Gatha Bowman /// Part 1 /// 646 | Forensic Files

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[Music] there will be no end said Dorothy Layton 37 year old wife mother and business
owner gatha Bowman went missing on February 15 1993. that year February 15th was a Monday and a busy
one for gatha there was a lot going on that day it is fairly easy to narrow down when
gatha was last seen to probably a window of just a few hours however due to the untruthfulness of
several individuals at the very center of this case it has been nearly impossible to know
the exact hour that gatha was last seen and more importantly by who gather was well liked and adored by many
she was smart she was a natural beauty and she loved being a mother gatha owned permedica an up-and-coming
company that provided Health Care to those confined to their homes Joe Valerio who worked with gatha for over two years
said gatha was an inspiration to his career choices quote she had a heart as big as all Outdoors
one of the saddest aspects to this case is it gatha was so well liked by everyone
but when it comes down to getting some form of justice for this lady some of those closest to gatha chose to
protect themselves rather than help a friend or even a loved one in 1999 Dorothy Layton gaither's mother
told the news journal quote I know with other people like in a traffic accident or something
there's an end and this one there won't be an end I say nay it's been a long time coming and way
overdue but it is time for those to come forward especially the ones who knew her the
best to come forward and come together and tell the truth about what happened to Gaither Bowman
this is True Crime garage [Music] [Music] gatha Bowman was a well-liked and well-known business owner she and her
second husband Gary Bowman owned and operated pre-medica health care which is described as a diversified medical
supply business and a nationwide provider of health care services and products offering free delivery free
home evaluation and no charge for respiratory therapy consultation the company's products include
wheelchairs oxygen bedside items dressings pumps Respiratory Care and More pre-medica also offers Furniture
examining tables and scales for doctors offices as well as uniforms gatha Bowman
is listed as the president of the company now we say here captain that gatha and her husband Gary Bowman owned
this business however it's clear that this was gatha's business Gary worked elsewhere he had other jobs he would
come in and help from time to time but he was not a health care professional gatha was the healthcare professional
and she was the president of pre-medica but she was also the official owner operator of this business yeah sometimes
they put the husband or the spouse of the individual on the business so they can get better business loan correct my
guest here Captain is that we have both names on the business simply for the purposes of the banks this business was
a success and you can hear there what they are offering they're offering a wide range of products to their
potential customers plus they offer a wide area of coverage for their customers they provide service to
residents of Mansfield Mount Vernon Belleville Mount Galena and Upper Sandusky Ohio so a wide coverage area
that they are supplying these medical supplies to their customers and as you can hear you get a lot of bang for your
buck if you are dealing with pre-medica they offer all of these free services to
go along with you purchasing supplies from them so the business was a success and it was a growing business and in
fact life in general was or seem to be a success for gatha and Gary Bowman now Gary was gatha's second husband the two
had a daughter together her name is Christina now where our story picks up Christina is still rather
young she is three years old getting close to turning four gatha has a son from her previous marriage his name is
Jason he is about 11 years old at the time of the story Jason's father is many would say still
very much in the picture but that's an an understatement he is very much in the picture yes but
gatha and her ex were doing the shared custody thing and from everything I could find and from what everyone was
saying the parenting relationship was a very good one a very strong relationship
so no bad blood there between ex-wife and ex-husband our story Captain is going to start off here on a Monday yeah
Monday February 15 1993. at the time gatha is living with her current husband Gary and the two
children Jason from her previous marriage and Christina they are living on Impala Drive in Richland County Ohio
this home address Bears significant importance to this case in my humble opinion and we will get into the reasons
why as we get into the details of the timeline and the investigation itself for those of you that are more familiar
with the great state of Ohio you may know that Richland county is about an hour's Drive North and a little to the
east of Columbus Ohio which is in the the Center The Heart of Ohio the county seat of Richland county is
Mansfield which we have referenced in other cases previously covered here in the garage the population was about 127
000 residents for the county back then so not a super large population but not small either Mansfield's population back
then was over 50 000 people so much much larger than any of these suburbs surrounding Columbus Ohio at the time
now we said our story will start off with Monday February 15 1993 and that's true but to be clear here there is some
confusion here Captain because we will end up with reports stating that this is the last time gatha was seen or heard
from what will kick off this investigation is the missing persons report a missing
person's report was filed with Richland County Sheriff's Office on the following
day Tuesday February 16th gatha didn't come home the previous day on the 15th and does not arrive for work on the
morning of the 16th both which is incredibly out of character for this mother and the owner of this business is
it uncharacteristic of her not to come home at night because does she travel to for sales or anything yes that's correct
it's uncharacteristic for her not to come home that night and you're right though she is very involved in the
business as one would expect the owner and operator of a successful business as we said she's the president of primedica
and frankly she is practically running the whole show over there you know she's very Hands-On she's
the leader everybody that works for her is under her lead and they actually they
are under her leadership as not just the boss and the owner of the business but also they're trying to grow their
careers as well right and they say you know she was an inspiration to see her running this operation and the things
that I learned from her it was an inspiration to my career and my career choices going forward she was not just a
leader but an inspiration so her employees they don't hear from her on the 16th well that's strange not only is
she a no-show which is completely out of character but there's no communication to any of the employees as to where she
could be why she's not at work that day so she's reported missing on this day on
February 16 1993. so on this day captain the Richland County Sheriff's Office just caught a new case a missing
person's case of course they did all of the usual procedures checking with family friends people at
her work no one seemed to know where gatha was Nor where she could be but gatha wasn't the only thing missing
here we also have her 1990 Dodge van that was missing as well reports have people seeing gatha last seen leaving
her work on the 15th that Monday and this is listed between 6 45 p.m and 7 P.M so a rather precise time there
however it will Circle back to these reports later because as you and I always say captain the devil is in the
details so one important clue here Captain is that Gaither told more than one person that day that she had a
business meeting that evening however she did not say where this business meeting would take place or
with whom the business meeting was for right now at the time before she went missing no one thought anything of this
right she's a successful business owner and regularly had business meetings both
via phone in person and frankly even sometimes on location after all she is running a medical supply business and
thus she has suppliers to work with as well she's essentially the middleman here well let's unpack this for a second
because like you said it's it's very uncommon for her not to show up for work it's very uncommon for her not to show
up at home after work but if she's leaving work at almost 7 pm and she's stating to employees and other
co-workers I I have a meeting later a business meeting this means it's it's probably pretty be common for her to get
back pretty late and I know a lot of times in those situations the spouse of the person that works
really late will just stay on their own routine they don't wait for the person to get home they just go to bed when
they go to bed when you're a business owner when you're a manager when you're high up typically there is no set hours
for your job now your routine may fall mostly within the hours of 9 A.M to 5 p.m however as you can see here she's
the owner operator it's very likely she's often going in early to be the first one there and she's often probably
the last one or one of the last ones to leave that day so you're exactly right there Captain probably not a probably
not super easy to pin down her routine her routine was probably more dictated by the business itself right and really
what we're dealing with here in the early stages of this investigation for Richland County and
their sheriff's deputies and their investigation would be now we're starting to talk about a window between
roughly 7 p.m and then whatever time she was due to be home that night or whatever time her husband would have
expected her to come home again that might not be such a hard and fast timeline or deadline but then we have
the fact that we know she doesn't arrive at work the next morning so we've already started our timeline of the
question the time that's in question here for this missing person's case well I just want to point this out because I
was in a relationship for a long time with somebody that worked in the medical field and if she was scheduled to get
home late I just went to bed so I couldn't tell you what time she got home and then sometimes if she had an early
shift she was up and out the door before I woke up so in this scenario if that's something
that's common for gatha then in her family there might not be any alarms or red flags going off for them at this time
period right there was no red flags going off for the people at her work based off of saying that she was going
to have this business meeting but of course that's going to change when she doesn't show up the next day or as the
days go by that she is missing right and so everything seems pretty routine until
she doesn't come home that night and then underline that and circle it when she doesn't show up for work the next
morning now after she is reported missing to authorities of course this business meeting takes on a whole new
level of Suspicion and I'm sure that the people closest to her were thinking very hard
am I sure she didn't say who she was meeting am I sure she didn't say where it would be or even what time this
meeting was to start well it's weird to have a meeting start obviously she's leaving work a quarter till seven seven
pm so unless she's going straight there a meeting starting on a Monday night at 7
30 p.m maybe 8 00 p.m that seems pretty late to me I agree and but I think a lot
of this has to do with um the type of business that you may be in you know when I was working in
aviation a lot of the people that I worked with were at other locations here in central Ohio and so it wouldn't be
terribly uncommon with us having very busy daytime schedules to right mix a little bit of business with pleasure
right and say hey you want to meet at this roosters or at this restaurant that is halfway between your house and my
house or the hangar and where I'm currently my office why don't we meet there right after work and we can have a
little bit of good food and a couple drinks and and figure everything out while we're there this is going to take
us to Wednesday February 17th so two days after she went missing yeah gaither's 1990 Dodge van is located by
Richland County sheriff's deputies and the report is this on February 17th Richland County sheriff's deputies found
gatha's 1990 Dodge van in the parking lot of the Best Western motel on Laver Road it was covered with snow so
deputies believed the vehicle was there before the previous night's storm so this is interesting and this is going
to help to fill in a big blank on our timeline here our time and question so they find this vehicle
the distance from her home she lives on Impala Drive in Mansfield Laver road is in Mansfield as well there
are three General routes that one would take if they were to go from where her vehicle was found to her home or from
her home to where her vehicle was found those routes range in distance from 1.3 miles to 2 miles
a three to four minute drive time so she's missing and this whole time that she's missing her vehicle was very
nearby the statement about the snow is very interesting to me as well you know how does this affect our
timeline here well yes we find the vehicle within 48 Hours of when she's last reported to have been seen or heard
from right but now we have the deputies that are saying look you know this is February it didn't it it's covered in
snow this vehicle and it didn't snow before the 16th so this vehicle got here it was parked
here in in and sat here during that snowstorm whatever happened to gatha if the vehicle is involved in her going missing
well the vehicle might be able to supply you with some Clues one but it's already
supplied you with shortening the window of time on when it is that something could have
happened to her and just so we're clear she goes missing on that Monday and what
law enforcement is saying is that that vehicle her van was in that location by that Monday night or at least by that
Tuesday morning right again shortening the window here now that location is of some interest to me and that is because
they state that it's in the parking lot of a Best Western motel now you go okay well did she drive this
vehicle there or did somebody place this vehicle there after something happened to her that we cannot say based off of
what the Richland County Sheriff's office has said about the vehicle they cannot say either well I'm guessing
because it's 1993 that Best Western doesn't have a lot of CCTV footage yeah that's the thing here with this case if
we would have had some surveillance if we would have had some witness statements that had seen gatha or
interacted with gatha at this location that would really help out the investigation however the van itself per
the Richland County Sheriff's Office does not yield any clues we have this Best Western motel but attached to the
motel is a bar as well so it's not it's not easy to look at this situation and go okay well she was going to the hotel
well and something happened or she was going to this bar and something happened the problem with both of these
businesses there and where her vehicle is found in the parking lot is basically a shared parking lot so while the
newspaper May say It's the Best Western motel's parking lot it's a shared parking lot in fact those two buildings
and and uh businesses under different names are still there to this day well let's unpack this a little bit though
because obviously you'd meet some of your clients at your place of work and some of the clients that showed me I was
guessing at hospitals or the ER or doctor's offices things like that it's not how the realm of possibility that
there's a traveling salesman and he's in town and she says well where did he stay
he says well I was at the Best Western oh I'll just meet you at the bar and restaurant with inside the Best Western
you're right and it is a bar and restaurant and in fact the weird thing is today 30 years later it's no longer a
Best Western but a rather seedy roach motel it's a it's a pretty uh best roach Western there you go it's
not a Best Western anymore but whatever name it's under now I I'm not going to give any worse Western great Yelp
reviews for people to go and stay there however the bar and restaurant to this day still receives very good reviews and
they still serve food wouldn't be out of the question that she would be meeting somebody there and maybe want to grab a
bite to eat or a drink or two while they're meeting them the problem is and you all can picture this it's very
much like you would see on an old 90s episode of Law and Order when the detectives go out of course they're
going to go into the bar they're going to go into the motel they're going to ask the employees especially the ones
that were working there on the evening of the 15th and probably everybody that's working there on the 16th as well
because we don't have an exact minute when that van arrived there did you see gatha did she meet anybody
uh was there anybody that was here that said that they were meeting a woman that
owns a medical supply business the problem was especially with the bar and the bartenders was you weren't getting a
definitive answer you were you weren't getting a oh I can confirm that I've seen her but you also weren't getting I
can deny that I saw her what the answers you're getting is it's busy we get a lot
of people that come in and out and I can't say for certain if I saw her or not well on those locations are so much
harder for the staff to remember faces because those types of locations don't have
a ton of repeat customers they don't have a ton of regulars so unfortunately here Captain this is where and how this
investigation would sit for a good deal of time we have a missing woman that everyone is saying no way would she
leave her children she's a wonderful mother and no way would she leave her business her business was her pride and
joy it was her life's work so we have this missing person and then we find her vehicle less than 48 hours
after it's reported that she's last seen the van found abandoned in this parking
lot then we have the Richland County Sheriff's Office saying that this van yielded no clues as to where gatha could
be or what could have happened to her [Music] foreign we are back cheers mates hotel motel Holiday Inn roach motel best
years to you Best Western yeah I want to give not a sponsor I want to give a little mention here a dear
friend of mine and a dear friend of my family's Rebecca Mather Eckerman passed away late last month I knew Becky for 20
years she was a dear friend and she listened to our little garage show here and so do a lot of her loved ones and
friends so I just want everyone to know that we are thinking of you all and we'll pour a little out for Becky to the
good times cheers cheers to Becky yep and cheers to you captain now before the break we were saying that after finding
gaither's van less than 48 hours after she is missing this case sits stagnant for several
weeks this is until her body was located and the report reads the body of a woman was found in Delaware County has
been identified as the missing woman that was reported missing last month according to Richland County Sheriff's
Office Delaware County sheriff's deputies found the body of Gaither Bowman age 37 the positive
identification came after comparisons of dental records deputies said according to a spokesman for the Delaware
Sheriff's Department the county owned gravel storage facility where the body was found is on Dunham Road and Old
North South County Line Road that dead ended when Alum Creek Reservoir was put in the facility is west of Interstate
71. deputies had been working with other law enforcement agencies on the missing
persons case in fact another body was found recently in Franklin County which turned out to not be Bowman they
suspected it may have been her but it turned out to not be her an autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of
death so when she's found it's almost exactly one month's time after she goes missing
so she goes missing last reported to be seen on the 15th reported missing on the
16th van found on the 17th and then almost exactly one month later she's found in Delaware County and a little
more detail here we get some more details that come out we're going to be able to start to fill
in some of the blanks here because now we have a month's worth of time to sort out and figure out what happened
to this woman there are a lot of strange things in this timeline once we start to piece it
together and certainly what will be some obvious red flags in this timeline now we also have a better description of
where the body was found and how the body was found and this comes from the Ohio Attorney General's office So based
off of the article that we read previously it makes it sound like the Delaware County sheriff's deputies
happen to be out in this area and spotted her body well that might be the short version of it but the real version
of it is that an employee of the Delaware County Engineer's Office found human remains on March 16 1993 in
a gravel pile located at the property on Dunham road which is south of Route 37 East the body
was located on a gravel pile covered in trash and partially clothed and then we know that using dental records the
remains were later identified as gatha Bowman this is a property that is owned and operated by the county of Delaware
we see these properties in all of our counties out there right you you have these
properties a lot of them are tucked away sometimes out in the middle of nowhere if you live in a county that has extra
space if you want to call it that but they can be tucked away in the middle of nowhere sometimes and it's
often where you will see the County houses it's salt storage for snow removal right or in this case gravel and
such so this would be an area that is owned and operated by the Delaware County here in Ohio and they will use
this property there's probably not a lot of employees in and out of this property
but you're going to use this facility more as a storage an open air storage facility if you will and this is going
to be so you can maintain your roads and and things of that nature so an employee
stumbles upon this body these human remains and then phones it into Delaware County they come out and they check out
the area and they find our victim here partially clothed covered in trash and then to complicate matters more between
the times she went missing in mid February to when she's found in mid-march it was rather cold that year
it was a cold winter in 1993 and it snowed off and on quite a bit you may have had employees coming and going from
time to time during that course of the month and simply not noticing that the remains were there
in fact we have deputies that that later state that when they arrived on the scene the body still was partially
covered in snow and they believed based off of the weather from that winter that
at one time she likely was completely covered in snow yeah this case is so complex because we know certain things
that she left between 6 45 and 7 but who was she supposed to meet was she supposed to meet individual what she's
supposed to meet a group of people where were they supposed to meet at their work
or at this Best Western would you eat them in a box would you eat them with a fox
so we know she went missing but we find her car and we don't know if that's a crime scene because they don't
search that vehicle in depth but now we find her body but this seems like a dump
site this doesn't seem like where the murder actually took place well we do get some
autopsy information which can help us out here a little bit here Captain so what we have is it reads
officials may not know how Mansfield businesswoman Gaither Bowman died but they have agreed to treat her death as a
homicide gatha Bowman a 37 year old mother of two was found partially concealed under a
pile of household trash in Delaware County her van was found two days later after she went missing in the parking
lot of a Mansfield Best Western motel Witnesses said the van had been there since the morning of February 16th she
was last seen wearing cream-colored slacks and a blouse and a blazer a joint investigation team from Delaware and
Richland counties is appealing for information from anyone who may have seen Gaither Bowman after 6 45 pm on
February 15th Gaither Bowman's frozen body was found behind a pile of gravel in a Delaware county-owned gravel
storage area near Alum Creek Lake she apparently had changed clothes at least once since she disappeared
this according to a Delaware County Sheriff's Office investigator they go on to say that she was found wearing a
white skirt and a sweater Gaither Bowman had not sustained any visible injury and was wearing all of
her jewelry the household trash that covered her body included advertisements from a
Mansfield newspaper indicating that she may not have been killed at the site Delaware County coroner said the extreme
cold prevented any accurate estimation of the time of death or the date of Gaither Bowman's death he goes on to say
quote she could have been there since the day she went missing or she could have died
last week as cold as it was it was like being in a freezer and then of course at
the time what they're saying here Captain is that they could not determine the cause of death but that would be
determined later hopefully by the forensic Laboratories at the Ohio State University and they go on to say that
it's probably going to take us about a month or so to get those results back but interesting here
to hear that the determination immediately was to treat this as a homicide for those of
you that are new to True Crime or new to this show this is something that's pretty obvious to the captain and I
because what you see here something we've seen in many other cases gatha regardless of what happened to her
she didn't take her own life and then then conceal her own body right we have investigators and detectives that are on
scene they are witnessing the scene they have found her they're going through the
scene and one thing that they have decided on immediately is someone went to the trouble to try to conceal her and
like the coroner said given the Frozen temperatures at the time it's difficult to pin down the time of
death because it's like she was stored in a freezer for all of this time she could have died the day she went missing
she could have died last week what we can discern at the crime scene is that someone went to the trouble to try to
conceal her therefore we know that we are currently dealing with a homicide and we are going to work this as a
homicide investigation starting now and do that we're not just going to sit on our hands and wait for the Ohio State
University to come back with their information to tell us yes in fact this is how she was killed we can start
working this immediately as a homicide so we just went from a missing person's case to a homicide investigation again
this case is complicated because she's telling people at work I have a business meeting later we don't know with who or
where but it's also unclear is it actually a business meeting or was it a personal
meeting that she was just telling people that it was a business meeting later as
promised those results from the Ohio State University do come back and are publicized and it's announced that the
cause of death was determined Gaither Bowman age 37 was strangled to death and then her body was discarded there
amongst trash in Delaware County again someone tried to conceal the body maybe not for good but
maybe just long enough to get away with her murder right everyone I'm certain picked up on this the complicating
Factor here too is putting together that definitive timeline based on the the freezing conditions weather conditions
during the course of that month that she was missing the important thing here though you know they say in real estate
location location location location well it works the same way for homicide investigations as well location location
location and here we have three counties to deal with we have Richland County and
we have Delaware County which is stated is they're working together in a joint homicide investigation for Gaither
Bowman but between the counties of Richland and Delaware County we have Morrow County Interstate 71 South runs
through Richland through Morrow through Delaware and down into Franklin County where we have Columbus and it continues
on the thing that is so important here we don't know where she went missing or the details of how
she went missing just yet right but what we do know is this you can look at her business
you can look at her home and you can look at the location where her van was found
all three are within minutes within just a mile or two of getting on 71. now if you go 71
Interstate 71 South you can take that directly down to route 37. and you make a right and back then in
1993 Dunham road the location of where the body was later found at this property owned and operated by
Delaware County it is still to this day a dead end road but back then there was there was not a
whole lot going on on this road uh there might have been a couple of houses and but primarily you have this space that
is owned by Delaware County back there what I'm getting at Captain is if somebody was looking to conceal the body
which we know that they were based off of this trash that was found in the manner that the body was found
somebody 100 was attempting to conceal the body there but not just that conceal the body from where she lived and worked
in Richland County it would be so easy that if somebody did something terrible to this wonderful
woman to hop on 71 South and it's almost exactly 50 miles it's about 48 miles of freeway but you
only get you get about you get about two miles on each end okay so 44 miles 44 to 46 miles of freeway
and you get about two miles on each end to get to 71 and then once you get off of 71. it looks to me like somebody did
something to gatha and decided I've got to conceal this body I want to I want to take
this body I want to get her out of this County I'm going to hop on 71 South and I'm going to go
right to where I think I'm in the country when I where I think I'm out in the middle of nowhere if you would have
hopped off a 71 on to 37 36 back then and made a right within less than a mile you are away from all of the businesses
you are in you're in the pitch black if it's night time and you see this gravel pile and you go
that's the spot that I'm going to conceal her body the interesting thing here too is remember the report
the trash that is found covering her body has advertisements and addresses this is
Mansfield trash her home her business where her vehicle is found is all in Mansfield Ohio
it's starting to shape up here that something terrible happened to Gaither Bowman in Mansfield Ohio and somebody
decided you know what either I'm grabbing some trash on my way out to help me conceal this body
or had this stuff with them already drove down 71 about 50 miles took her to the middle of
nowhere or what they thought was the middle of nowhere and covered her in this trash and now
detectives have this information and this evidence that says somebody brought not just the body with
them but bought that brought this trash with them to this location as well we know the location of where her car
was found her her vehicle was found and so if she was meeting somebody at that Best Western then maybe that person was
traveling maybe that person lived in Columbus or maybe that person used the Columbus airport so like you said to
head back down 71 it could also have just been I'm going to take the body with me and look for a location
dump the body and then head out on you know maybe head back to Columbus or maybe head back to Columbus to jump on a
plane another thing that's very interesting here Captain is the information that trickles out in gatha's
case and it's again filling in some of the blanks of this timeline and this information does not become public until
after her body was found but this is really interesting so in the same report that reports her
body found they go on to say that she worked and owned this pre-medica that she was last seen leaving work on
February 15th about 7 PM this according to the Sheriff's records but also in this report
it says she has been missing since February 15th when her ex-husband told authorities she did not pick up her
two children at the babysitter after work okay so let's examine that little nugget
of evidence here and I say evidence because it's not just another marker in our timeline there's something going on
here there's some big red flag that we need to examine couple things she doesn't come home that night
according to all of the records and the stories right she doesn't show up for work the next morning
she's not reported missing by her children her husband her work she's reported missing by her ex-husband
and remember she has one child with him and one child with her new husband and the way the reports go is that it was
their regular babysitter he's reporting her missing because she failed to pick up the children from
their regular babysitter on that Monday night right so what happens we don't have to have
the details here to know what happened anybody with children or babysitters know exactly what happened
it gets later it gets later it gets later gatha's not showing up it's 1993. babysitter starts to call the
other parents calls dad of the sun which is her ex-husband calls dad of the daughter
which is her current husband which of these two report Gaither missing the ex-husband
he seems to care a whole heck of a lot more that gatha is missing and never showed up to pick up these kids
on that Monday night yeah I mean this whole case is is complex and it's confusing
people's actions are confusing her current husband's actions are definitely confusing things seem out of alignment
things seem fishy from my understanding here Captain the way that this went down
is babysitter contacts at the very least the ex-husband and says gatha never showed up to pick up the
kids now we can make the assumption that the babysitter also contacted the father
of the daughter which is gatha's current husband right what ends up happening is
the children stay the night at the babysitter's home and then the ex-husband is even more
concerned when he wakes up the next morning and is notified once again by the babysitter she never came and picked
up the kids and that's when he calls it into Richland County and says look I think Gaither Bowman my ex-wife
might be missing she was supposed to pick up the kids last night from the babysitter
and she never arrived and you know how these stories go it's very likely that when that first call or
the first couple calls are made that nobody's ready to sound the alarm just yet you know it's well just give it
another half hour give it another hour maybe she'll show up and this was the time before cell phones
so it's not like they're expecting to be able to get a hold of gatha at a moment's notice
so it's not until that following morning that we have somebody raising the red flag and the person raising the red flag
here is Gaither Bowman's ex-husband well let's unpack this just a little bit because if I'm at work I'm the boss I'm
telling my employees my co-workers I have a meeting tonight it doesn't seem like it makes a lot of
sense that she would be the one to go pick up both children Drive the one child to the
ex's house and then take the other child back to her house if she has this meeting then her husband should be home
at least to watch their daughter she's only three years old even if you said to me well she's going to drop off her son
and then take her daughter to the meeting that doesn't make any sense to me well it's it seems like there's a lot of
dawn activities quote unquote Dawn activities going on with her current husband yeah that I can't
speak to any of that because the situation is she's at work the kids are at the babysitter's house there's no
indication that her son was to go to the biological father's house that night it
was simply good point he could have been coming back home with her right yeah no
they I mean they had shared custody it was a Monday night the kids were going to stay at gaither's house so she went
to work she had this meeting after work after the meeting she was going to pick up the kids and she was going to come
home foreign for joining us here in the garage the flying spaceship and until tomorrow be
good be kind and don't litter [Music] thank you [Music]

Gatha Bowman /// Part 1 /// 646

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

On Monday, February 15th, 1993 - 37 year old wife and mother, Gatha Bowman was last seen at the healthcare business that she owned and operated in Richland County, Ohio. Much mystery surrounds the events that took place in the hours following the time that she left work that day. Next week will mark 30 years since she was seen leaving work that day and her case is still being investigated to this day. Join us in the Garage for the details of this now 30 year old mystery. If you or someone you know have any information about Gatha Bowman’s case please contact the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office at 740-833-2892 or go to www.delawarecountysheriff.com

Beer of the Week - Green City by Other Half Brewing Company

Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 bottle caps

Brief Summary

Gaither Bowman went missing in 1993; her body was found weeks later, ruled a homicide with strangulation as the cause of death.

Key points

Gatha Bowman Goes Missing. Gatha Bowman, a well-liked business owner, went missing on February 15, 1993.
Missing Person's Report Filed. Gatha's husband reports her missing after she fails to return home.
Gatha's Van Found. Gatha's van is discovered in a motel parking lot, raising questions about her disappearance.
Missing Woman's Case Takes a Dark Turn. Gaither Bowman's body is found weeks after she went missing, leading to a homicide investigation.
Cause of Death Revealed. Gaither Bowman was strangled, and her body was concealed under trash.
Shared Custody Confusion. The children were supposed to stay at their father's house, but plans seem unclear.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She had a heart as big as all Outdoors.

Joe Valerio's reflection on Gatha's character.

4:07WatchFeb 11, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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