A former Mayo Clinic doctor has been accused of fatally poisoning his wife after their attempt at an open marriage went south. Dr. Connor Bowman, 30, was indicted by a Minnesota grand jury on a charge of first-degree premediated murder after initially being arrested and charged with second-degree murder in October 2023.
He allegedly killed his 32-year-old wife, Betty Bowman, who was also a pharmacist at the clinic. Supposedly, the couple had been in the middle of discussing divorce. Friends of the couple told police that they had been in an open relationship, but Connor Bowman developed an emotional connection to another woman, which led his wife to threaten divorce.
On August 16, 2023, Betty Bowman went to Mayo Clinic’s St. Mary’s Hospital with "severe gastrointestinal distress and dehydration where her condition deteriorated rapidly." She died four days later on August 20.
Connor Bowman, who is a poison specialist, was accused of trying to have his wife's body quickly cremated so that he could cash in on her $500,000 life insurance policy. He also reportedly tried to convince the medical examiner's office not to perform an autopsy, claiming that his wife had died "following a sudden onset of autoimmune and infectious illness."
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The office performed the autopsy anyway. The medical examiner found that Betty Bowman died from toxic effects of colchicine, which is a drug used to treat gout. Her death was marked as a homicide.
