Snapped: Women Who Murder - Mary Bowles
Episode Date: July 27, 2025A decades-old missing person's case is reopened after human remains are discovered in West Virginia.Season 32, Episode 13Originally aired: May 14, 2023Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE ...on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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I'm John Robbins and joining me on How Do You Cope this week is Shamel Williams,
Head of Services for Health and Training at the charity Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse.
Going on to be a perpetrator is a chosen behaviour.
You've chosen to impact abuse and pain, trauma to someone.
There's so many different routes that you could explore
rather than perpetrating abuse
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So that's How Do You Cope with me, John Robbins. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
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A long buried secret unearthed.
They were clearing the roadside and some debris and discovered some bones.
There was a bullet lodged in her skull.
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.
But the deeper investigators dig, the more family secrets
they find.
She started signing the checks.
It was approximately $19,000 cash.
She was money hungry.
She was getting checks monthly.
Witnesses implicated her in the death of her own son.
She looked innocent, but underneath, she was the devil.
March 30, 2011. It's just after 1.30 p.m. in Summers County, West Virginia.
Employees with the Department of Highways are working along a steep hillside near Walker
Mountain Road.
The 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.
The workers immediately contact West Virginia State Police.
Investigators arrive on the scene along with a team from the State Medical Examiner's
Office.
The remains they 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 rot in the woods
is just a horrifying concept.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Within a few weeks, they finally have some answers.
They were able to trace that serial number on the plate
and determine the victim was Kathy Jo McCoy,
a local woman living in the area who had been reported missing in 2003.
There were so many years that lapsed from the time Kathy went missing to the time we
found her bones. When you find the remains of someone, there's only one question,
how 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.
Kathy Jo Lukasch McCoy was born in Beckley, West Virginia on December 26, 1970 to parents Mary and Bill Lukasch.
Mary had four children, Matthew, Mark, Johnny, and Kathy Jo.
My siblings and I had a great time growing up.
We done all kinds of stuff, climbed trees,
go swimming.
Our 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.
They were always getting into some type of shenanigan or trouble. My mom loved her brothers.
But Kathy Jo's relationship with her mother Mary was far more complicated.
There was always an argument of some kind over something petty, but they would fight like cats and dogs.
Born in 1944, Kathy Jo's mother, Mary Louise Barley,
was an independent woman with a no-nonsense approach to life.
She grew up behind the Dock Pepper plant in Beckley.
She did not have any siblings.
My mom never talked about her past.
If we tried to talk about stuff like that. She changed subject.
Mary was stubborn.
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.
My mom, Cathy Jo, married my dad, Carl Willard McCoy,
at the age of, I want to say 16.
She was pretty young.
I have no idea how they met, how they fell in love, all that.
The marriage was short-lived, and in 1988, when Kathy Jo was 17,
the couple divorced after the birth of their son, Carl.
Two years later, Love found Kathy Jo once more.
My mother met my father,
and then I came along July 9, 1990.
I first met Kathy 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.
After giving birth to Jasmine at age 19,
Kathy 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 pain, she loved us. In her mid-20s, Kathy Jo attended cosmetology school and started her own business.
She had her own little shop going on inside her house.
In the end, the beauty shop wasn't everything she'd hoped it would be.
She wasn't really getting by on that.
She went from being a hairstylist to a stripper.
Her dancing was to provide.
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.
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.
In 1995, tragedy struck the McCoy family
when Kathy 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. Three years later, in September 1998, Kathy Jo's world was turned upside down yet again
by another horrific car crash, this time leaving
27-year-old Kathy Jo clinging to life.
She had flipped a geotracker.
I think it was like eight times.
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.
One of her arms had almost been severed.
They had done surgery to stabilize her neck
and to try to reattach 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.
After three months in the hospital, Kathy Jo was released.
But her dancing career was over.
Her arm was always upright in a stuck position against her chest.
She couldn't straighten it out completely.
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.
Kathy Jo's mother, Mary, and her new husband, Jack,
also offered to help out.
Every now and then, Mary would watch them kids.
Mary helped her to get signed up,
to get some type of compensation from the accident.
The injuries that Kathy Jo sustained in this car wreck were so severe,
it left her pretty much unable to work, and she just very much depended
on these Social Security checks that were coming in.
After two years of recovery, Kathy Jo hoped to drive again,
but her injuries prevented her from getting a license in West Virginia.
Her disability prevented her from driving because, again, she could only operate one hand, one arm.
So she couldn't drive, but she had to be able to drive.
While things remained tense between Kathy Jo and Mary,
on June 5, 2000, Mary offered to drive her daughter to Tennessee
with the hope of getting a license there.
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 me back, I guess, at the end of that weekend.
She seemed normal.
I love you.
See you Monday.
I love you. See you Monday.
Mary surprised everyone when she returned home alone
nine 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.
But the evening passed, and Kathy Jo never returned.
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.
Now, in 2011, 11 years later, West Virginia State Police have identified Kathy Jo's remains
along a rural West Virginia roadside.
Examination by a medical examiner determined a.22 caliber round was lodged in Kathy's
skull. Once the State Police was able to determine thatged in Kathy's skull.
Once the state police was able to determine that they were Kathy's bones
and that she had been missing for some time,
then the investigation started.
As police dig into Kathy Jo's missing persons file,
something strikes them as suspicious.
Kathy Jo McCoy was last seen on June 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.
Coming up, a fraud investigation leads detectives to their first suspect.
She had a criminal history spanning in the 80s and 90s.
I was just a kid myself, but I knew something was very wrong, very, very wrong.
MUSIC
Summers County, West Virginia, 2011. After discovering the remains of Kathy Jo McCoy,
a mother who went missing in June of 2000,
investigators are questioning why her disappearance was not reported until 2003.
Certainly, after so many years, I think it's very odd that family would not file a missing persons report.
So, I think that's the first red flag.
Investigators discover that Kathy Jo was ultimately reported missing under strange circumstances. So in 2003, the bank where Kathy Jo McCoy had our account notified the Social Security Administration
and they believed they'd been fraudulent activity on that account.
We determined that Kathy McCoy's mother, Mary Bowles, had been cashing checks
that were sent to Kathy McCoy from the Social Security Administration.
I interviewed several of the bank employees.
No one had seen Kathy McCoy in about three years.
All the bank employees confirmed that Mary would cash
Kathy McCoy's checks and explained to them
that the reason she was doing that is because
Kathy was too ill to come in and do it for herself.
So Mary would bring in Kathy's driver's license
and would also be a second endorser on the check to get the check cashed.
There was approximately $19,000 cashed.
I ordered photocopies of all of the checks that were cashed and
deposited over the entitlement period for Kathy McCoy from the Treasury
Department. As Agent Morton examines the checks, a disturbing detail catches his
eye. I was able to determine very quickly that sometime in mid 2000,
Kathy'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 Kathy's name on the checks.
With his suspicions growing, Agent Morton runs a background check on Mary Bowles.
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.
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.
She was very quick to admit everything.
She admitted she knew that it was wrong to do that.
But she says she had a good reason.
Mary indicated that she was in fact utilizing that money from
Kathy's checks in order to take care of Kathy's children who
were currently residing with her.
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, Kathy.
She basically told investigators that she would be prone to run off with random men.
She told me the story of how she hadn't seen Kathy in three years.
She had taken Kathy 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 persons report?
She said, well, she's an adult.
She can do what she wants.
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.
And 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 Call,
and my granddaddy. And then Jessica went to live with my nana, Vicki Call, and my granddaddy.
And then Jessica went with her dad.
Still, Tim Morton can't help but wonder,
if Mary was involved in defrauding Kathy Jo,
could she be capable of worse?
There was that lingering feeling that I couldn't let go,
that that's the least of
her worries is this check fraud.
It was a couple months into my investigation that I contacted the West Virginia State Police
and voiced my concerns and told them what I'd found.
So at that point, West Virginia State Police made this an official missing persons case.
With Mary Bowles in jail, West Virginia State Police launched their own investigation into Kathy Jo's disappearance in November 2003.
There were so many years that lapsed from the time Kathy went missing.
that lapsed from the time Kathy went missing. Time is your enemy because people's memories fade,
people die, they move away,
and so it makes it very difficult.
Police start by interviewing Kathy Jo's eldest kids, 16-year-old Carl and 13-year-old Jasmine.
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.
Three days after Kathy Jo left, the children say they were taken to their grandmother Mary's by Kathy
Jo's boyfriend, Jake.
I believe it was on a Monday or something, after the weekend, but Jake dropped us off
with Mary.
A couple days go by, well, I guess, you know, your mom, she just abandoned you all.
I did try to contact Kathy Jo, but my mama had said that she had moved
and she didn't want nothing to do with the family.
That's what I heard.
So I just went with it.
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.
This has been probably 2 and 1 half years of, you know,
mom being gone.
The living conditions with Mary were terrible.
Padlocked refrigerators, you know, the verbal abuse.
padlocked refrigerators, you know, the verbal abuse. Investigators immediately track down
Kathy Jo's former boyfriend for questioning.
Jake provided an alibi for himself indicating he was at work,
works in a mine. He was in that mine from 5 a.m. until late into the evening on the day
that
Kathy was last seen.
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 18-month prison sentence. 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 money, and I'll go away. But from the beginning I was
convinced that there was
something much more disturbing going on.
Coming up, more details of Mary's questionable past
come to light.
She told me that she did feel like Mary did something with
Kathy.
Could Kathy Jo still be alive?
Mary Bowles, she indicated that she had made contact
with her daughter Kathy.
What's your final view on
to what degree she believes all this stuff?
She lied.
She tried to manufacture evidence.
I'm Christopher Goffard with a new series from LA Times Studios.
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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 with her daughter Kathy
while she was in custody on federal charges,
and that Kathy appeared to be fine,
and she was working as a dancer in New York City.
But investigators aren't buying it.
She required a cane to walk from her car accident.
It was impossible to believe that Kathy Jo
would be working as a dancer anywhere.
Shortly after Mary's guilty plea,
her friend and former roommate Geraldine Tinscher
contacts Agent Morton.
Mary lived with a lady named Geraldine Tinscher,
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 Kathy.
Geraldine says after Mary went to prison,
she went through Mary's safe.
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
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 Kathy Jo's death.
In 05, Mary Bowles is released from federal custody.
She returns to her residence and reassumes her life.
returns to her residence and reassumes her life.
In fact, six years pass with no movement on the missing persons case until the discovery of Kathy Joes remains in 2011.
The normal procedure is to notify Nex and Ken of the death.
In this case, Nex and Ken was determined
to be her mother, Mary Bowles.
And yet, when officers attempt to locate Mary,
they come up empty-handed.
Investigators were not able to track down Mary.
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.
On April 26, 2011, investigators locate Kathy Jo's 20-year-old daughter, Jasmine, who was raised by her father and paternal grandmother, Vicki.
They first came by and asked Jasmine for a DNA sample.
I was praying that it wasn't gonna be a match,
because I could see how heartbroken my baby was.
But then when they came back, they told us.
I was mostly in shock because in my mind,
I just thought and hoped that she was somewhere out there.
Investigators learned from Jasmine that her grandmother, Mary, didn't seem all that concerned when Kathy Jo disappeared.
Mary hurried up to go and get Medicaid and food stamps in her name and to switch custody of us to her.
Jasmine's grandmother, Vicki, tells investigators that a month after Kathy Jo disappeared in
July 2000, she received an invitation from Mary. The day of Jasmine's birthday,
Mary invited us to her trailer in Pipestem, West Virginia
to celebrate with Jasmine and the kids.
She told us that Kathy Jo had left with three guys.
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 22 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.
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 Kathy Jo's skull.
The victim died as a result of a.22 caliber gunshot wound.
At this point, investigators have bumped up the pursuit for Mary Bowles. It's gone into multiple states.
of the pursuit for Mary Bowles. It's gone into multiple states.
On April 27, 2011,
three weeks into the search for Mary,
homicide investigators talked to Kathy Jo's son,
Carl McCoy,
who was only 12 when his mother went missing.
When Mom's remains were found,
I completely went downhill from there. You know what happened,
you suspect it, 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 dog.
Carl points out that Kathy Jo isn't the first family member to die under suspicious circumstances.
Carl related a story to investigators
about his uncle Mark, who at age 17
was in a very serious car accident
in Pigeon Forest, Tennessee.
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.
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 just told us Mary took and laid the mattress, you know,
against the door where they couldn't get out.
He died right there in the motel room.
Died from a lower punctured intestine,
drowned it in his own fluids.
No remorse.
It's like it didn't phase her.
According to the family, once back home, and fazer.
According to the family, once back home, Mary started looking for an attorney.
Then she turns around and sues the hospital.
Mary Bowles filed action against the hospital.
She successfully sued them for the amount of $24,000.
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 lot of people leave out with her and not come back.
Coming up, the hunt is on.
They discover her white full-size pickup truck parked in the yard.
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.
After years spent under a cloud of suspicion, Mary Bowles is now suspect number one
in the murder of her daughter, Kathy Jo McCoy.
Family, as well as other witnesses,
have 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 law enforcement,
but that hasn't stopped investigators.
They continue to reach out to potential witnesses who might help bolster their case, including
Mary's former friend and roommate Geraldine Tinscher.
Shortly after Mary Bowles went to prison for fraud in 2003, her roommate Geraldine Tinture discovered that she, in fact, was a victim of fraud.
Geraldine's not a fan of Mary Bowles anymore because she stole from her.
When state investigators circle back to Geraldine, she doesn't hold back.
Geraldine Tinscher was able to say about the night of June the 5th that 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 clothes were and that she was sopping wet from her hair all the way down to her feet.
Geraldine asked Mary what was going on.
She said, oh, I just dropped Kathy off with some friends
and she's going to get her own ride home.
Geraldine thought it was odd that Kathy's purse was still
in the front seat of the van.
She sees Mary getting in Kathy's purse and getting her driver's license out of her purse.
And she said, I'm getting her driver's license because I'm going to the state police and file
missing persons report. One was never filed with the West Virginia State Police.
One was never filed with the West Virginia State Police.
But investigators know that's not the real reason she wanted Kathy Jo's ID. She was getting that driver's license to cash Kathy'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 Kathy would not give up
custody of those children.
On April 28, 2011, detectives speak with Kathy Jo's brother, Matthew Lukash, and get an unexpected
break after weeks of searching for Mary Bowles.
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.
West Virginia state police immediately go looking for Mary.
When investigators get to the address,
based on tracking of the phone number,
they discover Mary's white full-size pickup truck
parked in the yard.
When investigators attempted to notify that Kathy, in fact, was deceased and her remains were recovered,
Mary indicated she already was aware of the fact.
Mary tells investigators she saw the story on the local news.
Investigators asked her to go back to the station
for a statement.
the station for a statement.
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 Kathy.
And Mary Bowles benefited from Kathy'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 very culpable of this crime.
But Mary stands her ground. Mary Bowles does agree to take a polygraph examination.
She ends up failing the polygraph with deception noted.
Authorities arrest Mary Bowles for the shooting death of her daughter, Kathy Jo.
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.
Coming up, will Mary finally face justice?
An 11-year crime is just a very difficult crime to pursue.
Or will she escape yet again?
The trial was just not going to happen. MUSIC
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 Tinscher's testimony, prosecutors secure what they need.
Geraldine testified at the preliminary.
She was a wonderful witness.
Mary Bowles was indicted for first degree murder.
It was an uphill battle after preliminary hearing.
An 11-year crime is just a very difficult crime to pursue.
Number one, you don't have a murder weapon.
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.
Prosecutors face the lingering questions,
including exactly what went down between Mary and Kathy Jo when they left home on June 5, 2000.
We believe there was some premeditation,
that Mary planned for some period of time.
Though they can't prove exactly how Mary killed Kathy 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.
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.
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, 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. In 2016, Mary Bowles is released from jail and placed in hospice care.
The prosecution dismisses their case against her.
I left the prosecuting attorney's office in December 2016.
I dismissed it before I left because I didn't want to leave a case like that to my next in line.
Mary Bowles dies on July 5, 2017.
When I got the notice that Mary Bowles was dead, I took a deep breath.
Mary Bowles was not going to hurt anyone again.
Mary Bowles was not going to hurt anyone again. But for Kathy Jo's family, the news brings mixed emotions.
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.
Justice wasn't served.
It was not served at all.
That woman never had remorse about anything.
What I want them to remember about Kathy Jo and 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. Her voice will be heard.
Kathy Jo McCoy was laid to rest by her family on March 11, 2007 in Hinton, West Virginia.
Mary Bowles was never tried or convicted of Kathy Jo's murder or the death of her son Mark.
We actin' bad, bad, bad, bad. We ain't tryin' that that which I heard nobody.
For decades he was untouchable.
But now it's all coming undone Sean combs the mogul as we know
it is over he will never be that person again even if he's
found not guilty of these charges.
I'm Jesse Weber host of law and crimes, the rise and fall of
Diddy the federal trial a front row seat to the biggest trial
in entertainment history, sex trafficking racketeering
prostitution allegations by federal prosecutors that span
decades and witnesses were finally speaking out.
The spotlight is harsher the stakes are higher and for did
there may be no second chances. You can listen to the rise and
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