Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter on Netflix- What happened to Kathleen Doyle? 

When Kathleen Doyle was se*ually assaulted and brutally murdered inside her Norfolk home on Granby Street, she was merely 25 years old and had just gotten married. It was only after four long decades that her murderer could be identified.

Dennis Bowman, a 70-year-old resident of Allegan County, Michigan, was arrested and charged with Doyle's murder. His arrest led to the subsequent revelations about the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl, his adopted daughter.

Netflix's two-part series Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter, directed and produced by Ryan White and Charlize Theron, respectively, follows Cathy Terkanian’s quest to find her missing daughter, Alexis, whom she had given up for adoption. Terkanian found answers to her daughter's disappearance when Bowman was arrested for the murder of Kathleen Doyle and admitted while in custody to accidentally killing Alexis, his adopted daughter.

---

Who is Kathleen Doyle? About her murder

Kathleen Doyle was a 25-year-old woman who had just married the love of her life, a Navy pilot, when she was r*ped and brutally murdered at her Norfolk home on Granby Street. On September 9, 1980, an intruder broke into her house, st*bbed her, r*ped her leaving her for dead. Her body was not found until September 11, around noon. Her husband was deployed overseas at the time of her murder.

When Kathleen was found, the house was in disorder, indicating a struggle. Moreover, there was a circular burn mark on Kathleen’s cheek. Authorities retrieved a charred Lincoln Log in Kathleen’s trash can, indicating that the offender was violent. It was also discovered that Kathleen's phone's mouthpiece had been removed, so her callers would not hear her if she called for help, insinuating that it was not the first time the perpetrator had committed such a crime.

---

What led to the killer being caught after four decades?

Kathleen Doyle's case went cold until 2018 when the Norfolk Cold Case unit and Detective Jonathan Smith discovered a new method to solve cold cases: genetic genealogy. A DNA profile from a bedsheet retrieved from Kathleen's house was sent for examination. The genealogy company sent a list of 32 names of possible matches, one of which was Dennis Lee Bowman.

Bowman had committed prior violent offenses in his home state of Michigan. He had been the suspect in an attempted murder and sexual assault case in Michigan just months before Kathleen’s murder. It was also discovered that Bowman was in Norfolk on his two-week military drill during the time of Kathleen’s murder. Moreover, Bowman’s adopted daughter disappeared in 1989 under mysterious circumstances.

All these clues pointed towards Bowman being the offender. He was arrested in November 2019. Dennis Bowman not only confessed to the murder of Kathleen Doyle but also to murdering his adopted daughter Aundria Bowman (birth name Alexis).

---

About Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter

Netflix's Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is a true-crime documentary chronicling Cathy Terkanian’s quest to find her daughter Alexis Badger, whom she had given up for adoption at nine months.

When Cathy tried to find out about her daughter in 2010, she learned that her daughter had disappeared. Determined to get to the bottom of the case, Cathy and her husband turned into internet sleuths. It was only in 2019, when Bowman confessed to his crimes, that Cathy found out the brutal truth about what happened to her daughter.

---

Catch Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter on Netflix today.