The former Mayo Clinic doctor accused of fatally poisoning his wife after their open marriage failed may have referred to himself as a widower on dating app Bumble even before she died, a newly released warrant shows.
Dr. Connor Bowman, 31, was slapped with murder charges after his wife, pharmacist Betty Bowman, 32, fell seriously ill and died from organ failure in Rochester, Minnesota, on Aug. 20 after allegedly being laced with a drug used to treat gout.
A new search warrant, released Tuesday and obtained by KAAL TV, reveals Bowman had been speaking to multiple women on the dating app around the time of his wife’s alleged murder.
Investigators are asking Bumble to hand over Bowman’s conversations — and details on exactly when he changed the marital status on his profile, according to the warrant.
His phone’s search records show Bowman had allegedly looked up the gender-neutral/masculine version of the word “widow” on August 18 — just two days before Betty died, the documents show.
At least one of the “female witnesses” he matched with on the app later told cops his profile identified him as a widower, according to the docs.
It wasn’t immediately clear, however, when the change to his dating profile status was made.
Bowman, a poison specialist, also allegedly gave the women different stories about what happened to his wife in the weeks after her death, the warrant shows.
A woman who claims she matched with him on Sept. 5 told investigators she had asked if he thought it was okay to flirt with others in the wake of his wife’s death.
“Connor responded saying it was a fair question but that he was okay being with a new person, that he knew what he wanted in life, and that Betty would have wanted him to move on to be happy,” the warrant states.
He allegedly told that woman that his wife had died from listeria poisoning earlier in the summer, according to the documents.
Another match alleged she was “led to believe that Betty had died earlier while on comfort care due to an overdose of morphine, approximately a year prior.”
Meanwhile, one woman who told investigators she matched with Bowman on Aug. 29 — nine days after Betty’s death — said she thought it was strange he brought up a large life insurance payout he’d received and that he had used it to pay off his student loan debt.
Bowman was arrested last October and subsequently hit with first and second-degree murder charges over his wife’s death.
Betty, a pharmacist who also worked at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, was suffering from gastrointestinal distress and dehydration — symptoms similar to food poisoning — when she was admitted to the hospital.
As her condition quickly deteriorated, Betty suffered heart problems, fluid buildup in her lungs and the removal of part of her colon before she died from organ failure.
Toxicology reports later determined the drug colchicine, which is used to treat gout, was present in her system the day after being hospitalized.
In the wake of her death, Bowman allegedly tried to persuade the medical examiner’s office not to perform an autopsy and pushed to have his wife cremated immediately, claiming her death was “natural.”
He noted in Betty’s obituary that she suffered from hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, a rare illness in which the immune system attacks the body’s organs.
One of Betty’s friends later told cops her marriage was crumbling due to infidelity and a slew of other issues, the Post Bulletin previously reported.
Friends claimed the couple was in an open relationship but that Bowman had developed an emotional connection to another woman – leading his wife to threaten divorce.
Bowman, who is being held in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center on $2 million bail, is scheduled to face court on June 11.
