[Narrator] A long-buried secret unearthed.
[Amy] They were clearing the roadside and some debris
and discovered some bones.
There was a bullet lodged in her skull.
[Narrator] A decade-old mystery comes back to life.
My mom was kind of a free spirit.
She was wild.
She was working as a dancer in New York City.
We would look out the window constantly
and just pray that she would come back.
[Narrator] But the deeper investigators dig,
the more family secrets they find.
[Tim] She started signing checks.
There was approximately
nineteen thousand dollars cashed.
She was money hungry. She was getting checks monthly.
[Michael] Witnesses implicated her
in the death of her own son.
[Jasmine] She looked innocent, but underneath,
she was the devil.
[theme music]
[Narrator] March 30, 2011.
It's just after 1:30 PM in Summers County, West Virginia.
Employees with the Department of Highways
are working along a steep hillside
near Walker Mountain Road.
[Tim] A Department of Highways worker
was in a remote area down near Hinton, West Virginia,
located in the southern part of West Virginia.
Very mountainous, a lot of rural areas.
It was up the side of a hill, literally,
right below the road.
They were clearing the roadside and some debris
and discovered some bones.
[siren wailing]
[Narrator] The workers immediately contact
West Virginia State Police.
Investigators arrive on the scene,
along with a team from the state medical examiner's office
[Michael] The remains that were located,
it was 13 bones and the skull.
Based on the clothing that was found on the body,
you know you have a female.
The idea that someone would leave you out to,
to rot in the woods is just a horrifying concept.
[Narrator] There's nothing to immediately identify the victim
at the scene, but one thing is clear,
Jane Doe's death was no accident.
There was a bullet lodged in her skull.
[Michael] Just because there is a bullet hole in a person
doesn't mean this is a homicide.
You need to make sure you establish very clearly
what the evidence is and where it is.
[Narrator] Over the next couple of days,
as forensic experts continue to comb the scene
and examine the remains,
they discover something unique about their Jane Doe.
Two of the vertebrae were, in fact, fused,
which was a great lead.
[Daniel] If a person's been involved
in some sort of an accident,
the doctor will actually use these metal plates
to fuse together the injured vertebrae,
and hospitals have records of those plates.
The investigators shipped those bones
to a forensic anthropologist.
[Narrator] Within a few weeks, they finally have some answers.
[Michael] They were able to trace
that serial number on the plate
and determine the victim was Cathy Jo McCoy,
a local woman living in the are
who had been reported missing in 2003.
[Amy] There was so many years that lapsed
from the time Cathy went missing to the time we found her bones.
When you find the remains of someone,
there's only one question,
how'd they get there and who put them there?
And in any kind of criminal case,
time is your enemy.
The weather and the animals and the time
deteriorate that kind of evidence.
[Narrator] Cathy Jo Lukach McCoy
was born in Beckley, West Virginia
on December 26th, 1970,
to parents Mary and Bill Lukach
Mary had four children,
Matthew, Mark, Johnny and Cathy Jo.
My siblings and I had a great time growing up.
We, uh, done all kinds of stuff, climb trees, go swimming.
My favorite memory was always going out camping,
going down to Sandstone, toward New River.
They were always getting into some type of
shenanigan or trouble.
My mom loved her brothers.
[Narrator] But Cathy Jo's relationship
with her mother, Mary, was far more complicated.
[Carl] There was always an argument of some kind
over something petty,
but they would fight like cats and dogs.
[Narrator] Born in 1944,
Cathy Jo's mother, Mary Louise Barley,
was an independent woman with a no-nonsense approach to life.
She grew up behind a Dr Pepper plant in Beckley.
She did not have any siblings.
My mom never, uh, talked about her past.
If we tried to talk about stuff like that,
she'd change the subject.
Mary was stubborn.
[Narrator] Her family says Cathy Jo
was just as strong willed as her mother.
More than anything, she wanted out
from under her parents' roof.
In 1985, the opportunity came.
[Carl] My mom, Cathy Jo, married my dad, Carl Willard McCoy,
at the age of, I want to say sixteen.
She was pretty young.
I have no idea how they met,
how they fell in love, all of that.
[Narrator] The marriage was short lived,
and in 1988, when Cathy Jo was 17,
the couple divorced after the birth of their son, Carl.
Two years later, love found Cathy Jo once more.
[Jasmine] My mother met my father,
and then I came along July 9, 1990.
[Vicki] I first met Cathy Jo when she was in her late teens.
She became friends with my daughter first,
and then became involved with my son,
who is Jasmine's father.
[Narrator] After giving birth to Jasmine at age 19,
Cathy Jo continued from one relationship to the next.
None lasted, but by the age of 26,
she had two more children.
My mom was kind of a free spirit.
She was wild.
But very nurturing.
Every part of her being she loved us.
[Narrator] In her mid-20's,
Cathy Jo attended cosmetology school
and started her own business.
She had her own little shop going on inside of her house.
[Narrator] In the end, the beauty shop
wasn't everything she'd hoped it would be.
She wasn't really getting by on that, and she, uh,
went from being a hairstylist to a stripper.
Her dancing was to provide.
[Matthew] She didn't really like the line of work,
but she wanted to get her kids everything they wanted.
Them kids got treated like gold
[Carl] I mean, those were the best Christmases
we probably had.
I mean, she had three kids at that time.
You know, she tried to provide for us
as much as she could.
[Narrator] In 1995, tragedy struck the McCoy family
when Cathy Jo's older brother Mark
was in a serious car accident.
My little brother, after he got in that car accident
in Tennessee, he died.
My mother, she saw Mark as her baby.
So, when he passed, you know, it broke her.
[Narrator] Three years later, in September 1998,
Cathy Jo's world was turned upside down yet again
by another horrific car crash,
this time leaving 27-year-old Cathy Jo clinging to life.
She had flipped a Geo-Tracker...
I think it was, like, eight times.
[Jasmine] She broke her arm
and hurt both of her legs,
which kind of messed her up for a while,
so she wasn't able to walk or really take care of herself
for a while.
[Vicki] One of her arms had almost been severed.
They had done, uh, surgery to stabilize neck
and to try to re-attach her arm.
And she said, "I'm going to fight
because I have to get back to my babies."
One surgery was to perform a fusion on her vertebrae
to fuse those two together with a metal plate.
[Narrator] After 3 months in the hospital,
Cathy Jo was released.
But her dancing career was over
Her arm was always upright in a stuck position,
uh, against her chest.
Uh, she couldn't straighten it out completely.
[Narrator] She was forced to rely on
those around her for help.
She had gotten back with a prior boyfriend, Jake.
He knew the family pretty well.
He would help provide.
He really loved Mom.
[Narrator] Cathy Jo's mother, Mary,
and her new husband, Jack,
also offered to help out.
Every now and then, Mary would watch them kids.
[Vicki] Mary helped her to get signed up
to get some type of compensation from the accident.
[Taylor] The injuries that, that Cathy Jo sustained
in this car wreck were so severe,
it left her pretty much unable to, to work,
so she was very much dependent on these Social Security checks
that were coming in.
[Narrator] After two years of recovery,
Cathy Jo hoped to drive again.
But her injuries prevented her from getting a license
in West Virginia.
Her disability prevented her from driving, uh,
because again, she could only operate one hand, one arm.
She couldn't drive, but she had to be able to drive.
[Narrator] While things remained tense
between Cathy Jo and Mary,
on June 5th, 2000,
Mary offered to drive her daughter to Tennessee
with the hope of getting a license there.
[Carl] So, I guess in her mind,
if I go out of state and attempt to get an out-of-state license,
maybe she could get one to be able to drive.
Mary was supposed to help her with this.
They instructed me to keep an eye on my sister Jasmine.
My mom even took a suitcase with her.
She was expecting to be back I guess the end of that weekend.
She seemed normal.
"I love you. See you Monday."
[Narrator] Mary surprised everyone
when she returned home alone 9 hours later
saying there had been a change of plans.
Mary said, "Your mother saw some friends on the corner in Hinton,
so I dropped her off with them,
and she'll be home later on this evening."
[Narrator] But the evening passed,
and Cathy Jo never returned.
[Jasmine] Mary said she ran off.
It was really weird to us, even as children.
We would look out the window constantly
and just pray that she would come back.
[Narrator] Now, in 2011, 11 years later,
West Virginia State Police have identified Cathy Jo's remains
along a rural West Virginia roadside.
Examination by a medical examiner
determined a .22 caliber round was lodged in Cathy's skull.
[Amy] Once the state police was able to determine
that they were Cathy's bones,
and that she had been missing for some time,
then the investigation started.
[Narrator] As police dig into Cathy Jo's
missing persons file,
something strikes them as suspicious.
[Daniel] Cathy Jo McCoy was last seen
on June the 5th of 2000,
but no one filed a police report until 2003.
It's hard to imagine the idea
that someone would be missing for three years,
and nobody has gone to the police.
[Narrator] Coming up,
a fraud investigation leads detectives
to their first suspect.
She had a criminal history spanning in the '80s and '90s.
[Carl] I was just a kid myself,
but I knew something was very wrong,
very, very wrong.
[Narrator] Summers County, West Virginia. 2011.
After discovering the remains of Cathy Jo McCoy,
a mother who went missing in June of 2000,
investigators are questioning why her disappearance
was not reported until 2003.
[Amy] Certainly, after so many years,
I think it was very odd that family
would not file a missing persons report.
So, I think that's the first red flag.
[Narrator] Investigators discover that Cathy Jo
was ultimately reported missing under strange circumstances.
[Michael] So, in 2003
the bank where, uh, Cathy Jo McCoy, uh, had her account
notified the Social Security Administration,
and they believed
there'd been fraudulent activity on that account.
We determined that Cathy McCoy's mother, Mary Bowles,
had been cashing checks that were sent to Cathy McCoy
from the Social Security Administration.
I interviewed several of the bank employees.
No one had seen Cathy McCoy in about three years.
All the bank employees confirme
that Mary would cash Cathy McCoy's checks
and explain to them that the reason she was doing that
was because Cathy was too ill to come in and do it for herself.
So, Mary would bring in Cathy's driver's license
and would also be a second endorser on the check
to get the check cashed.
There was approximately ninetee thousand dollars cashed.
I ordered photocopies of all of the checks
that were cashed and deposited over the entitlement period
for Cathy McCoy
from the Treasury Department.
[Narrator] As Agent Morton examines the checks,
a disturbing detail catches his eye.
I was able to determine very quickly
that sometime in mid 2000,
Cathy's signature changed on the checks.
This lady had been missing for three years.
At this point, I believe that her mother, Mary Bowles,
was forging Cathy's name on the checks.
[Narrator] With his suspicions growing,
Agent Morton runs a background check on Mary Bowles.
[Tim] In any investigation,
we're pulling records for everyone involved.
It appeared that she had a criminal history
spanning the '80s and '90s,
with charges of various types of fraud, forgery.
[Narrator] After looking into Mary's past,
fraud agents confront her in October 2003.
To their surprise, she doesn't put up much of a fight.
[Tim] She was very quick to admit everything.
She admitted she knew that it was wrong to do that.
[Narrator] But she says she had a good reason...
[Michael] Mary indicated that she was in fact
utilizing that money from Cathy's checks
in order to take care of Cathy's children,
who were currently residing with her.
[Narrator] Mary claims someone needed to step in
and support her grandchildren
after her daughter took off in 2000.
Mary Bowles did not paint a very favorable picture
of her daughter, Cathy.
She basically told investigator
that she would be prone to run off with random men.
[Tim] She told me the story of how
she hadn't seen Cathy in three years.
She had taken Cathy out,
and they ran into some acquaintances.
So Mary left her, and that was the last she'd ever seen her.
And I just found that very hard to believe.
I said, "That's your daughter.
Why would you not file a missing person's report?"
She said, "Well, she's an adult, she can do what she wants."
[Narrator] In October 2003,
Social Security investigators arrest Mary on forgery charges.
We were in foster care maybe...
six months to a year, I can't remember.
But I was aware that she was arrested.
Then finally, my brother went to live with
Carl McCoy's side of the family
And then I went to live with my nana, Vicki Caul,
and my granddaddy, and then Jessica went with her dad.
[Narrator] Still, Tim Morton can't help but wonder,
if Mary was involved in defrauding Cathy Jo,
could she be capable of worse?
[Tim] There was that lingering feeling
that I couldn't let go that, ya know,
that's the least of her worries is this check fraud.
It was a couple months into my investigation
that I contacted west--
the West Virginia State Police and voiced my concerns
and told 'em what I'd found.
[Michael] So at that point, the West Virginia State Police
made this an official missing persons case.
[Narrator] With Mary Bowles in jail,
West Virginia State Police launch their own investigation
into Cathy Jo's disappearance in November 2003.
There was so many years that lapsed
from the time Cathy went missing.
Time is your enemy because people's memories fade,
people die, um, they move away, uh,
and so, it makes it very difficult.
[Narrator] Police start by interviewing
Cathy Jo's eldest kids,
16-year-old Carl and 13-year-old Jasmine.
[Carl] I mean, I was just a kid myself,
but I knew something was very wrong,
very, very wrong.
My mom would not just up and leave like that.
[Narrator] Three days after Cathy Jo left,
the children say they were take to their grandmother Mary's
by Cathy Jo's boyfriend, Jake.
I believe it was on a Monday or something after the weekend,
but Jake had dropped us off with Mary.
A couple days go by, "Well, I guess, you know,
your mom, she just abandoned you all."
[Matthew] I did try to contact Cathy Jo,
but my momma had said that she had moved
and she didn't want nothing to do with the family.
That's, that's what I heard.
And that's, so I just went with it.
[Jessica] At that point in time living with Mary,
we weren't allowed to go outside.
We weren't allowed to go to school.
We basically had to stay inside all the time!
Mary wouldn't let us eat a lot.
I remember, we'd ask for food, and she'd tell us no.
[Carl] This has been probably two and a half years of,
you know, Mom being gone.
The living conditions with Mary were terrible.
Padlocking refrigerators, you know, the verbal abuse.
[Narrator] Investigators immediately track down
Cathy Jo's former boyfriend for questioning.
[Michael] Jake provided an alibi for himself,
indicating he was at work, uh, works in a mine.
He was in that mine from 5 AM until late into the evening
on the day that Cathy was last seen.
[Narrator] Not only does Jake's alibi check out,
he passes a polygraph with flying colors.
The missing persons investigation
is just getting underway in December 2003,
when Mary Bowles pleads guilty to forgery.
Mary Bowles received an eighteen-month prison sentence.
[Tim] I think Mary thought, you know,
she admits to the Social Security fraud,
and that, you know, she'll plead guilty, do her time,
pay back the money, and I'll go away.
But from the beginning, I was convinced
that there was something much more disturbing going on.
[Narrator] Coming up,
more details of Mary's questionable past
come to light...
She told me that she did feel like
Mary did something with Cathy.
[Narrator] Could Cathy Jo still be alive?
Mary Bowles, she indicated that she had made contact
with her daughter, Cathy.
[Narrator] In December 2003,
Mary Bowles pleads guilty to forgery
and finds herself at the center of her own daughter's
missing persons investigation.
However, when detectives interview Mary
in a West Virginia jail,
she makes a bold claim.
Mary Bowles indicated that she had made contact, uh,
with her daughter, Cathy,
while she was in custody on federal charges,
and that, uh, Cathy appeared to be fine,
and she was working as a dancer in New York City.
[Narrator] But investigators aren't buying it.
[Michael] She required a cane to walk from her car accident.
It was impossible to believe that Cathy Jo
would be working as a dancer anywhere.
[Narrator] Shortly after Mary's guilty plea,
her friend and former roommate, Geraldine Tincher,
contacts Agent Morton.
[Tim] Mary lived with a lady named Geraldine Tincher.
And I'm not sure of their relationship,
but they lived together on and off for years.
Initially her story was that basically
she didn't have any reason not to believe Mary
about the story of Cathy.
[Narrator] Geraldine says after Mary went to prison,
she went through Mary's safe.
[Tim] Geraldine finds a letter from
the Social Security Administration
addressed to herself,
and she realizes that she had been awarded benefits.
Geraldine had applied for widow's benefits,
but she thought that she was just denied that.
What happened was, Mary intercepted the award letter.
So, that's when Geraldine called me.
I did an investigation on that and found out
it was a little over 10,000 dollars
that Mary had stolen from Geraldine.
So we went back to the grand jury
and we got those charges added.
While Mary Bowles is on the radar of the police,
there really wasn't anything to concretely say
she was responsible for Cathy Jo's death.
In '05, Mary Bowles is released, uh, from federal custody.
She returns to her residence and reassumes her life.
[Narrator] In fact, six years pass
with no movement on the missing persons case...
until the discovery of Cathy Jo's remains in 2011.
The normal procedure is to notify next of kin
of the death.
In this case, uh, next of kin
was determined to be her mother, Mary Bowles.
[Narrator] And yet, when officers attempt to locate Mary
they come up empty handed.
Investigators were not able to track down Mary.
[Daniel] They're contacting her family members.
Every attempt that they made at that point
to locate Mary Bowles,
the troopers came up empty each and every time.
Once investigators exhaust all attempts
to contact Mary Bowles,
they decided to go ahead and go to Cathy Jo McCoy's children
and advise them their mother has been found.
[Narrator] On April 26, 2011,
investigators locate Cathy Jo's 20-year-old daughter, Jasmine,
who was raised by her father an paternal grandmother, Vicki.
[Vicki] They first came by and asked Jasmine for a DNA sample.
I was praying that it wasn't going to be a match,
because I could see how heartbroken my baby was.
But then when they came back, they told us.
[Jasmine] I was mostly in shock,
because in my mind, I just thought and hoped
that she was somewhere out there.
[Narrator] Investigators learn from Jasmine
that her grandmother Mary didn't seem all that concerned
when Cathy Jo disappeared.
[Jasmine] Mary hurried up to go and get
Medicaid and food stamps in her name,
and to switch custody of us to her.
[Narrator] Jasmine's grandmother Vicki
tells investigators that a mont after Cathy Jo disappeared,
in July 2000, she received an invitation from Mary.
[Vicki] The day of Jasmine's birthday,
Mary invited us to her trailer in Pikeston, West Virginia
to celebrate with Jasmine and the kids.
She told us that Cathy Jo had left with three guys.
[Narrator] Vicki tells investigators
that what happened next was absolutely chilling.
Mary says, "I want to show you something."
And I'm thinking, well, maybe she's going to show me
a gift that she bought for the little girl or whatever.
And she goes in, and she pulls out this twenty-two
and shows it to me.
And I said, "Aren't you afraid to have that in the house
when you've got kids?"
And she said, "Oh, they don't pay any attention
to anything I do." And she put it away.
But I wondered that day why she would do that.
[Narrator] The story rings a bell for investigators.
The caliber gun Mary showed Vicki all those years ago
is the same caliber as the bullet
recovered from Cathy Jo's skull
The victim died as a result of a .22 caliber gunshot wound.
At this point, investigators have bumped up, uh,
the pursuit for Mary Bowles.
It's gone into multiple states.
[Narrator] On April 27, 2011,
three weeks into the search for Mary,
homicide investigators talk to Cathy Jo's son, Carl McCoy,
who was only 12 when his mother went missing.
[Carl] When Mom's remains were found,
I mean, I completely went downhill from there.
You know what happened, you suspected,
but there's still that little glimmer of hope
that she may come back.
Maybe there's some merit to what Mary is trying to tell us,
because she's your grandmother, right?
She wouldn't lie to you about something like that.
This is her daughter.
[Narrator] Carl points out that Cathy Jo
isn't the first family member
to die under suspicious circumstances.
[Michael] Carl related a story to investigators
about his uncle Mark, who, at age 17,
was in a very serious car accident
in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
[Daniel] Mary Bowles, she decides
to yank him out of the hospital
She proceeds to take Mark to a hotel
not too far from that location.
[Vicki] His mom signed him out against medical advice.
Mark screamed in pain most of the night.
And Mary wouldn't let anybody in to help him.
Only one that was in that room was him and Mark's girlfriend.
She, uh, just told us Mary took and laid the mattress
against the door, where they couldn't get out.
He died right there in the motel room.
Died from a lower punctured intestine.
Drowned in his own fluids.
No remorse.
It's like it didn't faze her.
[Narrator] According to the family,
once back home, Mary started looking for an attorney.
Then she turns around and sues the hospital.
[Michael] Mary Bowles filed action against the hospital.
She successfully sued them for the amount of $24,000.
[Daniel] Based on all of her past behavior,
she, yes, has shown a propensity
to take advantage of even her loved ones
if it meant some money going into her pocket.
She's had a lotta people leave out with her
and not come back.
[Narrator] Coming up,
the hunt is on.
They discover her white full-sized pickup truck
parked in the yard.
[Narrator] And a former friend is no longer afraid
to share what she knows...
Mary had been traipsing around in the woods all day,
and she was sopping wet from her hair
all the way down to her feet.
[Narrator] After years spent under a cloud of suspicion,
Mary Bowles is now suspect number one
in the murder of her daughter, Cathy Jo McCoy.
Family, as well as other witnesses, have, uh,
implicated her in the death of her own son and her daughter.
Investigators have bumped up the pursuit.
It's gone into multiple states.
She appears to be eluding, uh, law enforcement,
but that hasn't stopped investigators.
[Narrator] They continue to reach out
to potential witnesses
who might help bolster their case,
including Mary's former friend and roommate,
Geraldine Tincher.
[Michael] Shortly after Mary Bowles
went to prison for fraud in 2003,
her roommate, Geraldine Tincher
discovered that she in fact was a victim of fraud.
Geraldine was not a fan of Mary Bowles anymore
because she stole from her.
[Narrator] When state investigators
circle back to Geraldine, she doesn't hold back.
[Daniel] Geraldine Tincher was able to say that,
about the night of June the 5th
when Mary came into the house,
it appeared as if Mary had been
traipsing around in the woods all day
just by the way her, her clothes were,
and that she was sopping wet from her hair
all the way down to her feet.
[Tim] Geraldine asked Mary what was going on.
She said, "Oh, I just, uh, dropped Cathy off
with some friends, and she's gonna get her own ride home."
Geraldine thought it was odd that Cathy's purse
was still in the, the front seat of the van.
She sees Mary getting in Cathy's purse
and getting her driver's license out of her purse.
She said, "I'm getting her driver's license
'cause I'm going to the State Police
and file a missing person's report."
One was never filed with the West Virginia State Police.
[Narrator] But investigators know
that's not the real reason she wanted Cathy Jo's ID.
She was getting that driver's license
to cash Cathy's checks at the bank.
Geraldine said, the children.
She said, she wanted custody of those children.
There had been a feud between the two of them
over the children since the accident.
Mary wanted custody,
and Cathy would not give up custody of those children.
[Narrator] On April 28, 2011,
detectives speak with Cathy Jo' brother, Matthew Lukach,
and get an unexpected break
after weeks of searching for Mary Bowles.
[Michael] Matthew told investigators
he recently received a phone call from his mother.
And the Caller ID showed
that she was actually in the local area, in West Virginia.
[Narrator] West Virginia State Police
immediately go looking for Mary
[Michael] When investigators get to the address
based on tracking of the phone number,
they discover Mary's white full-sized pickup truck
parked in the yard.
When investigators attempted to notify
that Cathy in fact was deceased and her remains were recovered,
Mary indicated she already was aware of the fact.
[Narrator] Mary tells investigators
she saw the story on the local news.
Investigators ask her to go back to the station for a statement.
[Narrator] State troopers immediately bring Mary in
for questioning.
She insists she knows nothing about her daughter's murder.
Mary Bowles was the last person who saw Cathy.
And Mary Bowles benefited from Cathy's disappearance
and ultimate death.
When you put all those little pieces together,
coming home wet and muddy,
all of that behavior added up to someone
that you have to believe is,
is very culpable of this crime.
[Narrator] But Mary stands her ground.
[Michael] Mary Bowles does agree to take a polygraph examination
And she ends up failing the polygraph, uh,
with deception noted.
[Narrator] Authorities arrest Mary Bowles
for the shooting death of her daughter, Cathy Jo.
[Michael] The fact that she failed the polygraph,
her track record on committing fraud,
and a life full of lies,
coupled with possession of a firearm,
it's painting a picture to the investigators.
We charged her with first degree murder.
[Narrator] Coming up,
will Mary finally face justice?
An eleven-year crime
is just a very difficult crime to pursue.
[Narrator] Or will she escape yet again?
A trial was just not going to happen.
[Narrator] Following Mary Bowles' arrest,
prosecutors present their case to a grand jury--
11 years after her daughter, Cathy Jo, disappeared.
With the help of Geraldine Tincher's testimony,
prosecutors secure what they need.
Geraldine testified at the preliminary, uh,
she was a wonderful witness.
Mary Bowles was indicted for first degree murder.
It was an uphill battle after the preliminary hearing.
An eleven-year crime
is just a very difficult crime to pursue.
[Michael] Number one, you don't have a murder weapon,
uh, and number two,
a lack of forensic evidence because of the amount of time.
There's not an ability to get anything DNA-wise on clothing,
or the crime scene with drag marks.
There's none of that evidence that exists.
And the age of the case is going against you,
the memories of witnesses.
They are at a disadvantage in a number of areas.
[Narrator] Prosecutors face the lingering questions,
including exactly what went down between Mary and Cathy Jo
when they left home on June 5, 2000.
We believed there was some premeditation.
That Mary planned for some period of time.
[Narrator] Though they can't prove exactly
how Mary killed Cathy Jo,
prosecutors are confident about why.
The one theme that seems to be constant in this case is greed.
Mary Bowles is a prolific liar,
someone that's committed fraud her entire life.
[Jasmine] Mary looked innocent,
but underneath, she was the devil.
Mary was money hungry.
My mother was getting Social Security checks monthly.
She was getting food stamps for us kids
because she didn't have a job, where she was disabled.
So Mary thought that if she had us children,
then she would get those benefits,
and my mother stood in the way of that.
[Narrator] While the family eagerly awaits
Mary's day in court, they are dealt a setback.
Mary was indicted on murder charges.
And the trial was set to go,
and then she had received a terminal cancer diagnosis.
You could see the decline in her health.
We would have hearings, and it got to the point
where the ambulance had to actually get her
and bring her up to the courtroom
in either a wheelchair, or at,
I think, the last hearing, a stretcher.
What happened during our case is Ms. Bowles' health deteriorated
to the point that I knew that having a trial
was just not going to happen.
[Narrator] In 2016, Mary Bowles is released from jail
and placed in hospice care.
The prosecution dismisses their case against her.
[Amy] I left the prosecuting attorney's office
in December 2016.
I dismissed it before I left because
I didn't wanna leave a case like that to my next in line.
[Narrator] Mary Bowles dies on July 5, 2017.
[Amy] When I got the notice that Mary Bowles was dead,
I took a deep breath.
Mary Bowles was not going to hurt anyone again.
[Narrator] But for Cathy Jo's family,
the news brings mixed emotions.
[Jasmine] I was mad when I found out
my mom will never get justice like she deserves.
My mother was kind, beautiful.
She would do anything for her kids.
I just want people to know that
my mother just didn't deserve it
and that she was a good person.
[Matthew] Justice wasn't served.
It was not served at all.
That woman never had remorse about anything.
[Jessica] What I want them to remember about Cathy Jo,
my mother,
is that she was one of the most loving, free-spirited,
outgoing, beautiful people.
And she, she was human. She had a voice.
And though she ain't here to say it right now, we are.
And her voice will be heard.
[music]