Kriti Mehrotra
As a two-part documentary that delves deep into the 1989 disappearance and death of 14-year-old Aundria Bowman, Netflix’s ‘Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter’ is truly unlike any other. That’s because it chronicles not only the way her adoptive father, Dennis Bowman, killed her and hid the truth for decades but also her biological mother’s fight to attain justice upon learning of all his prior brutal offenses. Amongst those to thus also feature in this original is actually Metta Paige McLeod, a Michigan native who has since accused the now twice-convicted killer of having abducted and raped her as a child.
Metta McLeod was Merely Six When She Was Abducted and Attacked
In September 1989, five months after Aundria vanished without a trace from her Allegan County home in Michigan, 6-year-old Metta was attacked in neighboring Ottawa County. According to her own accounts, she had walked home after school on that fateful day before asking her mother if she could go to her friend’s house as she regularly did, only to outrightly be told no sans any explanation. “We always walked to each other’s houses in that neighborhood,” she stated. “It was a safe neighborhood… I begged her, and I begged her, and she said, ‘All right, call me when you get there.'”
Little did Metta or her mother know that she would be stopped by a man in a red pickup truck as she freely walked along before getting abducted right from outside the Windmill Gas Station. This stranger ostensibly told her: “Your mom said I could take you to go see some puppies. We are going to go to a barn and see some puppies,” which drew her close enough for him to grab. She seemingly didn’t scream at that point since she believed he knew her mother, so she went along with everything he said, including ducking down under the seat whenever they passed a cop.
Per the show, he was really affectionate, caring, and kind to Metta at first, but his whole demeanor changed in the blink of an eye as they got closer to the densely wooded area near the city. “He pulled over,” she claimed. “He got out and got a rope from the back of the truck. Then he came around, yanked me by my neck, and dragged me into the woods. And I started screaming.” That’s when he stripped her naked, tied her sweater around her mouth, unzipped his pants, and took advantage, just to get scared and flee as a dog from a nearby campground suddenly started barking.
Metta Believes Her Assailant to be Dennis Bowman
While Metta did manage to untie herself and run to the road naked until someone dialed 911, her ensuing statements to the police or the composite sketch she helped create led nowhere. There were no witnesses as well as no concrete evidence for officials to have something to go off on, so this young Harrington Elementary School student’s sexual assault case gradually went cold. She tried to find her perpetrator for years as she grew older in the hopes of attaining some answers or justice, but it wasn’t until she came across Aundria’s case that she made a connection.
“I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen to anybody else, any other little girls,” Metta candidly expressed in the show. “…I started looking at missing people in Michigan,… especially near (my area).” That’s how she discovered Aundria’s case and found it odd the teen not only disappeared the same year as her attack but also that her adoptive father was the one to officially report her missing. The same father who had a mustache and drove a red pickup truck — the second Metta saw a picture of Dennis Bowman, she realized he looked exactly like the man who had assaulted her; he was it, she said. However, it’s imperative to note that Dennis has since vehemently denied being involved in this heinous matter, and he has never been arrested, charged, or convicted of this offense either.
Metta Has Managed to Build a Good Life For Herself
Even though the trauma of what happened to her at the age of 6 has followed Metta like a dark cloud, she has actually created a happy, stable life for herself in the decades to have gone by. In fact, this Zeeland, Michigan resident, former AmeriCorps Volunteer, and Lake Michigan College graduate has had a full-fledged traditional career as well as a family of her own since 2006. She actually started as a Home Health Aide at Evergreen Commons Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, only to spread her wings by evolving into the Assistant General Manager at a Days Inn in 2007. From there, she took up freelance genealogy work for Ancestry, owned-operated her own vending machines for a few years, and even served at Gentex Corporation in two departments in two years.
Since September 2024, though, following a degree in hospitality plus a year and three-quarter break from the Days Inn by Wyndham, Metta has been serving as its General Manager — it’s a position she is truly proud of. Coming to her personal standing, this Grand Valley State University MBA student (class of December ’24) is a comedy lover, a hobbyist artist, a music enthusiast, as well as a mom of four boys. Her eldest (whom she often compares to Andy Samberg in looks) recently turned 18. We should mention Metta has never really been public about her relationships in any manner, yet the ring often seen on her finger in pictures does indicate she’s possibly happily engaged/married. In other words, though Metta McLeod has endured a lot, she hasn’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of her happiness with her family for long, which is all that matters in the long run.
Read More: Cathy Terkanian: Where is Aundria Bowman’s Mother Now?
