Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter

Put another piece on the fire.

I think right there will be good.

Yeah.

Careful.

That looks good.

This story is not about me.

This is about a missing child.

My missing child.

All my life I was looking for her.

But I didn't know what happened to her.

She just, like, disappeared.

It's been a long, difficult journey.

Because, here's the thing,

my daughter's case wasn't unsolved.

It was uninvestigated.

And that enraged me.

But anger is a motivator.

I got to the point that I got to find this kid alive.

I don't care if I have to walk over God's green earth to do it.

You can't run on anything else. You can run on anger.

It doesn't need to be fed. It doesn't need to sleep.

It might kill you.

You want to get something done, get good and angry.

There's going to be an answer to this.

I am going to find her.

You get the naughty one.

-That's good? -Yeah.

I'm ready.

I met Ed in '91. The old-fashioned way in the bar.

- - Cathy was in her scrubs.

She worked professionally as a nurse in New Orleans.

And she left the bar, and neither of us thought we'd see each other again.

Three days later, we crossed paths again, and after that we never separated.

She quit her job, rented a U-Haul trailer,

loaded up all her stuff and her dog,

and drove from New Orleans up here to this house in Massachusetts.

And along the way, we stopped at the chapel at the University of Virginia,

and we were married about ten weeks after we met.

And that was 32 years ago.

We were married for about a month

when she mentioned that she'd had a child,

and she'd given the child up for adoption.

It's heart-wrenching, all my life, that I did this,

that I allowed this to happen to her and I.

She was the prettiest baby I ever saw.

Extremely bald-headed.

Beautiful eyes.

I was only 16 years old when I had my daughter in 1974.

And it was becoming a reality that I was going to have to get her out of a diaper.

I was gonna have to teach her how to feed herself.

I was gonna have to do all the things that an adult does

that I wasn't sure I could do.

And I was very vulnerable.

And my mother cornered me.

And she said, "You need to give her up for adoption."

"You can't take care of this baby."

"You don't know what you're doing."

So I didn't know how to prove I was worthy of my child.

And I got talked into...

She was going to get the best parents that adoption could offer,

as long as I gave her up as an infant.

If I couldn't do anything else for her, I was going to do this.

She deserves this.

And I just stepped back.

And I let my daughter go into the adoption system in Norfolk, Virginia,

so that she could have a better life.

She was just nine months old.

Throughout my life, she was always on my mind.

But it was a closed adoption,

so I don't know what happened to her. She never came looking for me.

Thirty-five years later, in 2010,

I get this letter from the adoption agency.

I thought it was a letter telling me my daughter was looking for me.

And I was just like, "Wow. This is happening."

Instead, I found out that my daughter went missing 21 years ago,

in 1989, when she was 14 years old.

And I was told that an unidentified body found next to a cornfield...

might be my daughter's body.

I just... everything just, like, went blank.

And the adoption agency immediately tells me

that a detective has been to see them about this Jane Doe

and that the police needed my DNA to help identify her.

So I gave them my DNA,

and they told me I have to just wait for some time.

I didn't know what to do.

She had been missing 21 years when they finally found me.

And so I couldn't sit at that computer and just wait for my DNA to be verified

that they were her remains.

So I got in touch with the police and the adoption agency.

But they would not tell me what my daughter's adopted name was,

where she went missing from.

Because I put her up for adoption, I had no standing.

So I can't go and say, "This is my daughter."

You know, I... I don't have the right to do that.

So that kind of made me go, "I'm going to find out about my daughter myself."

I only had my daughter's birthday.

And so I said to Eddie,

"Look on the computer and look for a missing child close to her birthday."

I don't think I spent ten minutes looking at this website,

when I found this missing person with the same birth date as her daughter.

June 23rd, 1974.

She was the first one listed on the missing person's section

of the Michigan State Police Department.

I named her Alexis Miranda Badger.

I learned that her name had changed to Aundria Michelle Bowman.

And I found out that she lived in Hamilton, Michigan.

I mean, looking at her, I was just like, "I don't know that person."

I remember an infant.

But when I started looking at her eyes and just...

She looks like me. She is mine. My little girl.

But I was looking on the internet trying to find her.

I couldn't find her or the adopted parents anywhere.

Nothing.

And so I just decided to open a Facebook "Find Aundria M Bowman" page.

Because I knew that kids go looking for each other

that went to high school together.

Roll up my sleeves for some work.

Why is this not loading?

Listen, I knew nothing about computers when this all started.

"Welcome, members."

"If any of you were close friends of Aundria,

we'd love to hear from you."

"Please drop us a line via Private Message

to this Find Aundria M Bowman Facebook page. Thanks."

Suddenly, everything just started happening.

I contacted her immediately to give Cathy more information.

Aundria was adopted by Brenda and Dennis Bowman.

Our family just absolutely loved her.

Brenda is my husband's cousin.

We went to the same school together over in Muskegon, Michigan.

Brenda was more quiet

and was just sort of to herself a lot.

Brenda and Dennis met when she was in high school.

And they fell for each other.

That was probably Brenda's first boyfriend.

Yeah. When she graduated from high school,

Dennis was in the Navy at that time.

But before I ever went into the service,

I had told Brenda,

I'd met her about a year before I went in,

I told her, I said, "Look, when I get out of boot camp,"

I said, "And I come home for leave," I said, "Will you accept my ring?"

And I knew she was the one just as soon as I met her.

We got married in '71.

And he got stationed in San Diego.

We lived there for six months.

And I had my choice of duty station.

We came to Norfolk, Virginia.

And they were trying to start a family.

And at that time,

they told me there was a double uterus.

"Chances of you getting pregnant are probably very slim."

And that's when we were applying for adoption.

And it took us, like...

I can't think how many years.

The social worker called one morning,

and she goes, "We have a baby for you."

"Six months old."

She called the next day,

and she goes, "Brenda, I made a mistake."

I says, "We can't have her?"

And she goes, "She's ten months old."

And I go, "Okay."

We adopted Aundria.

I was never supposed to have any, and we got the miracle of adopting.

She had always been Daddy's girl.

She was the sweetest kid that ever walked.

Yeah, Aundria was a... a sweet little girl,

uh, a gift from God to this family who couldn't have children.

Brenda and Dennis eventually moved from Virginia

back to the west side of Michigan.

Hamilton, it's a smaller community.

Hamilton is a quiet, sleepy town

close to Holland.

You don't have anything bad in Hamilton happen.

Basically, gas station, tons of churches, the school, and a grocery store.

That's about Hamilton, back in the day, summed right up.

Small town living. Everybody knew everybody's business.

And you had to go to church.

If you were out of that norm, you were looked at different.

Brenda and Denny went to church every Sunday.

Both of them were Sunday school teachers,

and they wanted to grow their family.

And then years later,

I was constantly sick.

And Denny just come home from work one day and threw a pregnancy test down.

And I go, "Yeah, right.