A Bowler woman was being held on $150,000 cash bond after she allegedly set a fire that burned down a house in the Town of Bartelme on Aug. 17.
Amanda J. Bowman, 47, was charged in Shawano-Menominee Circuit Court on Aug. 21 with arson, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and six counts of felony bail jumping. She was awaiting trial on charges of possession of methamphetamine and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia when the incident occurred.
During a brief court appearance Aug. 28, Bowman waived the time limits for a preliminary hearing, and Judge Katherine Sloma scheduled the hearing for 2 p.m. Oct. 2.
According to the criminal complaint, crews were called to the home on the morning of Aug. 17 and found it fully engulfed in flames. Shawano County Sheriff’s Department Detective Craig Rekoske interviewed Bowman, who said the house belong to her 67-year-old cousin, identified in the complaint as KID, and 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, the complaint said. 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,” the complaint said.
Standing in the hallway at the door to KID’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, the complaint said.
“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.
KID offered a different sequence of events, saying he was in bed and did hear Bowman say, “It’s me. I’m filling up my car,” but 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,” KID 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 strange 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.
Asked if Bowman had ever had an episode before where he was concerned for his safety, he said, “No, it really caught me off guard.”
Bowman was charged with the methamphetamine possession count in August 2023 and was free on a $2,500 signature bond. She had last appeared in court on Aug. 13, when a final pre-trial conference was scheduled for Nov. 5.
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