REMEMBERING MINNET & JASMINE

Minnet and Jasmine Bowman were two little girls whose lives began under difficult circumstances and who were supposed to find safety through adoption. Minnet was born in 1997. She entered foster care as a young child before being adopted by Renee Bowman. Jasmine entered foster care with her younger biological sister when Jasmine was approximately two years old. Early reports from her foster placement described a little girl who was doing well. A social worker described Jasmine as charming, inquisitive and talkative. She loved to smile and laugh and was an active child. By January 2004, Jasmine was described as very happy in her placement. Those early descriptions matter. Before Jasmine became known as one of two little girls whose bodies were discovered inside a freezer, she was a smiling, talkative child. And before Minnet became part of the same horrific story, she was a little girl whose biological relatives had struggled with the circumstances that ultimately led to her adoption. Adoption was supposed to provide these girls with permanence and safety. Instead, the woman entrusted with protecting them became the person who abused and killed them.

MINNET & JASMINE’S STORY

Renee Bowman adopted Minnet first. Jasmine and her younger biological sister later joined the household and were eventually adopted as well. Behind the doors of the Bowman home, the girls' lives became increasingly isolated and violent. Renee kept the children confined inside a locked bedroom. They were not permitted to freely use the bathroom and were forced to use a bucket as a toilet. Food was withheld from them, and evidence presented at trial showed that at times they were given cat food. The girls were repeatedly beaten. Their surviving younger sister later testified that Renee struck the children with objects including a baseball bat and a hard shoe. She also described Renee repeatedly choking them until they could no longer breathe and sometimes lost consciousness. The abuse was so frequent that when the surviving child was later asked how many times Renee had choked her, she could not count them. Minnet and Jasmine suffered alongside her. At some point while the family was living in Rockville, Maryland, Renee killed both girls. Investigators were never able to establish the exact dates on which they died. Their surviving sister testified that she had seen Renee choke Minnet and Jasmine. After her arrest, Renee also admitted to another person that she had smothered the girls. Autopsies determined that both children died from asphyxiation. Minnet had also suffered broken bones involving her arms and hand. Jasmine had injuries that included lacerations to her scalp. After killing the girls, Renee concealed their bodies inside a chest freezer. Minnet was wrapped in a blanket. Jasmine's body was placed inside a bag. Renee then told people that the girls were no longer living with her. Their younger sister was told that Minnet and Jasmine had gone to live with someone else. As Renee moved from Rockville to Charles County and eventually to Lusby in Calvert County, she took the freezer containing the children's bodies with her. For more than a year, Minnet and Jasmine remained hidden. Renee continued receiving adoption subsidies intended for the care of the girls even after they were dead. The truth was finally discovered because their younger sister survived. In September 2008, after enduring continued abuse, the little girl escaped from Renee's home by getting out through a second story window. She was found outside injured and inadequately clothed. Authorities began investigating what had happened to her. On September 27, 2008, investigators searched Renee's home in Lusby. Inside a locked freezer in the basement, they discovered the bodies of two children. They were eventually identified as Minnet and Jasmine. The sisters had been missing for so long that no one had reported them missing.

SYSTEM FAILURES & WARNING SIGNS

Minnet, Jasmine and their younger sister had all entered the District of Columbia child welfare system before being placed with Renee Bowman. Adoption was intended to give the girls the stable and permanent home they needed. There were, however, pieces of Renee's background that later raised serious questions about how thoroughly she had been evaluated before being approved as an adoptive parent. Renee had filed for bankruptcy in 2001, the same year she adopted Minnet. She also had a 1999 misdemeanor conviction for threatening bodily harm to a seventy two year old man. Contemporary reporting based on the children's confidential foster care records found that these issues were not mentioned in the social worker reports reviewed by the court during Jasmine and her younger sister's placement. The early reports instead described the girls as doing well in Renee's home. After the adoptions were finalized, the children became increasingly isolated. There are no records showing that Minnet and Jasmine were enrolled in school during the period leading up to their deaths. That isolation removed one of the most important opportunities for adults outside the home to regularly see the girls, recognize injuries or notice their disappearance. Even after Minnet and Jasmine were dead, their absence went undetected. In January 2008, while Renee was living in Charles County, a child welfare worker visited the home following an anonymous report of possible neglect. Renee was reportedly using a false name. The investigation did not substantiate abuse. Minnet and Jasmine were already gone. Their bodies remained hidden inside the freezer. The girls were not discovered because a routine system check finally located them. They were discovered because their younger sister escaped. Minnet and Jasmine's case later brought intense scrutiny to the District of Columbia child welfare system that had approved Renee to adopt three vulnerable children and continued paying adoption subsidies after two of those children were dead.

JUSTICE FOR MINNET & JASMINE

Renee Bowman initially offered investigators false explanations for what had happened to Minnet and Jasmine. At different points, she claimed Minnet had stopped eating and that Jasmine had died after a fall. The medical evidence told a different story. Both girls died from asphyxiation. Their surviving sister provided critical testimony at Renee's trial, describing the confinement, beatings and repeated choking the three children endured inside the home. In February 2010, a Montgomery County jury convicted Renee of two counts of first degree murder and three counts of first degree child abuse. The following month, she received the maximum sentence available.

 

Renee Bowman

Relationship to Minnet & Jasmine: Adoptive Mother

Conviction(s): Two counts of first degree murder; Three counts of first degree child abuse

Sentence: Two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 75 years

FOREVER REMEMBERED

For years, Minnet and Jasmine were hidden. First they were isolated from the outside world while they were alive. Then their deaths were concealed. Their bodies traveled inside a freezer as the person who killed them moved from one Maryland community to another. When they were finally found, no family member immediately came forward to claim their remains. The detectives and victim advocates who had worked on their case refused to let that be the end of their story. They arranged a memorial service for Minnet and Jasmine. Their ashes were later scattered at Annmarie Garden Sculpture Park and Arts Center in Southern Maryland, near the place where their surviving younger sister was beginning a new life with foster parents. A letter was prepared for their sister so that when she became old enough, she could learn where Minnet and Jasmine had been laid to rest and have a place where she could remember them. Minnet and Jasmine were sisters. They were children who had already experienced instability before adoption and deserved for adoption to become the safe ending to that part of their story.

 

Jasmine was once described as a little girl who loved to smile and laugh.

 

Minnet had biological relatives who remembered that she belonged to a family long before the world learned her name through tragedy.

 

Neither girl should be remembered as a body discovered inside a freezer.

 

They were children.

 

They were sisters.

 

And they deserved to be found, protected and loved while they were still alive.

 

Abuse Angels remembers Minnet Bowman and Jasmine Bowman. Remembered. Honored. Never Forgotten.