Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is arguably the best Netflix documentary of 2024, exploring a compelling case of one woman’s decade-long search for her daughter.
Though there is plenty of new true crime to dive into this month, this two-part series is well worth putting at the top of your watchlist. Directed and produced by Ryan White and produced by Charlize Theron, Into the Fire starts off with Cathy Terkanian’s story.
She gave birth to Alexis Badger at a young age, but was pressured into giving her daughter up for adoption by her mother. Since it was a no-contact adoption, she didn’t know what happened… until 2010, when she received a letter explaining her child, now Aundria Bowman, was missing.
But this is just the very beginning of a long, winding journey to the truth, one which Netflix viewers are invited to witness in the documentary. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of the most shocking reveals, and though it’s a recorded case, be aware there are spoilers and some may find this content distressing.
Separate abduction case leads to unexpected suspect
Midway through Episode 1 of Into the Fire, what we’ve learned so far is that Aundria had been adopted by Brenda and Dennis Bowman. Police records show Dennis had reported her missing from their Michigan home in 1989 at age 14, claiming she’d been acting out in the months leading up to her disappearance.
However, the case takes an unexpected turn when Cathy begins searching for answers, launching Facebook pages where she spoke with locals and some of Aundria’s old friends. In 2013, she received a message from Metta McLeod, who explained she had been abducted in September 1989 – not long after Aundria vanished.
Her story was a shocking one. At the time, Metta was just six years old, and had been walking to a friend’s house in Holland, Michigan, when a man drove up to her in a red truck and said he knew her mom, promising to drive her to see some puppies.
Instead, the predator took her to the woods, tied a rope around her neck, and took off her clothes. But just as he was about to attack, some dogs started barking nearby. This spooked the assailant, who ran away, leaving Metta to untie herself and run to safety.
The attacker was never identified, despite the witness evidence Metta was able to provide to the police. When she reached out to Cathy, she theorized that whoever abducted her may have done the same to Aundria.
However, no one could have predicted what happened next: when Metta saw a photo of Aundria’s adoptive parents, she noticed the father Dennis looked just like her attacker. As Cathy says, “I was devastated and horrified. This is the adoptive father of my daughter.”
Cathy, her husband Edward Terkanian, and volunteer sleuth and forensic sketch artist Carl Koppelman started looking into the details of Metta’s case, discovering that, at the time of the abduction, Dennis was in the area and he owned a red pickup truck similar to the one she described.
What’s more, Dennis’ background appeared to show a pattern of behavior. In 1981, in a completely separate case, he was arrested for the attempted murder of a teenage girl, and sentenced to five years in prison. At the time, Aundria was six years old.
Another pattern that becomes clear throughout Into the Fire is Brenda’s refusal to acknowledge Dennis’ crimes, often minimizing what he’d done and accusing Aundria of having a “chip on her shoulder” about her adoptive father going to prison.
Much to the shock of relatives and friends, when Aundria opened up and claimed Dennis had been molesting her, she wasn’t believed by the authorities or Brenda. Instead, she was accused of being a liar.
Seeing all of these details come together, Cathy becomes certain that Dennis is the one who’s responsible for her daughter’s disappearance – and she’s determined to seek justice.
Cathy’s mother’s instinct kicks in
Metta’s case wasn’t the only moment in Into the Fire that would have even the most rational skeptics questioning their beliefs. This reveal starts with the discussion of Dennis and Brenda’s home, which they moved into “almost right after” Aundria disappeared.
They had their original house torn down before transferring to the current property, so Cathy, Ed, and Carl decide to do a bit of investigating by setting up a drone to film above their home and see if there are any clues to suggest Dennis had buried Aundria.
Alongside their footage, they looked at the backyard on Google Earth at different periods in time, and Cathy noticed a spot that had changed numerous times. “My daughter, she’s in that backyard,” she says.
But Carl doubts this theory, not least because Dennis and Brenda lived on a different property when Aundria vanished. What’s more, there was a wooded area across the street from their original house, leading him to believe it’s most likely that Dennis would have buried her there.
At the time, Michigan police had started looking into the case again, and Cathy was so convinced, she asked them to get a search warrant. However, as Bryan Fuller, a detective at Michigan State Police, points out in the Netflix doc, “You can’t just go dig up somebody’s yard because the mom has a feeling.”
Even Cathy herself acknowledges it’s “far-fetched,” but she’s adamant it’s true, believing Dennis felt like he had control over her daughter’s body and wanted to “keep her close.” This is mostly forgotten until closer to the end of Episode 2, when Dennis is arrested on a separate murder case.
After extensive work from the police, creating a ruse involving Dennis and his love for Brenda, they’re able to get him to reveal where he buried Aundria: in the exact spot where Cathy had said.
“For Cathy to have this suspicion all along that Dennis was responsible, and that Aundria is buried in the backyard, and that both those turned out to be true is almost unexplainable,” says Allegan County Sheriff’s Office detective Chris Haverdink.
Meanwhile, Norfolk Police Department detective Jon Smith points out, “That was her mother’s instinct.”
Dennis Bowman is finally arrested… for a completely different murder
When Dennis was finally arrested for murder in 2019, Cathy and everyone who’d been following the case assumed it was for Aundria – but it was actually for the previously unsolved 1980 homicide of Kathleen Doyle in Norfolk, Virginia.
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It’s yet another twist in this disturbing case, one that was years in the making. Kathleen’s murder was notably brutal, having unfolded while her husband, Steven Doyle, was deployed overseas as a US Navy pilot. During this time, someone broke into her home and raped, stabbed, and beat her, before killing her by strangulation.
The house was in disorder, which Jon explains indicated a struggle. There was even a circular burn mark on Kathleen’s cheek, and the authorities had found a charred Lincoln Log in Kathleen’s trash can, finding it odd as she and Steven hadn’t had children yet. “Obviously that paints a picture of an offender that was very, very violent,” says Jon.
This level of violence also indicated to the authorities that this wasn’t the first time the perpetrator had committed such an offense. They even discovered the mouthpiece had been removed from her phone, so even though she was able to call someone for help, they weren’t able to hear her.
For years, detectives were unable to solve the case, but the situation changed in the 2010s, when forensic DNA work had advanced significantly. Using the samples that had been taken from the scene, they were able to whittle it down to a list of 31 names – including Dennis Bowman.
But even then, they had their work cut out for them. Not only did they have to track down everyone on the list, they also had to get them to agree to give a swab sample. And here’s where the next unusual coincidence came into play.
Detectives were in the right place at the right time
Dennis stood out to Jon due to his criminal history. Then, in 2019, a regional homicide investigators association meeting took place in the Norfolk, Virginia area. And Bryan Fuller, the aforementioned Michigan State Police detective, just so happened to be there.
Jon told Bryan about the case he was looking into and his suspicions about Dennis, to which he replied, “I know Dennis. I know his family, and that’s probably your guy.”
Speaking about the odds of their meeting, Bryan says, “I was shocked. Not only was it ironic that that’s the name he brought to me, but that I was there attending this conference and that I was involved in the investigation of Aundria Bowman.”
From that point on, the two strategized about how to bring the case forward. When they discovered Dennis had been on deployment at the exact place and time of Kathleen’s murder, they knew he was their guy. They just needed a DNA sample.
Prior to this, Cathy had been hassling Dennis and Brenda, believing they were responsible for the death of her daughter. As part of her efforts, she called their home number and left messages accusing them of the murder, which rubbed Dennis up the wrong way.
Even though this wasn’t granted by the detectives as a part of their ongoing investigation, ironically, it helped them to nail him. You see, Bryan and Jon created a ruse whereby they brought Dennis and Brenda in for (what they assumed was) a discussion over their concerns about Cathy.
While there, Dennis was drinking from a coffee cup, which the detectives then used to get a DNA sample. It turned out to be a match for Kathleen’s killer, and finally they were able to arrest him. “It’s just like the Wild West,” says Cathy, “ and I just herded them in.”
Dennis fell into the officers’ trap
After Dennis was arrested, the case was far from over. They still needed to find out what happened to Aundria, and to get there detectives had to work hard. Dennis demonstrated his manipulation, telling conflicting accounts of what happened.
The one thing they had over him was his relationship with Brenda, who continued to defend him and minimize the horrific crimes he’d committed. Dennis was looking at being incarcerated in Virginia, a long way from Brenda, who remained in Michigan.
During one of their prison calls, Brenda told Dennis that she wouldn’t come to live in Virginia, meaning regular visits would be off the cards. So, the detectives decided to offer Dennis a deal: if he told them what he did to Aundria, they’d move him to a prison in Michigan.
Initially, he and Brenda denied it, until eventually he relented. In his first admission, Dennis claimed he and Aundria had an argument, leading to her falling down the stairs and dying. Although police weren’t buying his version of events, it was the first step.
Dennis also claimed he had cut up Aundria’s body so she’d fit in a barrel, and that the remains were taken away in the trash. However, after extensive questioning and further leveraging of his relationship with Brenda, they found out the truth: that she’d been buried in their backyard the whole time.
Given the horrifying nature of Dennis’ crimes, and the callousness he demonstrated, the police decided to not to stay true to their word. You see, they never signed an agreement with Dennis about moving him to Michigan – and so they decided to make him stay in Virginia for the rest of his life.
As Allegan County Prosecutor Myrene Koch says, “The last thing that our team wanted to do was to allow him to have that last measure of control by staying in the prison he wanted to stay in because it was convenient for him.
“And I will do everything in my power to make sure Dennis Bowman doesn’t control one damn thing. So we made the decision as a team that we would not allow him to have that control, and we would send him back to Virginia for the murder of Kathleen Doyle.”
Not only was Dennis finally behind bars, but the outcome provided some level of resolution for Cathy and the loved ones of both Kathleen and Aundria.
Kathleen’s aunt, Christine, shares a poignant message in Netflix’s Into the Fire, saying, “Don’t let the person who did this awful thing be the person everybody remembers. Let them remember the young women who died.”
These two young women were smart, vibrant, and brave, and their spirits live on through others. “She’s not completely gone,” says Cathy. “I’m as close as you’re going to get to her spirit.”
Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is streaming on Netflix now. For more true crime, check out all the 10 shocking Netflix documentaries you should watch after Worst Ex Ever. You can also learn more about the true story of the Menendez Brothers, and find out what really happened with the Laci Peterson case.
