LUSBY — LUSBY - She walked barefoot along the gravel road, her pink nightshirt stained. The girl wore her hair in pigtails, each fastened with a pink barrette, her dark hair so matted it looked as if it were in dreadlocks.
Phillip Garrett, smoking a cigarette on his neighbor's front lawn in the Calvert County neighborhood, called out to the girl.
"My mother beats me. She just beats me to death," the 7-year-old, covered in bruises and cuts, responded, according to witnesses and police.
Those startling words Friday night set off an investigation by the Calvert County sheriff's office that resulted in a grim discovery Saturday at the girl's home - children's remains in a large freezer in the basement.
Renee D. Bowman, 43, a former Rockville resident and the adoptive mother of the girl and two others, was ordered held without bond yesterday on first- and second-degree child abuse charges.
Bowman admitted beating the girl found Friday night, saying she had "lost her temper" and hit the girl with a "hard-heeled shoe," according to Calvert County Detective Sgt. Michael Moore Jr.
Confronted later with the evidence of remains in the freezer, Bowman said she had stored the bodies of her two other adopted daughters in the freezer since she moved from Rockville in February to the rented, tan, single-story rambler in the 200 block of Buckskin Trail in Lusby, Calvert County sheriff's officials said. The case is being investigated as a homicide, Moore said.
"It's a tragedy," he said. "Children don't get to vote on where they come in this life. You would pray and hope the system would have helped them. All we can do is hope the system doesn't let down this little girl. She's a 7-year-old and has been brutally victimized.
"She has been put through hell."
The surviving girl has open sores and lesions on her buttocks and lower thighs, marks on her neck made by a cord, rope or other item and bruises on her hands and lips, police said.
Montgomery County police said they are awaiting a determination from the state medical examiner before any charges are filed. Because the remains were encased in a large block of ice, autopsies have not yet been performed. They are scheduled today at the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore.
Officials from the medical examiner's office did not return phone calls last night.
