(Photo via: Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office)
OAN’s Abril Elfi
3:51 PM – Tuesday, October 24, 2023
A former doctor and poison specialist has been charged in connection to the fatal poisoning of his wife.
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The Olmsted County Attorney’s Office announced that 30-year-old Connor Fitzgerald Bowman was charged on Monday with one count of second-degree murder in connection to his wife’s killing.
Connor worked at the University of Kansas as a poison specialist answering poison control-related phone calls.
According to the criminal complaint, Connor’s wife died on August 20th after being hospitalized four days earlier for what initially appeared to be food poisoning.
The obituary states that Betty Bowman, 32, died at the Mayo Clinic’s St. Marys Hospital in Rochester “following a sudden onset of autoimmune and infectious illness.”
While Betty was hospitalized, she suffered heart problems, fluid buildup in her lungs, and the removal of a portion of her colon. She passed away soon after from organ failure.
The Southeast Minnesota Medical Examiner’s Office contacted the Rochester Police Department the next day to indicate that Betty’s death seemed suspicious.
According to the lawsuit, Connor contacted the office to request that the autopsy be halted and Betty be cremated immediately because she “didn’t want to be a cadaver.”
He also spoke with one of the death investigators about the scope and timeline of the toxicological analysis.
Staff at St. Marys, as well as Betty’s friends, told investigators that Connor believed she died of the rare ailment hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, and even mentioned it in her obituary.
One of Betty’s friends told detectives that she was “a healthy person,” and that her marriage was in jeopardy due to infidelity and other troubles like divorce.
The lawsuit states that her friend also claimed that the pair maintained separate bank accounts due to Connor’s debts, and that Connor told a friend he was about to collect $500,000 in life insurance.
An investigator started looking into Connor’s web history where they noted that Connor examined Betty’s e-health records several times between August 20th and August 31st, and that at one point he was added to her care team, which gave him access to her medical record without requiring him to input his credentials.
The university later informed the investigator in late September that Connor had been searching for material on the gout medicine colchicine and sodium nitrate, which can hinder the transport of oxygen in the body, on university-issued devices in the days before Betty’s death.
He is also accused of typing web searches on those devices to see whether internet browsing records may be used in court, whether police can trace package deliveries, and whether to “delete amazon data police.”
The complaint noted that Connor used an online tool on several occasions to convert Betty’s weight to milligrams and then multiplied that number by 0.8 mg to get colchicine’s lethal dosage rate.
Additionally, Connor typed in online searches regarding buying liquid colchicine five days before Betty became sick, and he visited a website that “helps service online purchases,” which police claim “coincided with the online activity for purchasing colchicine.”
Toxicology reports later indicated that colchicine was found in Betty’s system the day after she was admitted to the hospital.
On October 20th, her death was deemed a homicide and Connor was arrested the following day.
According to investigators, a receipt for a $450,000 bank deposit was also discovered in Connor’s home. He is now being held on a $2 million bond at the Olmsted County Jail and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.
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