User:JohnP72/Dustin Bowers

Dustin Bowers (January 26, 1987 – January 14, 1988) was a [Canadian] boy from Kincardine, Ontario who was allegedly abducted, and left to die of exposure by an unknown person on January 13, 1988. He was found the next day about a kilometre north of Kincardine.

According to his mother he was snatched from his child car seat at about 1 p.m. on Thursday January 14, 1988 after being left in the car with Dustin's older brother Ben while Julie Bowers went into the Royal Bank nearby in the town of Kincardine.

Dustin was found at 3 p.m. the next afternoon in an area of dense bush about a kilometre north of Kincardine. According to the coroner, Dr. Charles Randal Smith, Dustin had died of exposure.

Dustin's death gained wide media exposure in Ontario due to the unusual circumstances surrounding his discovery. Mrs. Bowers claimed to have a dream in which she saw the location of her son's body. She then led police to find Dustin dressed in a blue snowsuit, lying on his back and covered by a dusting of snow.

Mrs. Bowers was charged with Dustin's death on the day he was found, and was subsequently aquitted of second-degree murder in a Toronto courthouse on March 16, 1990. Currently, there is no active investigation into Dustin's death. The case remains open and unsolved.

Police investigation
Mrs. Bowers' trip to the bank was a routine stop to deposit money from the gas station that Bowers and her husband John were managing. Every day she would pick up her father-in-law so that he could sit in the vehicle and watch over the Bowers' two boys while Julie went into the bank to make the deposit. On the day that Dustin is alleged to have been taken, Mrs. Bowers' father-in-law was waiting for her as usual, but she never collected him, and did not explain why. He passed away before the case went to trial, and the jury never heard this evidence.