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Lusby, Maryland: A Calvert County woman accused of abusing one of her three daughters was ordered held without bond on Monday after police investigating the case found human remains in the woman's basement freezer, authorities said.
Renee Bowman, 43, has been arrested on allegations that she abused her 7-year-old daughter, who was found walking barefoot on a neighbourhood street Friday night.
A neighbour recounted Monday that the disheveled girl told him: "My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death."
The girl, authorities said, "showed signs of extreme abuse and neglect," and had fled her home Friday by jumping out of a second-floor window after she was locked in her bedroom.
Bowman admitted to beating the girl with a "hard-heeled shoe" and later told Calvert County authorities, who had executed a search warrant at her home and found the freezer with human remains, that they were "of her two other adopted daughters," according to a news release from the Calvert County Sheriff's Office.
Autopsies
Police said they cannot be sure the remains are of the two girls, ages 9 and 11, until autopsies are performed.
Bowman told police that the remains had been in the freezer since she moved in in February.
Neighbour Phillip Garrett, who said he found the 7-year-old walking on a gravel road early Friday evening with no socks or shoes, described his shock in seeing the girl. Her pink nightgown was muddied and her pigtails, fastened with pink barrettes, were matted. He called out to her. "I said, 'What's wrong? Are you OK?'"
According to Garrett, the girl answered, "My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death."
Garrett carried her into his neighbour's home and called 911.
The girl told Garrett that she had not eaten in days.
Of her two sisters, Garrett said, "She said her siblings had been beaten to death and one day, they just didn't come back."
Calvert County Detective Sgt. Michael Moore Jr. said that a joint investigation is being conducted with Montgomery County and that any charges involving the remains in the freezer would be brought by Montgomery authorities.
Fleas
Calvert authorities have charged Bowman only in the case involving the 7-year-old, he said.
Moore described the house's exterior as typical, but he said that inside, it was "just pretty much a mess," with four cats and a dog with severe cases of fleas.
When investigators looked in the basement freezer, they saw at least one discernible body, wrapped in black plastic trash bag, in a block of ice, Moore said.
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