ALLEGAN COUNTY — The recent release of "Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter," a trending documentary on Netflix , gives a never-before-seen glimpse into the Bowman household through recorded phone calls, conversations and letters between Dennis and Brenda Bowman, as well as their interactions with police.
The documentary covers the cold case of 14-year-old Aundria Bowman, who was murdered by Hamilton resident Dennis Bowman, her adopted father, in 1989. The story is told primarily by her birth mother, Cathy Terkanian, in her quest for justice.
But interspersed in the narrative are recordings and letters obtained by documentary-makers from police, providing more insight than ever before into the family from which Aundria planned to escape.
More: Hamilton cold case subject of Netflix's 'Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter'
More: Five local takeaways from Aundria Bowman documentary 'Into the Fire'
The first recordings of Dennis and Brenda used in "Into the Fire" focus on the couple's adoption of Aundria, who was born to Terkanian at age 16 and originally named Alexis Badger. The Bowmans met while Brenda was in high school and married in 1971, after Dennis returned from Navy bootcamp.
“I knew she was the one just as soon as I met her,” Dennis said in the recording.
The Bowmans moved to San Diego for six months, then to Norfolk, Virginia, which Dennis chose as his duty station.
Meanwhile, around the time Alexis Badger was nine months old, Terkanian surrendered her to the adoption system in Norfolk.
The Bowmans applied for adoption after doctors discovered Brenda had a double uterus. The chances of her getting pregnant were slim, the couple said.
“I was never supposed to have any, and we got the miracle of adopting,” Brenda said in a recording.
The Bowmans eventually returned to West Michigan and settled in Hamilton. When Aundria was 13, Brenda became pregnant with the couple's biological daughter, Vanessa. In 1989, after Vanessa was born, recordings spelled trouble for Brenda, Dennis and Aundria.
“When she turned 12, 13, it was like somebody just flipped a switch,” Dennis said. “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 a fist through the front window of the door.”
After her sudden change in behavior, the couple claims, Brenda and Dennis took her to counseling at church. In a recording from the documentary, Brenda shared that, during a fight, Aundria claimed Dennis had molested her. The family spoke with a minister about the allegations while Brenda and Dennis were in the room.
“She admitted that nobody touched her,” Dennis said in a recording. “It was a lie but she was trying to get her way.”
The day Aundria 'ran away'
The day Aundria went missing, Brenda told police Dennis picked her up from school before driving Brenda to work with Vanessa, so Aundria could focus on her homework.
In recordings played in "Into the Fire," Dennis claims the house was unlocked when he returned. He said he laid Vanessa on the couch and went upstairs, where he found the lock on the couple's bedroom broken, and an overnight bag and cash missing.
“We had gotten our income tax money. Some of it was in the bank, but there was cash in an envelope and (Dennis) kept it hidden in his dresser. She took that,” Brenda said in a recording. “She took all the change whatsoever she could get out of the baby’s bank and her purple coat.”
After realizing Aundria was gone, Dennis claims he called police, who came to the house to investigate.
“Aundria disappeared," Dennis said in a recording. “She was gone. She was just gone."
In the days to come, the Bowmans borrowed cars from friends and neighbors and drove around the area at night when Brenda got off work.
“It got to a point that Denny says, ‘You gotta stop,'" Brenda said in a recording. "'You have a baby at home. You have got to stop.' We were two grieving parents and our daughter was missing.”
The recordings were presumably taken around 2010, when the case was reopened following the discovery of a Jane Doe in Racine, Wisconsin, at first believed to be Aundria. Terkanian was alerted to her biological daughter's disappearance, and began a decade-long advocacy to see Dennis behind bars.
The police connected with the Bowmans, explaining they wanted to solve the case and provide closure.
“Some closure,” said Brenda in a recording from the meeting. “There’s never any closure.”
“Let’s get down to business," Dennis said. "Let’s find my daughter.”
Dennis’ previous convictions
In 1980, Dennis fired multiple gunshots at a teenager in Holland after she refused to go into the woods with him. He was originally charged with attempted murder, but pled to assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct. The teen was saved when she flagged down a passing car.
“We conclude that he is a danger to women if he is not confined,” a judge wrote afterward, when Dennis was sentenced to 5-10 years in prison.
He was also arrested for breaking and entering and stalking a coworker. When his home was searched following his arrest, police found a duffel bag containing the victim’s lingerie, a mask and an illegal sawed-off shotgun. Dennis served one year in the county jail.
After his arrest following the 1980 attempted murder altercation, Bowman told police, “You got to let me go. I got to pick up my little daughter from school.”
Brenda moved to Kinross in the Upper Peninsula with six-year-old Aundria while Dennis served his time. Aundria would visit Dennis in the correctional facility with Brenda.
“She always had a chip on her shoulder. ‘Well, all the kids know. I’m a prisoner’s daughter,'” Brenda said in a recording. “And I said, ‘You’re not the only one.’ Heaven forbid I took that child into a prison visiting room.”
Conflicts with Terkanian
Terkanian, Brenda and Dennis crossed paths frequently in the years before Dennis' conviction. During a Missing in Michigan Conference in 2013, Brenda, in recordings obtained for the documentary, shared how Terkanian confronted her. Brenda claimed she'd taken a notebook and pictures to share with Terkanian.
“I said, ‘Today she has two mothers here. I want to thank you for coming, Cathy.’ And that’s all I said,” Brenda said in the recording.
Terkanian wasn't interested. She demanded Brenda be honest about her husband's criminal record.
“She acted like such a witch,” Brenda said. “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.”
After the argument, Terkanian left and Brenda received and lit a candle for Aundria.
“And I thought, ‘Well, who’s the better mother here? She won’t even walk across stage for her daughter?’” Brenda said.
In the years that followed, Terkanian sent letters and repeatedly called Dennis and Brenda, which led to them disconnecting their phone and contacting the police.
“She gave up (Aundria) and she comes off like ‘Oh, my poor child, and we gave her to these monsters,'” Dennis said in a recording obtained for the documentary.
Terkanian purchased a billboard near the Bowman home, hung missing posters throughout the community and became more vocal on social media.
“The only reason the posters was put up, just to hassle us,” Dennis said before a detective asked if he'd taken any of them down. He responded: “No. I want to find her.”
In another interview with detectives, Dennis said, “We had nothing to do with Aundria’s disappearance. I will swear on a stack of Bibles."
When police began to suspect Dennis' involvement in a separate murder in Norfolk, Virginia, officials brought the couple in, presumably to speak more about Terkanian. Really, they wanted to collect a DNA sample, according to "Into the Fire."
“A year-and-a-half of hassles by some crazy lady calling us murderers and spreading rumors all over Allegan County,” Dennis said in a recording from that meeting.
“Cathy hears something that’s been misconstrued, and then she misconstrues it more,” Brenda said. “Then it goes back to Aundria’s lies about, ‘My dad did this. My mom did this. Blah blah.’ To this day, through all of this, I can’t stand a liar.”
‘I’m the guy you’ve been looking over your shoulder for.’
In 2019, Dennis was arrested at a local gas station for the murder and rape of Kathleen Doyle in Norfolk. As he sat in the back of the police car, not yet told why he'd been taken into custody, he rambled in confusion and talked about Aundria.
“I didn’t kill my daughter. There’s no goddamn way,” Dennis said to himself in a recording obtained for the documentary. “Thirty-one years ago, she walked out of our life. We have no idea where she is. I didn’t murder my daughter.”
Later, in an interview room, Lieutenant Squyres and Detective Jon Smith of Norfolk introduced themselves. A first name for Squyres is not given in "Into the Fire."
“Do you know why we're here?” Squyres asked.
“I have no freakin’ idea," Dennis responded.
"I’m the guy that you have been looking over your shoulder for, waiting to show up for most of your life, and now it’s here," Squyres said.
In a room down the hall, Brenda also spoke with detectives.
“For 47 years, you’ve been being a very dedicated wife, giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it appears to me that he betrayed that trust, that loyalty that you extended to him,” Squyres told a crying Brenda. “And you being a good person would never imagine that he could so something this horrific. He’s going to be indicted for murder and rape.”
“My life is upside down right now,” Brenda said in response. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Police used DNA evidence from a green bedspread to narrow down suspects to Dennis, technology that wasn't available in the 1980s.
Crime scene photos depict a violent struggle. Doyle’s bed was pushed off the box spring, and the mouthpiece on her phone was disabled, preventing her from calling for help. Doyle suffered multiple stab wounds to her chest and back, and a circular burn on her cheek from a Lincoln Log. The cause of death was strangulation.
Sue Engweiler, a relative of the Bowmans, called Brenda after Dennis was arrested. In that phone call, according to Engweiler, Brenda said: “We’re getting a lawyer. He didn’t do anything wrong. They’ve got the wrong guy.”
Brenda also told Engweiler it couldn’t be Dennis because they lived in Michigan at the time of the murder.
Smith disproved that claim using files from Dennis’ arrest in May 1980. In a court transcript of the case, the lawyer representing Dennis said his client wasn't present for a hearing because he was away for a two-week summer camp requirement in Norfolk. The file was dated Sept. 16. Kathleen Doyle was murdered Sept. 11.
Smith and Dennis’ conversations skated around the murder of Doyle. Smith would fulfill food requests and let Dennis guide the pace of the interview, according to "Into the Fire."
“Oh, he’s not even in here. No, he took my cuffs off and shut the door and walked out,” Dennis said in a recorded phone call to Brenda. “He got me a Starbucks, deep roast. He said we could talk while I was drinking my coffee. He’s been real good, honey.”
Smith’s goal was to get a confession from Dennis about the murder of Doyle. Dennis spoke about a variety of things before his confession, such as his health, his blade collection and his parents. After hours, Dennis began to share his side of the night Doyle was murdered.
“I go to the two weeks reserve and I’m there for a week and a half. I’m 600 miles away from anybody I know, I’m wound up like an eight-day clock,” Dennis said. “So after about a week and a half, I said ‘Fuck it. I gotta get off this ship.’ I went out and wandered around and I walked into a little bar and I sat down and ordered a double bourbon and Coke. Well, I got stupid drunk.”
Dennis' story of events doesn't match the violent struggle shown at the crime scene. He told police he broke into Doyle’s home using a small pen knife through the back window, adding he was just looking for cash.
“I walk past this house. All the lights are out. There’s no car in the drive. And I said ‘I wonder if they got some money lying around,” Dennis said. “... I almost fell into the house. I was drunk.”
Dennis said he walked through the living room and stopped in the kitchen to look in the cookie jar for money before heading toward the bedroom. When he walked into the bedroom, he said, Doyle sat up and screamed. He told police he covered her mouth with his left hand and Doyle grabbed his right, causing the knife to stab her chest.
“When I started to calm down, she was still lying on the bed and she was moving. And I said, ‘Lady, I’m leaving.’ and I walked out the front door," Dennis said.
Smith asked Dennis if he could put into words or describe how he felt in that moment.
“It was a demon,” Dennis said before drawing a stick figure of a man representing him with a blacked out circle on his chest and a stick figure demon sitting adjacent.
“The demon’s in here,” Dennis said while filling in the black circle. “And it still tries to get out. But I won’t let it.”
Smith then pressed Dennis on the inconsistencies in his story.
“You beat the hell out of that girl. You stabbed the hell out of that girl,” Smith said. Dennis insisted, “I only stabbed her one time. … Because I can still see it in my mind.”
After Smith repeated the autopsy findings, Dennis shut down.
“I didn’t do that,” he said repeatedly to himself in the recording. “I’ve done it again. I’ve done it again.”
What really happened to Aundria
After his conviction in the Doyle case, detectives sought a confession from Dennis for the murder of his adopted daughter.
When detectives asked Brenda what she thought, in a recording obtained for the documentary, she said: “I don’t know what to believe right now. I really don’t. There’s always that hope that Aundria’s not dead.”
Brenda and Dennis continually communicated through phone calls and letters. Dennis sent Brenda gifts, including flowers. As the search for Aundria continued, the interception of their conversations became key evidence, according to "Into the Fire."
“We should have done something when you got out the first time. We should have gone to counseling. We should have gotten to the bottom of everything," Brenda told Dennis in one phone call.
Later in the call, the couple exchanged 'I love yous' and Brenda said “Even though I damn you at times.” Dennis replied with: “And I don’t blame you one bit, sweetie. I should be home. I’m not.”
In a different call, after Dennis told Brenda he loved her, the couple went back and forth.
“Forty years ago, you should’ve thought of that," Brenda said.
“Forty years ago, I was going nuts though,” Dennis said.
“Forty years ago, I wish to hell you never went to Virginia,” Brenda said.
Police eventually decided to exploit Dennis' interest in staying near his wife.
“Well, you know Virginia’s gonna be impossible for an actual visit,” Brenda told Dennis in one call. “Sue asked me if I was gonna pack up and go live in Virginia for a while. I said, ‘No, I can’t do that.’”
Police made a tentative offer to Dennis, saying if he agreed to be honest about Aundria, they would consider allowing him to stay in Michigan to serve his sentence.
In a phone conversation between Dennis, Brenda and their daughter Vanessa, Brenda told Dennis that, while it would be nice to keep him in Michigan, he shouldn’t admit to something he didn’t do.
“I keep telling ‘em … I told him (police) yesterday, I said, ‘You don’t kill family. You don’t. You get mad at ‘em. You scream at ‘em. Sometimes you fight with ‘em. But you don’t kill ‘em,'" Dennis said. “... They have no idea what real family is, I think.”
Vanessa shared how the police dug holes in the family's backyard.
“I don’t know what they're looking for. I really don’t," Dennis said.
But not long after, Dennis requested a supervised meeting with Brenda, in which he admitted Aundria died in March 1989, the day he reported her missing.
“Honey, I’ve done some stuff that I’m really ashamed of. Honest to God. Aundria’s dead,” he said. “She’s been dead from the start.”
Dennis claimed he argued with Aundria, who was trying to run away and threatened to continue telling others he'd molested her. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck, Dennis said, as Brenda begged him in tears not to admit to something he didn’t do.
“She was gone. I couldn’t lose you and Vanessa, she was only 14 months old. And I didn’t know what to do 'cause I knew if I called and told them anything that they’d put me back in prison,” Dennis said.
Dennis told Brenda he moved the body into a barn in the backyard, where Aundria laid for a couple of days wrapped in a blanket. He said he later had to "cut off" Aundria's legs to fit her body into a barrel he set by the neighbors' trash.
“Thirty-somethin’ years,” Brenda said between sobs.
“As long as I didn’t tell you, you had hope," Dennis said. "I’m sorry for deceiving you.”
“I know what your fear was,” Brenda said. “But it was our daughter. You should’ve got her help.”
In conversations with police, Dennis claimed the search for Aundria and the posters were "BS." He didn't refute his original claim she'd stolen money, adding he burned the bag and coat she'd had, and the money must've burned with it. When he filed the missing persons report for Aundria, he said, the fire was still partially burning in a barrel as he spoke with police.
Police asked Dennis how he felt about claims locals had seen Aundria in and around Holland after her disappearance.
“Good," he said. "'Cause it took the heat off of me.”
Finding the body
In order for Dennis to be charged and convicted, it was important to have Aundria’s remains. This became a sort of “cat-and-mouse” game between he and police.
“Just because she broke her neck, that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her,” Dennis told police in questioning. Later in the interview, Dennis said, “The best lie is one that’s mostly true.”
In a phone call following his confession, Brenda said: “No one knows the truth but you and God.”
Brenda also spoke to Dennis about frustrations with the reaction of family and friends.
“She worded it like you chopped Aundria up when she was alive,” Brenda said of one person. “And I started writing back. ‘You don’t know half the truth of what you think you know.’"
Throughout the investigation, Brenda continually relied on her relationship with God to guide her, according to "Into the Fire."
“I can only tell you what I was told that day and have believed in for all these years. I got my Philippians 4:13 in one corner and I got Isaiah 41:10 at the bottom,” she told Dennis. “You’re not gonna take my love away from me or anything or my God. This is the way I am and if you don’t like it, oh well."
In one letter to Brenda intercepted by police, Dennis claimed he hadn't dismembered Aundria after all, but had wrapped her body in a clean, white sheet, bound her hands and feet with red ribbon, covered her with herbs and buried her on the outskirts of a private cemetery in a tarp. Dennis wrote in the letter that Aundria was wearing jeans, her favorite sweater and a gold necklace with a heart and a cross on it.
“In 30 years, I have passed her more than 100 times. I’m sure she’s with God,” Dennis wrote.
That story was a lie. Dennis admitted he made it up to make Brenda feel better.
“Now, you say you don’t know the truth. The truth is I love you. I love Vanessa and I loved Aundria,” Dennis wrote to Brenda. “You've known me for 50 years, and you say you don’t know me anymore? Well then you’ll have to make up your own mind. I will never forget you. I have you forever carved on my heart.”
Police confronted Brenda, according to the documentary, urging her to get the true story from Dennis. She shared during phone calls the night terrors she had about Aundria, as well as the emotional toll the case had taken.
“The prosecutor here still will not charge without her body. If it came to the time that you decide to tell me what I need to know, you would stay in Michigan for life, which would enable us visits. That’s not guaranteed, but I have to hang onto (anything) I can have,” Brenda said.
“I still want closure with knowing where she is. I want our baby girl home with me in a very pretty urn. Then I can finally realize that she’s home where she belongs after all the years she’s been gone."
“The only help we’ll get from now on is from God," Dennis said.
In the end, Dennis confessed he'd buried Aundria and the barrel in the backyard of their previous home, then relocated the body to their current home after they moved.
“I will tell you exactly where Aundria is," Dennis said in a phone call to Brenda. "She’s very close. ... She’s been right there the whole time. Now you know.”
Police found a barrel containing Aundria’s remains mixed with diapers and wrappers, buried in the backyard.
“All I could say to him [the detective] was, ‘At least he didn’t lie to me this time,'" Brenda said in a recording about the day they discovered the body.
Dennis was sentenced to 35-50 years in prison for Aundria’s murder in 2022, a sentence he’ll serve out in Virginia.
After his conviction for the murders of Doyle and Aundria, Dennis admitted to police he sexually assaulted a woman in San Francisco while he was stationed there, had sexually assaulted two women in San Diego, and had sexually assaulted a woman in a trailer park.
“That’s all the dark stuff in my closet,” Dennis said to detectives — but as "Into the Fire" points out, whether or not he's telling the truth remains to be seen.
— Cassidey Kavathas is the politics and court reporter at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at ckavathas@hollandsentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter @CassideyKava.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: 'Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter' — Aundria's story as told by Dennis and Brenda Bowman
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