♪
[ Indistinct chatter ]
Narrator: Up next, a young woman vanishes
and a town wonders, who's next?
It was horrendous. Nobody saw it.
Nobody knew what happened.
Narrator: Tips pour in, but leads dry up.
Bacala: I promised we would solve this crime
and that was a hard promise to keep.
Narrator: Stymied detectives appeal to a higher power
and forensic science.
Toney: It's just my belief,
and I've told this to victims' families in the past--
"God don't like ugly."
Narrator: Technology exposes a suspect
but also raises questions
about who else might be involved.
We were really puzzled.
You know, we didn't know where to go from there.
♪
Narrator: What is now known as Louisiana was rich in resources
when first settled by France in the 1600s.
Since France was deeply Roman Catholic,
what are called counties in other states
are called parishes in Louisiana.
One the most storied, Ascension Parish
is deep in the heart of the old south.
The Mississippi River
divides Ascension Parish from east to west.
It cuts right through us.
Narrator: The region is famous for great food, great music,
and language variations
created by a lot of cultural cross-pollination.
And Ascension Parish is booming.
Bacala: In 1990, we had 58,000 residents
in the entire parish.
Today, it's 120-something thousand.
So we've, uh, you know--
Then it was more or less rural,
just beginning to become a more suburban environment.
So it's changed significantly since 1990.
Bill, get the-- Bill, get the kid off the set.
Bi-- Bill? Come on, man.
We can't have the interview with a kid on set.
Narrator: In 1990, 18-year-old Tammy Bowers
was striking out on her own for the first time in her life
and found a place to live on the outskirts of Baton Rouge,
the state capital.
She was working at a little grocery store,
met a couple of friends there.
And so they decided they were gonna get together
and all-- her and her little friends
was gonna move in together.
Narrator: Nearly every night, Tammy used a pay phone
at a nearby convenience store
to check in with family and friends.
Bacala: You got to keep in mind, in 1990,
people didn't have cellphones,
and Tammy had just moved into a new home,
so she didn't have a home phone.
Zuvich: She always called and checked in,
you know, when she was not around.
Even at work, she'd take a break on her lunch hour
to give me a call.
Narrator: So, the night of March 6th
was a perfectly normal one for Tammy Bowers.
After calling her mother at around 11:00,
she also called a friend.
What happened next was far from normal.
Bacala: This all began with a 911 call.
A young man called up and said,
"I was talking to Tammy Bowers on a pay phone,"
and they were having just a normal conversation,
and then she said, "Oh! You surprised me."
The next thing you know, he heard a scuffle going on,
and he knew something was wrong.
And then, of course, she was-- disappeared from the phone call.
[ Dial tone ] Narrator: Tammy's friend rushed to the area.
Tammy was nowhere in sight.
Toney: And he discovered her car still there,
the phone hanging off the hook, and her eye glasses and all that
was on the ground, right below the phone.
Narrator: The door of Tammy's car was open.
Her keys were in the ignition.
Her purse, still on the front seat.
Police arrived moments later.
Bacala: Obvious that it wasn't a robbery.
It was obvious that, you know, she didn't have an opportunity
to even close the car door
to make sure nobody got her purse, so it's pretty clear
that someone had abducted Tammy Bowers.
Narrator: Police, hoping against hope
for an innocent explanation,
rushed to find Tammy's parents.
Well, it was around, I'd say, after midnight,
got a knock on the door from two police officers
who asked me if Tammy was with me.
And automatically panic set in.
It was just like, "Why are you asking me that?"
Narrator: Hours passed with no sign of Tammy.
You're kind of helpless.
It's middle of the night.
They-- You know, just trying to sleep.
The next morning, you get another phone call,
say they haven't found her yet.
I lost all trains of thought.
It's...
I don't know. It's a miserable feeling.
Narrator: About 36 hours later,
on what would have been Tammy's 19th birthday,
police were told the body of a young female,
later identified as Tammy Bowers,
was found on the border of Ascension Parish.
Toney: She was partially clothed.
She was in her sweatpants, but they were pulled down.
She was beaten severely.
Narrator: The cause of death was blunt force trauma.
There was clear evidence of sexual assault
Bacala: It just may have been a crime of opportunity.
They hadn't prepared to do this,
but had probably spotted Tammy on the pay phone,
made a snap decision to pull in,
grab her, abduct her, and bring her to this site
where she was sexually assaulted and murdered.
Narrator: If this was a crime of opportunity,
it meant whoever killed Tammy might have killed before
and was almost certainly capable of killing again.
Bacala: The community was struck by fear.
Everybody, you know, moms and daughters,
were all afraid to go out.
♪
Tammy: My plan for the future
is to attend college within the state
and peruse a career in acting,
later marry and have a lovely family.
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy your evening.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Narrator: The utterly inexplicable murder
of Tammy Bowers was devastating for her family
who mourned an outgoing child, the oldest of four children.
Yay! Hi! Yay!
Am I too tall for ya?
No.
Ah. How's that?
Bowers: As she grew up,
she wanted to be the attention, you know, out front.
You know...
"Look at me. I'm talking to you" kind of person.
You're watching TV, she's gonna get in front of the TV,
and you're gonna watch her.
"I'm singing." She was awesome.
Narrator: Tammy's murder, which looked to be
a spur-of-the-moment, random attack,
deeply shocked Ascension Parish.
Everybody was trying to solve this crime.
We had 58,000 people in Ascension Parish,
and I bet 10,000 of them were actively engaged
and had their ear to the door
and listening and paying attention.
Toney: In 1990, you have a community
that didn't have the high crime,
and then you have something like this happen,
and then the community gets alarmed.
You know, it's news.
Narrator: Detectives attempted to backtrack
Tammy's final hours,
and found she'd just called her mother
from the same pay phone where she was attacked.
The main reason she called was 'cause we were discussing
what we were gonna do for her birthday,
which was the very next-- you know, the next day.
Narrator: During this conversation,
Tammy mentioned she'd had a fight
with her ex-boyfriend, Kevin Fontenot.
Zuvich: She was breaking up with him,
and he didn't want to take the breakup.
He didn't-- wouldn't take no for an answer.
And it was at the point where she was very close
to calling the police.
She said it scared her.
Narrator: In fact, a lot of Tammy's friends
knew she wanted to put the relationship
with Kevin behind her.
You have Tammy just now moving out on her own,
and I'm thinking that
he's wanting more than what she's wanting to give.
There's the breakup and all,
so she's wanting a fresh life, in my opinion,
and he does not want to let it go.
Narrator: Letters Kevin wrote to Tammy made it clear
he was having a lot of trouble with the breakup.
Bacala: He had feelings for Tammy.
I think he was trying super hard to keep her
and the more he tried, I think it was more
pushing her in the wrong direction.
Narrator: So, maybe this murder wasn't
a spur-of-the-moment, random attack.
All eyes turned to Kevin Fontenot.
But that was my very first thought.
Did he do something to her?
Narrator: Detectives tracked down Kevin Fontenot
and got a surprise.
It was clear Kevin had recently been in a fight.
He had fresh scratches on his face.
You would hope that if someone tried to take her,
she would fight back.
And here you got scratches on him,
you're thinking, "Whoa," you know?
"This guy could be involved in her disappearance."
Narrator: Tammy's family had no problem
believing her ex-boyfriend might have attacked her.
Her mother told police
she'd had a violent altercation with him
just three days before her murder.
She was really afraid, her and her little roommate.
They were really afraid because he was--
he was very violent about it, you know?
She just didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore.
Narrator: There's a theory that most murder cases
that are solved get solved within 48 hours.
And for detectives and Tammy Bowers' family,
this case looked like it would be one of them,
as long as the evidence
confirmed their theory of what happened.
♪
Okay, anyway, uh, hi.
This is Jane Callen coming to you
with another nightly...
talk show.
Narrator: Shortly after the abduction and murder
of Tammy Bowers,
a prime suspect emerged in the person
of her ex-boyfriend, Kevin Fontenot.
Kevin was absolutely the first person we thought of
that could have done anything to hurt Tammy.
Narrator: Upset after Tammy broke up with him,
detectives learned that Kevin had driven to her house.
Once inside, he pleaded with her to end the breakup.
She refused.
And then things got out of hand.
That altercation had gotten physical,
so he had scratches and things on him.
She threatened to pull a knife on him,
and, eventually, even sprayed him with mace.
So he was obviously somebody we needed to talk to.
Narrator: Kevin admitted to the altercation,
confessed that it did get violent,
but insisted he was no killer.
A friend alibied him for the time of the murder.
But detectives wanted to be sure
and turned to genetic material recovered from the crime scene.
At the time of Tammy's murder,
DNA testing was still getting started.
Booker: In 1990, we were not doing DNA testing at all.
The testing that I did on the bloodstains
and on the semen stains were just ABO blood testing.
Narrator: Though not nearly as accurate as DNA testing,
ABO blood typing was very effective
at eliminating potential suspects.
Booker: Everybody has a blood type,
type A, type B, type AB, or type O.
You could eliminate someone if you found out
that a bloodstain was type B and your suspect was type A.
Well, then you knew they didn't leave that bloodstain.
Narrator: And that's what happened with Kevin Fontenot.
His blood type made it clear he was not Tammy's killer.
He went from suspect number one to distraught ex-boyfriend.
After that, then we were lost, you know?
We didn't know where to go from there.
Narrator: Detectives were in the same quandary.
The local community was still on the case and tips kept coming.
A trucker had what looked like solid information.
Toney: He's going to work at this particular time,
around 11:00 p.m., and he sees a white female
that he describes on a pay phone
and a Ford Gran Torino-type of vehicle pull up,
and a black male, what he describes,
gets out of the vehicle and approaches the female
that he sees on the phone.
Narrator: But this trucker said he didn't see
any sort of altercation.
Still, hairs, apparently from someone of African descent,
were found among the debris at the crime scene,
and one was on Tammy's body.
A green shirt, not Tammy's,
with some small bloodstains was also near the body.
There was no telling, at this time,
if these items were connected to her murder.
Bacala: In 1990, DNA was in its infancy,
so it was much different then, but we tried to make sure
that we kept the evidence up to date with technology.
Narrator: The case started to go cold.
But, years later,
news emerged about a serial rapist killer
preying upon women in Ascension Parish
and the area beyond.
We heard about this guy in Baton Rouge
that was a serial killer.
We did, and we was like, "Was that a possibility?"
Yeah, we really thought it could have been.
Narrator: Investigators agreed.
The question was whether the evidence
could help them make the connection.
Booker: We always had an eye to the future
so we always kept everything frozen.
We just made sure that we had the samples stored properly
for when there was more advanced testing that could be done.
♪
Narrator: In 2002, a serial rapist murderer
was preying on women in the Baton Rouge area.
Some speculated that Tammy Bowers
may have fallen victim to this man.
It wasn't just crimes that were happening in 2002
because serial killers just don't start right then,
you know, in that time period, so you start going backwards.
Narrator: By this time, a single male DNA profile
had been generated from fluids
left at Tammy Bowers' crime scene.
Investigators hoped this might match DNA
from their string of serial rape murders.
But this evidence went nowhere.
Still, Tammy's family kept pushing.
As the years passed, we started losing little hope
they might find somebody,
but, uh, I stayed in touch with the detectives.
I called them constantly.
Narrator: The CODIS DNA database
was just being created at this time,
and no hits were generated.
But CODIS never sleeps, and it gets bigger every day.
In 2006, detectives on the Bowers case
got the call they'd been waiting for for years.
Bacala: I'm sitting in my office,
and Mike Toney, one of our detectives,
walked in and said, "We got a hit.
We know who killed Tammy Bowers."
And it was, you know-- it was like,
"Wow, all this time."
Well, the next thing, we've got to tell Mom and Dad,
let them know that we know who killed your daughter.
♪
Narrator: DNA from the scene matched Herman Frazier,
a 39-year-old from Ascension Parish,
with nearly 20 arrests on his record.
At first, Frazier refused to say
if he had any involvement in the Bowers murder.
But at his trial, he had an abrupt change of heart.
He chose to plead guilty.
Maybe he wanted to tell his story for a long time,
but just never had a day to do it,
and now this day had come.
Narrator: Frazier had a surprise for prosecutors.
He now claimed he had a partner in crime.
His story was that, on the night of Tammy's murder,
he'd been hanging out with a local career criminal
named Tolbert Morris,
and that Morris instigated Tammy's rape and murder.
Prosecutors were skeptical.
In any confession, there might be 90% truth or 75% truth,
and most people will try to minimize
their involvement a little bit.
Narrator: Tolbert Morris,
54 years old with a long rap sheet,
denied any involvement,
and his DNA was not on Tammy's body.
Analysts turned back to the green shirt
found at the crime scene.
Bloodstains on that shirt had her DNA,
so it was definitely connected to the crime,
and also to a so-far unidentified man.
One of the stains showed a little bit of male DNA in it.
There was a mixture of males
and Herman Frazier was eliminated.
He was excluded from that mixture.
Narrator: Analysts compared this profile,
a Y-STR profile,
which refers to the Y chromosome in male DNA
to Tolbert Morris' DNA.
It was a match, but not a perfect one.
Booker: The statistical result was that 99.96%
of male population would be excluded
as a possible source of this Y-STR profile.
Narrator: Years earlier, hairs found at the crime scene
were put in storage.
A profile of mitochondrial DNA,
DNA that's passed directly from mother to child,
was all that could be generated.
This profile was also consistent with Tolbert Morris' DNA.
The presence of two sources of his DNA
was irrefutable evidence.
It put Tolbert Morris at the scene
and corroborated Herman Frazier's story.
We got a DNA hit. It's an absolute lock of a case.
Bowers: I can't really put into words but relieving,
that we finally get some closure.
It was really, really relieving.
Narrator: Frazier said he and Morris
had been driving around drinking.
Morris saw Tammy on the phone,
realized there was no one nearby,
and acted on impulse.
Tammy was bundled into the car,
driven to the edge of town, assaulted, and murdered.
It was a horrifying story.
Tammy Bowers was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Zuvich: Every night since it happened,
I go to bed and I think,
"Oh, my God, that poor, poor baby,"
and I will, for the rest of my life,
think about that.
Every night I think about what she went through
and what they did to her.
Narrator: In October of 2012,
Tolbert Morris was given two life sentences,
one for aggravated rape
and one for second-degree murder,
and had an additional 30 years tacked on to his sentence
for kidnapping.
Herman Frazier got 50 years without parole.
A senseless murder solved by the good sense of detectives
who saved nearly everything connected to the crime.
Bacala: With good, hard work and technology
and the advancement of forensics and all,
you would always be hopeful that,
with the help from a greater power,
that it can get solved.
Bowers: The detectives, they stayed on this case.
They were determined, and any time anything come up,
they were pursuing it, so...
thank God for them, and thank God for DNA.
♪