Girls Might Have Been Dead More Than a Year, Police Say

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Police Look for Clues in Frozen Corpses Deaths

Officials are focusing on the backyard at the former home of a woman suspected of killing two of three adopted daughters and keeping one in a freezer.

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The 7-year-old was found wandering on a Calvert street Friday, dressed in a soiled nightgown, her body covered in bruises. That led sheriff's deputies to search Bowman's home, where they found the two bodies encased in a block of ice in the freezer, they said.

Bowman had been receiving $2,400 a month -- $800 for each of her adopted daughters -- through a federal program that aids people who adopt children who had been in foster care.

Bowman's adoptions were approved by a D.C. Superior Court judge after a background investigation by a private agency under contract with the child services agency. Records of the adoptions remain confidential under D.C. law.

The case is prompting discussion among child-welfare advocates in the region about developing a standardized protocol to ensure thorough examinations of prospective adoptive parents and increasing post-adoption monitoring. Most states and the District have no post-adoption monitoring systems, experts said.

Debra Byrd, president of the DC Metropolitan Foster and Adoptive Parent Association, a support group, said financial stability is a must for parents seeking to adopt. "I would consider bankruptcy to be a reason to not go ahead with the adoption," she said.

As of last month, 2,295 people who adopted from the District were receiving the tax-free federal subsidy of $800 a month per child, said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).

Meanwhile, some details of Bowman's background emerged.

A spokeswoman for Suburban Hospital in Bethesda said Bowman did secretarial work there from September 2004 to June 2006. She worked as a patient appointment scheduler at the Center for Ambulatory Surgery in the District from May 1989 to June 1993, then again from May 1998 to December 2000, according to a spokeswoman for the facility, which recently changed its name to MedStar Surgery Center.

In 1999, according to D.C. Superior Court records, Bowman, in a vehicle, pulled alongside the 72-year-old man's car and angrily demanded that he pay her for damages to her car caused during an earlier accident. The man, who was with a woman, quoted Bowman as yelling: "I want my $900. . . . If that [expletive] wasn't sitting next to you, I'd whup your [expletive] right now."

He said Bowman continued to follow him and threaten him that day, at one point saying she would "get the drug boys around the corner" to break into his house and beat him. Bowman received a 6-month suspended sentenced and was put on probation for a year.

It is unclear whether background investigators knew about or considered that case in evaluating Bowman as a prospective adoptive parent. Thomas Curcio, president of the nonprofit Board of Child Care, the private agency hired by the city to evaluate Bowman, has not responded to phone messages seeking a comment on the case.

When the 7-year-old spoke with Calvert authorities Friday, she said her mother had beaten her, but she spoke kindly about a man she considered to be her father. He is not her biological father, authorities said, but her mother's boyfriend.