Expert witnesses are unavailable for the trial against Amanda Bowman in September, so it was moved back until next February.
The trial is now set for four days beginning Feb. 8, with a final pre-trial hearing set for 9 a.m. Jan. 6 in Branch I at the Shawano County Courthouse. According to Shawano-Menominee County District Attorney Greg Parker, the three witnesses with the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigations will be at a conference that week, so the delay is necessary.
Bowman, 49, has been charged with arson and attempted first-degree homicide, both carrying increased penalties because the victim is elderly. She also has six felony bail jumping counts associated with the case.
Circuit Court Judge Katherine Sloma agreed to push the trial date back but warned that six months’ notice is plenty of time for the expert witnesses to plan ahead and not let anything else interfere with their schedules.
Parker also said that his office is having difficulty contacting the victim in the case, with the last contact being June 2025. He noted that letters have been sent to the home, and there has been no response to date.
Sloma also agreed to amend the $150,000 cash bond to a signature bond, which will allow Bowman to be free until the trial. Prior to the hearing, Bowman had been sitting in the Shawano County Jail for two years. Among the bond requirements are that Bowman must maintain sobriety, and she may not possess or use any accelerant or flammable material.
According to the criminal complaint, crews were called to a home in the Town of Bartelme on the morning of Aug. 17, 2024, and found it fully engulfed. Shawano County Sheriff’s Department Detective Craig Rekoske interviewed Bowman, who said the house belonged to her 67-year-old cousin and that she lived there on and off.
Bowman said she had been up all night driving and was running out of gas, so she stopped at her cousin’s where a young friend had been repairing her ATV, according to the complaint. She went into the house with the gas can when the dog started barking — “I just wanted him to know it was me,” she told the detective, adding that she “didn’t know why (she) brought it into the house,” according to the complaint.
Standing in the hallway at the door to the victim’s room, the gas can “just poofed in my face,” and she dropped the can because of the sudden flames, she told Rekoske.
Bowman said she and her cousin ran out of the house together, jumping over the flames, according to the complaint.
“I don’t know if I had a cigarette; he asked me that, too, and I do not remember,” the complaint quotes her as saying.
Rekoske reported that Bowman was showing “outward signs of drug usage, including the failure to maintain a stationary physical position, speaking in phrases and going from one topic to the next, and excessive hand and arm movement.”
When he confronted her about her drug usage, she eventually admitted she had used meth before the fire but offered conflicting timelines about how long before the fire it happened, at first saying it had been a week earlier, the complaint said.
Her cousin offered a different sequence of events, saying he was in bed and heard Bowman say: “It’s me. I’m filling up my car.” When he opened his eyes, he saw flames coming up from the carpet, “a red gas can melted and a trail of flames going down the hallway, and she’s down past the hallway running out the door or leaving,” according to the complaint.
He denied that he ran out of the house with Bowman and said she was already out of the house when he realized it was on fire.
“I don’t know; I was wondering if she was trying to kill me or something,” the cousin said, although he couldn’t think of a reason Bowman would want to do that, according to the complaint. “It’s just weird that the fire was right at my bedroom door.”
She had been acting strangely for about three days prior to the fire, the cousin said, and he noticed she had parked her car farther away from the house than she usually did.
Bowman has another open case in the Shawano County system. She was charged Aug. 15, 2023, with possession of methamphetamine and a misdemeanor count of possessing drug paraphernalia.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
