Up next, a young woman vanishes
and a town wonders, who's next?
It was horrendous.
Nobody saw it.
Nobody knew what happened.
Tips pour in, but leads dry up.
I promised
we would solve this crime
and that was
a hard promise to keep.
Stymied detectives
appeal to a higher power
and forensic science.
It's just my belief,
and I've told this to
victims' families in the past...
"God don't like ugly."
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.
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.
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.
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.
In 1990,
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.
Nearly every night,
Tammy used a pay phone
at a nearby convenience store
to check in with
family and friends.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tammy's friend rushed to the area.
Tammy was nowhere in sight.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
She was partially clothed.
She was in her sweatpants,
but they were pulled down.
She was beaten severely.
The cause of death
was blunt force trauma.
There was clear evidence
of sexual as*ault
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 m*rder*d.
If this was a crime
of opportunity,
it meant whoever k*lled Tammy
might have k*lled before
and was almost certainly
capable of k*lling again.
The community
was struck by fear.
Everybody, you know,
moms and daughters,
were all afraid to go out.
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.
The utterly inexplicable m*rder
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?
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.
Tammy's m*rder,
which looked to be
a spur-of-the-moment,
random att*ck,
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.
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.
Detectives
attempted to backtrack
Tammy's final hours,
and found she'd just
called her mother
from the same pay phone
where she was att*cked.
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.
During this conversation,
Tammy mentioned
she'd had a fight
with her ex-boyfriend,
Kevin Fontenot.
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.
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.
Letters Kevin wrote
to Tammy made it clear
he was having a lot
of trouble with the breakup.
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.
So, maybe this m*rder wasn't
a spur-of-the-moment,
random att*ck.
All eyes turned
to Kevin Fontenot.
But that was
my very first thought.
Did he do something to her?
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."
Tammy's family had no problem
believing her ex-boyfriend
might have att*cked her.
Her mother told police
she'd had a violent
altercation with him
just three days
before her m*rder.
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.
There's a theory
that most m*rder 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.
Shortly after
the abduction and m*rder
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.
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 Kn*fe on him,
and, eventually,
even sprayed him with mace.
So he was obviously somebody
we needed to talk to.
Kevin admitted
to the altercation,
confessed that it did
get violent,
but insisted he was no k*ller.
A friend alibied him
for the time of the m*rder.
But detectives wanted to be sure
and turned to genetic material
recovered from the crime scene.
At the time of Tammy's m*rder,
DNA testing was still
getting started.
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.
Though not nearly as
accurate as DNA testing,
ABO blood typing
was very effective
at eliminating
potential suspects.
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.
And that's what
happened with Kevin Fontenot.
His blood type made it clear
he was not Tammy's k*ller.
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.
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.
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.
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 m*rder.
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.
The case started to go cold.
But, years later,
news emerged about
a serial r*pist k*ller
preying upon women
in Ascension Parish
and the area beyond.
We heard about this guy
in Baton Rouge
that was a serial k*ller.
We did, and we was like,
"Was that a possibility?"
Yeah, we really thought
it could have been.
Investigators agreed.
The question was whether
the evidence
could help them
make the connection.
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.
In 2002,
a serial r*pist m*rder*r
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 K*llers
just don't start right then,
you know, in that time period,
so you start going backwards.
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 r*pe 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.
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.
I'm sitting in my office,
and Mike Toney,
one of our detectives,
walked in and said,
"We got a hit.
We know who k*lled
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 k*lled your daughter.
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 m*rder.
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.
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 m*rder,
he'd been hanging out
with a local career criminal
named Tolbert Morris,
and that Morris instigated
Tammy's r*pe and m*rder.
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.
Tolbert Morris,
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.
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.
The statistical result
was that 99.96%
of male population
would be excluded
as a possible source
of this Y-STR profile.
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.
I can't really
put into words but relieving,
that we finally
get some closure.
It was really, really relieving.
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 m*rder*d.
It was a horrifying story.
Tammy Bowers was simply in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
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.
In October of 2012,
Tolbert Morris was given
two life sentences,
one for aggravated r*pe
and one for
second-degree m*rder,
and had an additional 30 years
tacked on to his sentence
for kidnapping.
Herman Frazier got 50 years
without parole.
A senseless m*rder solved
by the good sense of detectives
who saved nearly everything
connected to the crime.
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.
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.