A Maryland woman accused of killing two of her adopted daughters and keeping their bodies in a freezer has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the abuse of a third daughter after the girl confronted her in a Calvert County court.
The girl, who was 7 in September 2008 when she was found wandering around her Lusby neighborhood in a bloodstained nightshirt after escaping through a window, read a statement in a soft voice in which she said people "should never do things to a little girl" that 44-four-year-old Renee Bowman did to her.
Judge Marjorie L. Clagett sentenced Bowman to the maximum sentence allowed because of the horrific nature of the crime.
Bowman pleaded guilty in September to first-degree child abuse. She has a separate trial scheduled in Montgomery County on first- and second-degree murder charges.
Calvert County sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Jasmine and Minnet Bowman encased in ice in their mother's Lusby home while investigating an abuse complaint involving the third daughter. Police believe Minnet Bowman was 9 years old and Jasmine Bowman was 7 years old at the time of their deaths. All three girls were adopted.
Investigators believe the murders occurred in May 2006 in a house that Bowman rented in Rockville, police said. Both girls died of asphyxiation, he said.
"I think you could see this was not a fresh scene," Montgomery County police spokesman Lt. Paul Starks said in March. "There were hurdles, because establishing the timeline came to our attention months and years after they had been determined to have been killed."
