TOLEDO -- Toledo Police say it could be the coldest cold case they've ever solved. Thirty-nine years ago this December, 14-year-old Eileen Adams, a freshman at Central Catholic High School, told her parents she was going shopping and to her sister's house after school. She never made it, and now police have issued an arrest warrant for the man they think did it.
On December 18th, 1967, she rode the school bus to her sister's home from school, and police believe some time after she got off the bus, Robert Baxter Bowman abducted her in the 2200th block of Sylvania Avenue. They believe she was held captive in his basement, sexually assaulted and strangled. Her body was found about a month later in a Monroe County Field.
So how did police crack this decades-old case? They say new, scientific evidence pointed the toward Bowman. "A DNA test of the suspect's daughter, which came back 99.9-percent certainty that the father of the person we tested was the source of semen found in Eileen Adams' underwear," said Deputy Chief Don Kenney of the Toledo Police Department.
Bowman, who's now 70, is charged with aggravated murder. He's believed to be living in San Diego, and police say he could be responsible for other crimes.
News 11 spoke on the phone with the man who found Adams' body nearly 40 years ago. Roy Knaggs of Whiteford Township, Michigan said he's happy police now have evidence. Knaggs was just 19-years-old back in 1968, and was hunting one afternoon on his family's property in Monroe County around Whiteford and Samaria Roads when he found a rug rolled up in a field with feet sticking out of it.
Knaggs told News 11, "I was so shocked. It's something you never forget."
"It makes your your mind race," Knaggs added. "And the memories are quite vivid."
Count on News 11 to follow this case as it develops.
