Police in Minnesota conducted unconstitutional searches in the case of a Mayo Clinic doctor accused of poisoning his wife, and the evidence gathered during those searches will be thrown out, a judge ruled this week.
Dr. Connor Bowman is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly using gout medication to kill his wife Betty Jo Bowman in August 2023 at their Twin Cities home.
The Rochester Police Department submitted numerous applications for search warrants, which Connor Bowman’s attorneys argued were unconstitutional. In the weeks following Betty Bowman’s death, investigators collected 14 electronic devices, including an iPad.
District Judge Kathy M. Wallace ruled against two search warrants and threw out the following information gathered from 13 devices and an iPad for violating the defendant’s right to privacy:
Media including texts, emails, photographs, notes, and/or audio files and
videos, including media regarding toxic/hazardous/controlled substances,
financial matters, divorce and/or personal relationship information.
Text messages/communication including conversations about toxic/
hazardous/controlled substances, financial matters, divorce and/or personal
relationship information.
Web/Internet browsing history including searches/websites/articles etc.
about toxic/hazardous/controlled substances, financial matters, divorce
and/or personal relationship information
Wallace stated that cops failed to meet the particularity requirement, which “prevents law enforcement from having unbridled discretion in determining what items should be searched or seized, as well as from engaging in general searches and exploratory rummaging.”
In other words, Wallace believes the warrants’ language was overly broad. Cops were aware of the Bowmans’ marital problems, his financial problems, and the fact that the victim ingested a smoothie laced with the gout medication that allegedly caused her death when she filed the initial application.
“This knowledge demonstrates that law enforcement could have provided more specificity in the … search warrant by searching exclusively for data concerning toxic/hazardous/controlled substances, financial matters, divorce and/or personal relationship information,” according to Wallace.
The judge also stated that investigators applied for the second warrant at issue about a month after the first. She stated that they knew a lot more at the time and could have been more specific. Despite this, the application was almost identical to the first, she said.
It is unclear how the tossed evidence will affect the state’s case against the doctor. Prosecutors have not commented on the situation.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Dr. Connor Bowman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Betty Jo Bowman in the summer of 2023, but in January 2024, a grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder.
His wife died at a hospital on August 20, 2023, after a four-day stay for what doctors initially diagnosed as food poisoning.
Her condition “deteriorated rapidly” after her admission, and she developed cardiac problems, fluid in her lungs, and organ failure. Investigators believe her death is suspicious because she was considered healthy prior to her hospitalisation.
Cops became even more suspicious of the doctor after friends revealed that Betty Bowman was seeking a divorce and that he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
Friends also pointed out that as a pharmacy resident who also worked in poison control, he had the knowledge to poison his wife if he wanted.
The South-east Minnesota Medical Examiner determined that her death was caused by the toxic effects of colchicine, and that the manner of death was homicide.
Investigators claim that Connor Bowman used his Mayo Clinic email address to purchase colchicine, a gout treatment, which they believe he used to poison his wife. He tried to blame her for buying the drug that killed her, saying she “fraudulently” bought the drug under his name, authorities said.
Detectives recently obtained information from a warrant on his phone, which revealed he was using the dating app Bumble on August 29, just nine days after his wife died.
He identified himself as a widower and allegedly started a conversation with a woman. The woman allegedly told cops she found it strange that he brought up the fact that he received a nearly $500,000 payout from his wife’s death.
According to the warrant, Connor Bowman spoke with another woman who asked if it was okay to flirt with someone, to which he replied that it was fine and that his deceased wife would want him to move on and find happiness.
He claimed his wife died of “listeria poisoning,” a foodborne bacterial illness, “earlier in the summer,” according to the warrant. The doctor allegedly told another woman that his wife died from a morphine overdose about a year ago.
Cops also obtained his Google searches from his phone, which allegedly included looking for “is widow gender neutral” on Aug. 18, two days before his wife’s death.
The doctor allegedly suggested to others and wrote in his wife’s obituary that she had hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or “HLH,” a rare illness in which certain blood cells accumulate and cause organ damage. But investigators learned she had no previous symptoms of HLH.
The medical examiner’s office reported a suspicious death to the Rochester Police Department the following day. The office had prevented a cremation from taking place due to the unusual circumstances, according to documents.
According to authorities, Connor Bowman requested that his wife be “cremated immediately” after her natural death.
However, according to the medical examiner, they received a call from a woman who knew the Bowmans and stated that the couple was having marital problems and “talking about a divorce following infidelity and a deteriorating relationship,” according to the probable cause arrest affidavit.
According to the affidavit, defendant Bowman emailed death investigators at the medical examiner’s office to enquire whether the toxicology reports being completed were more “thorough” than those typically performed at hospitals. He also requested a list of what would be tested.
Connor Bowman had attended pharmacy school, worked in poison control in Kansas, and was now in medical school. A spokesperson for the Mayo Clinic told Law&Crime that his residency at the hospital ended in October.
“We are aware of the recent arrest of a former Mayo Clinic resident on charges unrelated to his Mayo Clinic responsibilities,” according to a statement. The hospital declined to comment further.
Betty Bowman had recently told others that her husband was in debt so they kept separate bank accounts. Connor Bowman told a friend he was going to receive a $500,000 life insurance policy as a result of his wife’s death. Investigators discovered a check for nearly $500,000 from an insurance company in the Bowman residence.
Friends of the couple depict a marriage on the rocks as a result of financial difficulties and infidelity in Rochester Police Department applications for search warrants that Law&Crime previously reviewed.
The Bowmans were in a “open relationship,” but they agreed not to become emotionally attached to their other partners. Friends told detectives that Connor Bowman fell in love with his new girlfriend.
Betty Bowman allegedly confronted her husband about the woman and suggested that they begin divorce proceedings. According to the warrant, when one friend went to see Connor Bowman at his home three days after his death, she found his girlfriend there with him and his wife’s photos had been removed.
Another friend said she was visiting Betty Bowman 10 days before her death and gave her a smoothie her husband had made for her in a Lilo & Stich cup. According to the warrant, the friend thought it was strange that Connor Bowman had made a smoothie for his wife because he “never made anything for anybody.” It “tasted very bad.”
“[The friend] joked that Connor must be attempting to poison her, but didn’t take it seriously at the time. Betty even joked that she had considered it at the time and didn’t think it would happen, but she decided not to drink the smoothie and threw it away,” according to the warrant. Betty Bowman’s sudden illness and death raised suspicions in the friend’s mind.
According to the friends, the doctor did not act like a grieving husband would in the days following his wife’s death. He seemed “stoic and calm,” even going out for drinks where he “appeared to be happy or at least indifferent” about his wife’s death two days later.
One of Betty Bowman’s boyfriends told detectives that on August 14, Betty Bowman told him she “had a few days off work and was looking forward to spending some time with him.” The two saw each other the following day and texted later that night while she was drinking at home with her husband.
On August 16, she told him she was so sick she couldn’t sleep. She suspected that her illness was caused by an alcoholic drink she consumed, which was mixed into a large smoothie. She went to the hospital shortly afterwards.