Doctor Charged In Wife’s Death She Was Bludgeoned Hours After Insurance Policy Took Effect
A young doctor was charged Friday with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, who was bludgeoned with an ax and a baseball bat hours after a $500,000 life-insurance policy went into effect.
Bail was set at $1 million.
Bruce W. Rowan, 34, was still hospitalized Friday with self-inflicted knife wounds incurred when Clallam County sheriff’s detectives came to talk with him about his wife’s death early Monday.
Rowan excused himself, ostensibly to see to the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Annika, according to charging papers. He returned bleeding from wounds to the neck and chest, telling deputies: “I tried to get my aorta but I missed.”
The body of Deborah Lu Rowan, 33, was found about 1 a.m. Monday in a car that appeared to have left a rural road and struck a tree. Her injuries did not seem consistent with the accident, and the car’s accelerator pedal had been rigged to stay down.
The death shook this Olympic Peninsula community - already rocked by an investigation into the January emergency-room death of an infant at Olympic Memorial Hospital. Rowan, who worked in the emergency room, had helped tend the baby but is accused of no wrongdoing in that case.
Before the apparent suicide attempt Monday, Rowan told investigators he and his wife had gone to a movie Sunday evening, visited with the baby sitter who tended their daughter and gone to bed about 10 p.m., according to charging papers filed by Clallam County Prosecutor David Bruneau.
Rowan showed little emotion as he told detectives his wife went to the grocery store about midnight, unable to sleep, the papers said.
Told about the stuck accelerator pedal, Rowan said a neighborhood dog sometimes dropped rocks into the car. Told his wife’s crutches had been left in the driveway - she had recently undergone surgery to her left Achilles’ tendon - he said she had probably forgotten them.
When Rowan asked if his wife had been murdered, he was told that was a possibility. According to charging papers, sheriff’s detective Charles Fuchser told Rowan he thought someone had killed her and then placed her in the car, adding, “We’re going to figure out who did it.”
It was shortly after that remark that Rowan stabbed himself. Asked why he had done so, he said: “I just don’t want to say right now.”
Deputies found an ax and bat in a shed on the Rowan property, along with a garbage bag filled with blood and taped shut. Inside other bags they found a pillow and pillowcase drenched with blood, as well as blood-stained men’s clothing, bedding and a backrest.
Investigators were led to the shed by footprints made when someone stepped in wet cat litter outside the house. Cat litter also was found inside the car with Mrs. Rowan’s body.
Inside the house, they found blood spatters on the ceiling and walls of the master bedroom and a pool of blood underneath the mattress, indicating it had been flipped over. The bed had been stripped, according to charging papers, and remade with sheets and blankets from a downstairs bedroom. Bloody paper towels were found in the upstairs bathroom.
Blood stains also were found in three sinks on the main floor - both bathrooms and a kitchen. The victim was not wearing a bra, and a blood-stained bra was found in the washing machine.
Authorities later determined that Rowan had taken out a $500,000 life-insurance policy on his wife that went into effect Sunday - hours before her body was found. He paid the $169 premium on Feb. 23, Bruneau said in charging papers.
The doctor was the beneficiary of the policy.
An autopsy found no defensive wounds on Mrs. Rowan. Death was attributed to three or four blows to the face and head with “an ax-type of instrument,” charging papers said.
In seeking $1 million bail, Bruneau noted that Rowan had been in the area just a year and a half, that the couple’s daughter is the subject of child-custody action brought by relatives and that Rowan had been planning a trip to South America and “presumably … maintains a passport.”