristics
of Aundria Bowman and those of the Racine Jane Doe.
First of all, their noses are very similar.
Aundria has a long nose with sort of a bulbous tip.
[music fades]
And, looking at a map,
you can see that Holland, Michigan
was right across Lake Michigan from Racine, Wisconsin.
I contacted the Racine County Sheriff's Department,
and I was put in touch with a detective in charge of this case.
And I told him, "Hey, I've got this girl who is from Holland, Michigan,
and she looks like she might be a pretty good potential identity of your Jane Doe."
[pensive music playing]
[Cathy exhales sharply]
As bad as I wanted to know what happened to her, I...
I just dreaded to know that, you know...
Alexis had been beaten to death, thrown in a ditch.
[shears clicking]
[Cathy] But finally, after three years,
they tested my DNA against Racine Jane Doe and then sent it to me.
Okay.
"Let it be noted..."
[muttering indistinctly]
[Cathy] Oh God.
It wasn't her.
It meant that she wasn't my daughter. She wasn't Alexis.
But I was relieved. It was the strangest relief.
It's an anticipation of horror that you can't believe,
and when that horror doesn't play out, it's relief.
But it also meant that I was right back where I started.
I have to keep looking for her, and I am going to find her.
She'd totally reject me, you know, and rightfully so.
But at least I'd know she's alive.
[kids playing]
Especially when Detective Haverdink called me and said, "We're pursuing this."
"This is not something that's gonna go away."
Um, I was hopeful.
[music fades]
[man] I, actually, was in the same school as Aundria.
I was a year ahead of her,
and there wasn't even any talk around the school
about her missing or running away.
[phone ringing]
[Cathy] I just got this feeling that he wanted it solved.
He wasn't part of that '80s and '90s dropped-the-ball crowd.
[Det. Haverdink] The Aundria Bowman case was a cold case for 20 years,
so we wanted to solve this case, and the cold case team was formed.
[tense music playing]
We wanted to work this case in a way that it had not been worked so far.
All this stuff.
And so we would reach out to the Bowmans.
Letting them know that we are actively looking at the case again
and trying to move it forward.
[Det. Workman] Well, good morning. My name is Todd.
[Dennis] Dennis.
[Det. Workman] Dennis? Nice to meet you, sir.
So we're out of the State Police post in Wayland.
Obviously, this is an old, old case,
but we've been brought in to try and bring some closure.
[Brenda] Some closure.
There's never any closure.
[Dennis] Let's get down to business.
Let's find my daughter.
[Det. Workman] Yeah, that's where we're at too.
[Det. Haverdink] We also reached out to Cathy, the biological mother.
She was also very adamant that she wanted to find her daughter.
And I knew she talked to Carl Koppelman.
She had started some Facebook pages.
Several of Aundria's friends had reached out to her,
you know, kids that I went to school with.
So I just kind of listened to Cathy and Carl Koppelman
to see what information they had,
to see if that was something that was gonna be helpful
or useful to our case.
[music fades]
I was just like, "Thank God." I was not alone having to do this.
[keyboard clacking]
[Cathy] And I just knew that if I kept looking for Alexis
and started throwing all my energy into the Find Aundria M Bowman page,
something was going to develop.
[computer chiming]
[Cathy] And then Metta appeared.
[pensive music playing]
[Metta] I reached out to Cathy Terkanian on May 11, 2013.
And I said, "I just want to share with you that in September of 1989,
I was abducted from Holland, Michigan at the Windmill gas station
on the south side of Holland."
"I can't help but think our stories may be connected."
I walked home after school
and then I asked my mom if I could go to my friend's house,
which I did regularly.
We always walked to each other's houses.
It was a safe neighborhood, we thought.
And she actually said no. [chuckling]
And I... and I begged her and begged her.
"All right. Call me when you get there."
And then...
[smacking lips] Yup.
[unsettling music playing]
[Metta] I was six years old.
This is where the Windmill was.
So he actually took me from, like, right here.
I was walking along here, and he saw me,
and he came, and he parked right here alongside this sidewalk.
And he just said, "Your mom said I could take you to go see some puppies."
"We're gonna go to a barn and see some puppies."
So I was close enough for him,
where he just grabbed me and put me in his red pickup truck.
[ominous music playing]
[Metta] We would drive for a while, and I would say, "Oh, is that the barn?"
because I'm excited to see some puppies, you know.
And he's like, "No, we're almost there." And we keep driving.
And then we came to a four-way, and there was a cop,
so he told me to lay down.
And then he started, like, putting my hair behind my ear
and stroking my cheek and...
He was really nice at first, you know. I thought he was a nice guy.
He knew my mom.
And then his whole demeanor changed.
He pulled over.
And he got out and got a rope from the back of the truck.
And then he came around, and he yanked me around my neck
and dragged me into the woods, and I started screaming.
And he took off all my clothes,
and he tied my sweater around my mouth to keep me quiet.
I can see it like it just happened.
And he was above me. He unzipped his pants.
And then all of a sudden, some dog started barking.
[dog barking]
[Metta] And they seemed like they were really close by.
There's a campground nearby,
so he probably assumed that there was people nearby along with the dogs.
So he got up and ran and left me there.
He did sexually assault me.
And then I untied myself.
Then I ran to the road naked.
And then someone called 911.
That night I had to sit down and speak with a composite artist,
and I gave her as much detail as I could.
But they never caught him.
So since I was six years old, I've been looking for him.
[music fades]
I wanted to make sure it didn't happen to anybody else, any other little girls.
As soon as the internet came around, it was definitely a game changer.
I started looking at missing people in Michigan,
but especially near Holland, near me in Hamilton and areas.
And then you kind of do the rabbit hole and do your research
and see if there could be a connection.
[somber music playing]
[Metta] 2013 is when I reached out to the Facebook page.
[keyboard clacking]
[Metta] And it just kind of seemed odd to me that Aundria Bowman went missing
the same year as me, the same area as me.
The similarities with Aundria's case, if she was abducted,
I felt like her kidnapper could be the guy that kidnapped me.
[tense music playing]
[Metta] So I started reading up on her case more.
And then I saw a picture of Aundria's adopted father, Dennis Bowman.
Oh my God.
He looks exactly like the guy that kidnapped me.
[exhaling slowly]
I was devastated and horrified.
This is the adopted father of my daughter.
That was very... [exclaiming]
And so Metta and Carl and I did a lot of research together.
[Metta] I was abducted from the Windmill gas station.
He smelled dirty, like a mechanic, maybe a paint-ish smell.
Dennis Bowman was employed in the Macatawa Harbor.
He was a carpenter and worked on yachts in the harbor.
[Metta] So Dennis worked right down the road from there.
And it was like a little after 3:00.
He seemed like he'd just got out of work.
And the route basically went right by his house,
pretty close to where I was brought into that campground.
He went to church right up the road from where he abducted me from.
The red pickup truck I got taken in was like a faded, old, rusty pickup truck.
[Carl] We were trying to figure out whether he drove a red truck,
so we had to ask a relative of the Bowman family,
and she said, "Oh yeah. He had a truck like that."
And they actually provided a photo of that truck.
It looks very similar to the truck that I was taken in.
[Carl] It was just as Metta had described it.
[Metta] Just too many coincidences.
And then when I heard his voice...
[Dennis] So I called the police right away,
and I said, "Look, my kid's missing."
It was like chills down my back. The voice, you remember.
Could it be Dennis Bowman is the reason my child went missing?
[woman] I don't know how to say this in a nice way. Dennis was different.
He made me feel uncomfortable at times.
[woman 2] He's not someone I wanted to be around.
[woman 3] She told me that her parents didn't like her.
Something tells me it was a house of horrors.
[Dennis] Aundria disappeared. She was gone.
Jeez. Yeah, that's the guy.
[Cathy] Who the hell adopted my daughter?
This whole situation, this is like a house on fire.
Now, I can either walk past that house
and just not look at everybody screaming for help,
or I can walk right into that fire, and I could just let it burn me.
I saw the fire and I walked right in it.
And I won't be out of it until I get all the way through it.
And so I just knew I had to go to Michigan.
I had to follow up in Michigan where Alexis went missing from.
[music fades]
[Cathy] The first time we went out to Michigan, it was in 2013.
[Edward] And this will be the fifth time to Holland.
But we're fully capable of getting behind the wheel
and getting out there for as long as it takes to solve this.
[Cathy] Thank goodness I had Eddie.
He didn't know my daughter.
And I honestly think that, had I not met Ed,
I wouldn't have come looking for Alexis
because I didn't have that kind of unconditional love.
I feel loved.
[door squeaking]
-Hi. Good to see you, Cathy! -[Cathy] Carl Koppelman!
[both chuckle]
Great to see you again. Good to see you, Ed.
-Yeah. -[Edward] Hey, Carl.
[Cathy] We've been to Michigan with Carl several times over ten years.
It's very surreal, but it happened with exactly the right people.
My sleuth and my rock.
-And her support system. Yeah. -My rock.
A lot of my investigation was through Facebook,
but you can't get every little detail you need
unless you can talk to the person.
And so Eddie and I and Carl met people that would be willing to meet us,
people that I've never met in person.
Sue! Hi. How are you?
Hi.
-Finally. -[Cathy] I'm so glad to meet you.
-So good to meet you too. -[Cathy] I know.
[Sue] I can see your baby in your eyes.
Mmm. Thank you. Thank you.
You came just chiming in like a sweet little bird.
Because we love her.
I... See? Wow.
Can you go into a little bit about how they'd bring her over to your home?
Yeah, I remember Aundria sitting on the hearth,
just kind of like this.
[tense music playing]
[Sue] Then Brenda would come up and say,
"Well, did you hear what the kid did? Want me to tell you what the kid did?"
And I'm going like, "This is your child, supposedly."
And poor Aundria would cross her arms, or she'd just look up and down and just...
[Cathy] Was Dennis there in the room?
[Sue] Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
She seemed withdrawn and, well, demeaned.
I mean, you're put down and everything. You're not a happy-go-lucky kid.
[Cathy] I'll be honest with you. That kind of rocks my world.
I don't want to hear all that stuff.
You know, but I'm here to bear witness, so I will bear witness.
Hello?
[knocking on door]
[Cathy] Am I at the home of Michelle Timmer?
-Hi, Michelle. I'm Cathy. -[Edward] Hello.
-Hi. -Hi, honey. Hi.
-Jennifer. -[Jennifer] Hi. How are you?
Oh, I'm very good. Thank you.
-Are you Kim? -I am.
-[Michelle] She is! -Hi.
-How are ya? -Nice to meet you.
Does my heart good to see Alexis's friends.
I call her Alexis.
That's okay. Yeah, I understand.
I'm sorry I have to ask both of you to relive that stuff.
[Kim] No, it's... it's all right.
[Michelle] I remember she was in the ninth, I was in tenth grade,
and we took the bus to her house, and we went to go inside,
but she turned around, and she looked at me, and she said,
"Don't go in. Just wait out here."
And then she went in, and her dad immediately started chasing her
and yelling and screaming something.
And so she tore off, and he was right behind her
and grabbed her foot, so she fell down.
And I looked, and I couldn't see her anymore.
I couldn't... They were yelling and screaming upstairs.
So then on Monday, when I saw her at school,
I asked her about it and, you know, she told me that he'd chased her upstairs
and started hitting her 'cause she was late getting off the bus,
which she wasn't late getting off the bus.
I was invited to her house, and we were just hanging out,
and at dinner time, I remember the parents were eating hamburgers.
Aundria and I were only allowed
I think what was called a leftover sandwich.
It was ketchup, mustard, and relish on two pieces of bread,
and she made a comment that that's all she was allowed to eat.
-That's what Aundria said? -[Kim] Yes, that's what Aundria said.
So Dennis came across the table right in front of me
and hit her so hard he almost knocked her out of the chair.
[pensive music playing]
[Kim] She started bawling her eyes out, of course.
Brenda sat there and did nothing about it.
She just kept on feeding the baby.
It's like she just turned her back on it and acted like it didn't even happen.
At this point, whatever happened, she had had enough,
and so she came home on the bus with me.
My parents were both gone, so we came up to my room,
and then she stayed in my room, just hiding from her adoptive parents.
And she stayed for like four days.
I would bring extra food up there and give it to her
after my family were done eating.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Jennifer] She progressed into telling me that her adoptive dad,
he'd come in her room at night and made her do sexual things
that she didn't want to do.
As a 13-year-old, it's traumatic to hear about,
and I didn't even know what to do other than, "You need to tell somebody."
So we went back to school the next day.
Aundria and I came off the school bus, went into the principal's office,
and sat down to talk to the people in there about what happened to her.
I'm proud of her. That makes me proud.
She was very strong.
She was like me.
Only so much you're gonna put up with.
I remember Aundria and I commiserating with the problems that we had at home.
So I remember that Allegan County would come to the school,
and then they would call your parents to come to the school as well.
They would ask you right there in the room with your parents,
"Okay, so tell us what's going on."
Well, what are you going to say?
You know, your... your parents are sitting right there in front of you.
You... you just look at your parents and say, "Oh, you know. Nothing."
And so then they just send you right back home with them.
I went through that too.
[Brenda] One day, there was an argument,
and she turned around and said that, "Daddy had molested me."
And I told her, I said, "That's a lie."
At the time, we had her in counseling.
And the three of us went in to talk to the minister.
And he took her in and talked to her first.
And then he had Denny and I come in.
He says, "Do you have something to say?"
And she just says, "Yeah. I lied."
You know, he told her, with all of us there, he says,
"Do you realize what kind of allegation like that could do to your dad?"
[Dennis] She admitted that nobody touched her.
It was a lie but she was trying to get her way.
Bring the church in, of course.
If you're gonna go to therapy, let's go to the church.
Mm-hmm. That's a classic.
[Cathy] She's begging for her life. She was begging for her life.
All these people just turned a blind eye.
I mean, the kids did more than the adults did.
The kids lied for her. The kids snuck her food.
The kids cared about her.
The justice system did nothing for her but put her right back in that situation.
[Craig] Just what does that say, right there,
about how Brenda's reacting to anything that might take place with her daughter
in regards to Denny and how he would treat her?
I can understand, when everything is rolled back to that time
of sitting on the hearth at the fireplace, that that's what was going on.
She was telling everybody that she could tell,
and nobody would listen.
But she never came out and said anything to us, probably thinking, "Why?"
"They won't believe me either."
And it just broke my heart.
[somber music playing]
[Jennifer] We encouraged her to leave, to get out of the situation,
get out of her house, and she didn't wanna leave the baby there.
She said, "No, I have to take care of Vanessa."
We had Trapper Keepers back then.
Aundria kept pictures of the baby in her Trapper Keeper.
She took care of her all the time.
Changed her diaper, would feed her bottle. She loved her little sister.
And she was panic-stricken about leaving her little sister there by herself.
And she told us, you know... [crying]
[sniffling] Sorry. It's just really sad.
-I understand. I'm sorry. -But, anyway, she said that, um...
She was going to leave when Vanessa was older and go find,
you know, her real mom.
I think she ran away from home and just living somewhere
away from her adopted family.
She was probably happy and out there.
Had got away from the situation and was doing better.
And knowing how bad she wanted to run away,
I honestly believe it.
[Sue] Brenda called us and told us that Aundria had run away.
And the story I got, I didn't hear anything about her taking money.
-No? Oh, no? -[Sue] Or... No.
I said, "Did she take anything with her? Did she take her clothes?"
"Did she take her purse?" "No, she didn't take anything."
"She didn't take her purse or makeup. Nothing."
And I'm going like, I told Craig, I said, "Isn't that odd?"
But I'd talk to Brenda on the phone, and I'd say,
"You know, well, what... what is Denny... How's he feeling about all this?"
[Cathy] Right.
And she goes, "Well, we can't talk about it
because we get in a fight as soon as I bring it up."
His demeanor bothered me so much that I reported it.
I just said, "I'm calling about Aundria's Bowman's disappearance,
and I think that you ought to closely look at Dennis Bowman."
[Cathy sighing]
[Sue] The circumstances around her leaving don't make sense,
and I want answers.
[somber music playing]
[Cathy] She was supposed to get the best of the best.
That's what I was told.
And this is what she got.
Oh, it's so infuriating.
That whole... [inhaling] ...turmoil comes back.
After I put Alexis up for adoption, I fought suicide for years.
That's what adoption did to me, and so I don't have any kids.
You know, I wasn't that brave.
[contemplative music playing]
[Cathy] And I tell you, honestly, uh, had I... had I been able to keep her,
had I been supported to keep her, she'd be here right now.
I hate myself for that. [sighing] Fuck. Sorry.
Of course I believed everything my mother told me.
"She'll have a beautiful life."
[voice breaking] Sorry.
It's hard to get your dreams, like, crushed like that.
So I have to live with that. I have to live with this.
And it is... [exhaling]
Rips me to shreds.
And if something happened to Alexis,
I don't think I could really forgive myself.
[music fades]
[Cathy] I found out about FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, from Carl.
And what it is is it's a law that you can get a form,
send them a lot of money,
and they will send you the whole stack of records.
And so I just FOIA'd Dennis Bowman.
When I found out Bowman's background...
[scoffing] ...like, you got to be kidding me.
[unsettling music playing]
[Carl] There were two cases that were included.
One was his arrest for breaking and entering and stalking a coworker.
When he was caught, they searched his home
and found a duffel bag containing the woman's lingerie,
a mask to conceal his identity, and an illegal sawed-off shotgun.
He only ended up serving like a year in county jail for that.
And then there was a second, even more violent case, in 1980.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Cathy] May 23, 1980, he was 31 years old.
Bowman attacked the victim. She was a teenager.
It was along Lakeshore Drive, near Kirk Park, in Holland, Michigan.
So questioned by the lawyer, "What's the first thing that happened?"
Her answer. "He said, 'Pull over, get off your bike,
and start heading towards the woods.'"
"Then I saw the gun. And he yelled at me again."
"And he fired the gun past me."
[gun firing]
"And he said, 'Goddamn it, get off your bike
and start heading towards the woods.'"
"And he shot the gun towards my foot, and I saw the dirt fly."
[gun firing]
[somber music playing]
[Cathy] "He told me he was going to blow a hole right through me,
and he was pointing the gun at me."
"And I turned around and saw a pickup truck heading south."
"So I waved my arms and tried to make the person driving the truck stop."
"And I threw my bike in the back of the truck."
"And she opened the door and let me in."
"And when he was caught, he told the police,
'You got to let me go. I got to go pick up my little daughter from school.'"
[music stops]
He went straight to pre-trial?
Right, he was initially charged with attempted murder
and pled to assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct.
This is the opinion of the judge.
"The court has concluded that he is a danger to women
if he is not confined."
[sinister music playing]
[Cathy] February 2nd, 1981, sentenced five to ten years for her attack.
[Carl] At that time, Aundria was six years old.
[Brenda] I moved to Kinross when he was transferred there.
And she always had this chip on her shoulder.
"Well, all the kids know I'm a prisoner's daughter."
And I said, "You're not the only one."
Heaven forbid I took that child into a prison visiting room.
[Cathy] When I found out she was taking that little girl to the prison, I just...
[sighing] You know...
It just... it just kind of destroyed me.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Carl] He was then released from prison on January 31st, 1986,
and Aundria, at that point, was 11 years old.
We were just all shocked that Brenda stayed with him
with this young girl.
[Cathy] So here my little daughter was, living with a man on parole
who attempted to murder a teenage girl.
Nobody was there to protect my daughter.
She wasn't adopted into a good family.
I mean, just look at his history, you know.
And so, by this point, I was convinced Dennis had done something to Alexis.
I was convinced he'd murdered her.
[unsettling music playing]
[Cathy] So Alexis tells other people that Dennis is molesting her,
and Brenda knows, but doesn't care.
He needed her dead.
I have to prove he did do it.
And if I have to get crazy to shake everybody up, well, then, so be it.
I'm going to rattle every cage I can find.
[music fades]
[Cathy] The past ten years,
Carl and I, we started traveling to the Missing in Michigan conference.
And what it is is it's, every year,
all the families of the missing people get together,
and they sort of air what's going on.
Horrible stories.
Hi. My name's Mary Berlin. My sister is missing.
I have a missing family member, Richard Hitchcock.
He's been missing since 1990.
I'm just thankful for everyone in this room and everyone who shows up.
[Cathy] It's a kind of a support system.
You know, you go check in with these people once a year.
After 32 years of waiting and looking for a loved one,
it's a horrible place to be.
And sometimes I feel like I wish I could find him as an angel
rather than wonder where he is.
[Cathy] The second time we went to Michigan with Carl was in 2013.
We're a few minutes late. The circle's already formed.
And I sit down, and Carl goes,
"There's Brenda." And everything stopped.
[Brenda] I had taken this notebook.
Cause I had the suspicion Cathy was going to be there
and I was going to meet her.
I was going to share pictures.
And I said, "Today, she has two mothers here."
"I want to thank you for coming, Cathy."
And that's all I said.
I jumped up.
I said, "You tell these people who your husband is."
And then all of a sudden, you know, everybody got startled,
and there was a little bit of commotion.
I had had a cup of coffee in my hand all that morning,
and had I had that cup of coffee, I'd have thrown it right in her face.
She flung her hand across in front of her,
as if she was slapping her across the face.
I just went Jerry Springer baby, you know.
[Brenda] She acted like such a...
witch.
She screamed and hollered that
because my husband was in prison one time, he was a monster.
He killed her, and I stood and watched.
We're not that kind of people.
[scoffing] I was a nervous wreck. I couldn't talk.
I could yell, but I couldn't talk.
So Carl starts talking.
[Carl] So I stood up, and I started introducing myself.
Cathy came up behind me and held up a sign, "Find Aundria Bowman."
So she was standing behind me holding the sign.
And Carl says, "There's the story that they're telling you,
and there's the likely story."
[suspenseful music playing]
And everybody sort of looked at Brenda like,
"What's the likely story, Brenda?" You know?
[Brenda] She just started in, screaming and ranting and raving.
And I says, "Carl, I was willing to talk to her today,
but not if she's gonna be like this!"
[Carl] Brenda was kind of upset, and she says,
"It's a good thing my husband isn't here."
And I said, "Well, what do you expect me to say?
"We know his record."
"We know he spent five years in prison
for attempting to rape an 18-year-old girl at gunpoint."
"What are we supposed to think?"
And her response was, "Well, I haven't forgotten what he did,
but I forgive him, and I take my marriage vows seriously."
And I just, I can't contain it anymore.
So I just stormed out of the room.
[Brenda] I walked up. I got my candle.
Lit it.
And I thought, "Well, who's the better mother here?"
"She won't even walk across stage for her daughter?"
Ugh. I... I couldn't do it. I couldn't be in the room with her.
I got in the car and screamed like I've never screamed before.
[music fades]
[Cathy] Carl put up with a lot from me.
I'm like fire. He's like ice.
And that's the kind of stuff that keeps you sane,
that you have somebody that will put up with you
losing your mind, you know?
When you have to deal with life in this world of the missing,
there's a real set agenda you have.
-[dramatic music playing] -[Cathy] I'm slow, but I'm determined.
You talk to the community.
Talk to the people that she knew.
I heard her described as a rebel.
Yeah, that's the way I see Alexis as far as being a rebel.
"I don't want to conform to be like everybody else."
"I am my own individual."
You know, it sounds like my blood. [chuckling]
[Linda] Yeah?
[Cathy] That's what Carl and I did in those ten years.
We got the word out.
Dennis felt us. He felt us out there.
He knew we were out there surrounding him.
I think she really changed the course of which direction
this whole investigation went.
The first time I ever seen a poster was when you started this up.
I mean, you don't forget her face.
Like your face shape and your eyes look a lot like Aundria's.
She looks a lot like you.
[Cathy crying]
-Thank you for that. Thank you. -[Jennifer] Yeah.
[Edward] You know, talking to people that actually knew Alexis
just makes her more real.
You know, more than a photograph on a poster.
[indistinct chatter]
[Cathy] You are beautiful.
-You get yourself in here. -[Metta giggling]
[Cathy] And I just immediately bonded with Metta.
I know he abducted her when she was this little six-year-old.
She kind of spurred me on.
I was already angry and motivated,
but once I met Metta, I was like double that.
We connected on that level.
[Metta] It's just like this soul connection.
I always call her my soul mama. [giggling]
And I love her, and I don't think any of this
would have happened without her.
[Carl] Oh, there we go. Now it's gonna...
We're going to Hamilton High first?
[Carl] We're going to the Bowman house first.
[Cathy] Oh, okay.
Carl and I, we would get a car,
and we would drive to every place Bowman ever lived,
trying to find something that I felt proved
Dennis Bowman is responsible for my daughter's murder.
[Carl] Now, look to the right is where the house used to be.
[Cathy] Yeah.
[Carl] Right here.
[Cathy] This is the house where Alexis lived, but it got torn down.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Cathy] Dennis and Brenda moved out to the property that they live on now,
almost like right after Alexis went missing.
Which is pretty close to the first home.
It was so odd with them moving from that corner
because we thought, "What if she comes back?"
You know, "Where will she go?"
[Carl] Here they are.
[Cathy] There's the house.
The Bowmans live there.
Oh, somebody's home.
Pull across the road, Carl.
[Velcro tearing]
You launch. I'll spot.
Oh, okay.
[Cathy] If anybody starts looking like,
"What in the hell is going on?" Carl could just drop to his knee and go,
"Will you marry me," you know?
Let's get that drone a flyin'.
[engine whirring]
[Cathy] Yeah.
Come on, little guy. There it is. Okay.
All the circumstances just keep pointing at Dennis.
I could just feel it in my bones.
And I was becoming obsessed with Dennis Bowman's backyard.
[Carl] I got it now.
[Cathy] Go down where that... that spot right there.
-[Carl] Yeah. -You're making my day, man.
[pensive music playing]
[Cathy] Well, this is Dennis Bowman's backyard.
And I knew about Google Earth, and I just started looking at the Bowmans' property.
And there was something in the back of that house that just made me go, like,
"What is that?"
First one I saw was around 2011
that had the oval-shaped thing. And then that went away.
And then there was just the ground.
Yeah, it looks like there's cement there.
But look at this, Carl. There's something right there.
What is that?
Why does that keep changing?
What does that mean?
That must mean he's hiding something. What is he hiding?
[unsettling music playing]
[Cathy] My daughter, she's in that backyard.
[Carl] I'm doubtful that he put her remains there
because he lived in a different location when Aundria disappeared.
Given that there was a wooded area right across the street from the Bowman house
where they had lived at the time, the most obvious conclusion,
if he killed her, was that he took her body
and disposed of it into that wooded area.
And Cathy keeps saying, "No, she's buried in his backyard."
But I can't reconcile how he would have killed her and then
five, six months later put her body in that backyard.
But she's convinced.
[Cathy] My daughter's there.
[music fades]
[Cathy] If you come down here...
Right there. Probably 20 feet off the backside of his house.
-[tense music playing] -[inhaling, exhaling]
I didn't tell her she was crazy or that that's a stupid theory.
I... I just kind of rolled with it.
[Cathy] I just became convinced he felt like he owned her.
And had the right to kill her. And had the right to bury her.
And he was going to keep her close.
I mean, that is the most far-reaching, far-fetched, but it fits.
Prove me wrong, Dennis. Come on, prove me wrong.
I know what you did, Dennis Bowman.
[truck engine revving]
And I know why you did it.
[Cathy seething]
[Cathy] I called the police, and I said,
"Get a search warrant. Her body's in the backyard."
You can't just go dig up somebody's yard because the mom has a feeling, you know.
But Dennis Bowman was at the top of the list of suspects.
[Det. Haverdink] But we didn't have any witnesses saying he did anything.
We didn't know if she's alive, if she's dead.
When we started meeting with him, he was a little standoffish.
He always denied any involvement.
[Dennis] We had nothing to do with Aundria's disappearance.
I will swear that on a stack of Bibles.
[Det. Haverdink] Aundria hasn't been seen or heard from in a very long time.
My assumption is that she is dead.
[Dennis] I've had that assumption for a long time.
-But you can't prove it. -[Det. Haverdink] I can't prove it.
How helpless they must have felt, huh?
I'll tell you, I felt pretty helpless.
[tense music playing]
But I just went like, "I'm going to get that motherfucker."
So I went billboard.
Billboard will push it in their face, won't it?
It was on the main road going from where Dennis lived.
I was taunting him.
"You know I know, Dennis. You know I know."
Now everybody else is gonna know.
[Kim] More power to her getting this going to find answers.
That's amazing that she did this and pushed so hard.
[Cathy] I was on him on Facebook.
"Your bad karma is breathing down your neck, Dennis Bowman,
and it's never going to forget your name."
[producer] Do you ever worry about posting stuff like that?
No. Never. Never.
I don't think Dennis Bowman's brave enough to come after somebody
toe-to-toe with him, you know.
[suspenseful music swelling]
[Det. Fuller] Have you ever been accused of that before that?
[Dennis] No.
[sighing] It was shit, and she was feeding it to everybody.
And she's still feeding it.
The only reason the posters was put up, just was to hassle us.
[Det. Fuller] Did you take any of 'em down?
[Dennis] No. I want to find her.
[Det. Haverdink] I mean, Cathy would write letters to them on a daily basis.
She would call multiple times a day.
[Cathy] At one point, I called them up, and, of course, the machine answers,
and I, like, just rip into them until this machine goes, "Beep."
And I called them right back, and I ripped into them,
and the machine went, "Beep." And I called them right back.
"Beep." Do you know they disconnected their phone that next week?
[Cathy chuckling]
[Det. Haverdink] Cathy may have been very close to crossing some lines.
That definitely caused us to have to take a step back
and calm the Bowmans down.
[Cathy] Brenda called Detective Haverdink.
He said that, "Brenda told me that if you call her again,
she's going to file charges for harassment."
I wouldn't call that harassment. I'd call that perseverance and tenacity.
And a pit bull with lipstick.
That's right.
[Dennis] She gave up her kid, and she comes off like,
"Oh, my poor child. And we gave her to these monsters."
He had to prove he didn't do it, or I could stand and scream it
for the rest of my life.
What you gonna do about it?
[mouse clicking]
[Cathy] We won't give up on it. And we're going to push it, push it, push it.
[rousing music playing]
[music fades]
[somber music playing]
[Cathy] I was set up at a little desk in here in the living room,
and it was early in the morning,
and I had been trying to build the Facebook page a little bit more.
And I was thinking nothing was ever gonna happen.
[cell phone ringing]
[Cathy] And the phone rang, and I picked it up, and it's Metta.
And the first thing Metta said was, "They got him."
Somebody from Facebook messaged me that was friends with the neighbor.
And they said, "They're at the Bowman property."
"And there are so many police cars sitting out in his yard."
-[sirens wailing] -[Cathy] And I was just like, "Finally..."
"...they're going to charge Dennis Bowman for the murder of my daughter."
[tense music playing]
[Dennis, to himself] Six cops come at me out of nowhere.
Slam me against the window and said I'm under arrest.
They won't tell me what for.
I didn't kill my daughter.
There's no goddamn way.
Thirty-one years ago she walked out of our life.
We have no idea where she is.
I didn't murder my daughter.
[Lt. Squyres] Good morning, Mr. Bowman.
I'm Lieutenant Squyres, and this is Detective Smith.
Do you know why we're here?
I have no freakin' idea.
-[Lt. Squyres] None? -None.
[Lt. Squyres] You've been waiting for me.
You gonna tell me why I was arrested?
[Lt. Squyres] Absolutely, I'm gonna tell you why you were arrested.
I'm the guy that you have been looking over your shoulder
waiting for to show up for most of your life.
And now it's here.
Your eyes okay?
Kinda, yeah.
Goody-goody, so you're a Norfolk cop.
[Lt. Squyres] That's correct.
You're under arrest for the homicide in 1980
that you did when you killed that fighter pilot's wife in Virginia.
You're out of your freakin' mind.
That's why we're here.
[music fades]
[ending theme music playing]
[music fades]