ROCKVILLE, Md. — A Maryland woman convicted of killing two adopted daughters and storing their bodies in a home freezer was sentenced today to life without parole.
Judge Michael J. Algeo handed down 44-year-old Renee Bowman’s sentence. She had been convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree child abuse.
Bowman kept the bodies of the two young girls on ice for months while she continued to collect subsidies paid to parents who adopt special-needs children in the District of Columbia, receiving a total of about $150,000 after adopting the girls.
In January, Bowman was sentenced in Calvert County to 25 years in prison for abusing her surviving daughter. That girl escaped from Bowman’s home in September 2008 and was found wandering the neighborhood. Authorities searched Bowman’s home and found the bodies in the freezer.
The survivor, now 9 and living with new foster parents, testified in the trial about the abuse she and her sisters endured — being beaten with a baseball bat and shoes and choked until they lost consciousness.
The sisters, Minnet and Jasmine Bowman, were both younger than 10 when they died, though authorities were never able to determine exactly when the murders occurred. Nobody knew they were missing, and there are no records the children were ever enrolled in school.
Prosecutors said Bowman killed them while the family was living in Rockville and took the freezer with her when the family moved first to Charles County and later to Lusby, in Calvert County.
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