The biggest mystery of Netflix’s Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is only half solved

The new Netflix documentary Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter provides closure with its ending, although what truly happened to Aundria Bowman is still a mystery. 

Among the new true crime shows coming to streaming services this month, director Ryan White and producer Charlize Theron’s two-part docu-series is well worth putting top of your watch list – it may even be the best Netflix doc of 2024. 

It centers on Cathy Terkanian’s search for answers about her biological daughter, Aundria – born Alexis Badger – who she was forced to put up for adoption as a teen due to pressure from her family. Cathy’s life was turned upside down in 2010, when she was told Aundria had been missing since 1989.

Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter tracks the heart-wrenching journey to the truth. Warning: some may find this content distressing, and spoilers ahead for those who aren’t familiar with the case. 

What Dennis did to Aundria remains a mystery

Although we find out at the end of the Netflix docu-series that Aundria’s adoptive father, Dennis Bowman, was responsible for her death, we still don’t know exactly what he did to her. 

According to Dennis’ version of events, her death was accidental. When he finally confessed to his wife, Brenda Bowman, that he knew what happened to Aundria, he claimed they got into a fight, he hit her, and she fell down the stairs, breaking her neck. 

Initially, he was elusive about what happened to Aundria’s remains, telling detectives and Brenda he’d cut her body up, placed her in a barrel, and left it out to be taken away with the neighbor’s garbage cans.

However, Dennis later revealed that Aundrina’s remains had been buried in the Bowmans’ backyard the entire time – the exact place Cathy suspected her daughter had been all along. 

In 2021, Dennis pleaded no contest to second-degree murder for the killing, which is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such in order to achieve a sentencing. In this instance, he received the maximum penalty of 35-50 years. 

Here’s the issue: Dennis proved himself to be a manipulator when interrogated by the police and his wife, and he had a criminal history of violence towards women. 

The Michigan resident was arrested in 1981 for the attempted murder of a teenage girl and sentenced to five to ten years in prison. At the time, he was married to Brenda, and Aundria was around six years old. 

In 1998, he was arrested for breaking and entering the home of a co-worker and stalking her. When he was caught, they searched his home and found a duffel bag containing the woman’s lingerie, a mask to conceal his identity, and an illegal sawn-off shotgun. 

A woman named Metta McLeod, who appears in Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter, believes Dennis was the man who assaulted her when she was six years old. 

Even though there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for this crime, Metta’s discovery is key to Cathy’s journey to the truth. 

But the catalyst to have Dennis arrested was his most violent crime: the 1980 murder of a woman named Kathleen Doyle. While away on deployment in Virginia, Dennis broke into Kathleen’s home, tortured and sexually assaulted her, and killed her. 

Thanks to advancements in DNA technology and some impeccable detective work, Dennis was finally arrested in 2019. Police were then able to build a case for Aundria’s death, too, eventually getting a confession. 

Alongside these violent crimes against women and girls, Dennis was accused of sexually and physically abusing Aundria. Throughout her teenage years, she tried to speak out, with numerous former high school friends appearing in the new docu-series to corroborate these allegations. 

However, Brenda and the authorities never believed Aundria, accusing her of being a liar. This was tied into Dennis’ description of how she died – he claimed she was trying to run away, and when he told her to stay, she threatened to tell the counselors again that he molested her. 

Given the lies he’s told and his pattern of behavior, Aundria’s loved ones don’t buy that the death was an accident – and we may never know if this is the truth or not.

Speaking about Dennis’ version of events, Cathy says, “I can’t even get close to thinking about what he did to my daughter… his story, it’s all bullsh*t. Everything he said is bullsh*t.

“I don’t believe that that 14-year-old girl fell down the stairs. It became more and more her fault. I didn’t hear any of this was his fault. If anything, he threw my daughter down the stairs.

“He chopped her up. Chopping. I’m gonna tell you, he’s a f**king coward. That’s what a coward would do.”

What the Into the Fire ending gets right

All that being said, Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter doesn’t fall into the same mistakes many Netflix documentaries have made lately by leaving the case open-ended. There is, at least, a sense of closure in knowing that Dennis will remain in prison for the rest of his life. 

Although it can be difficult to provide an ending in real-life true crime cases, it often faces the ire of the online community if there is significant ambiguity. A prime example is American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, which dropped on Netflix earlier this year. 

It was a fascinating deep dive into a tangled web of conspiracies and crime, but the docu-series faced backlash for not providing definitive answers, so much so that creator Zachary Treitz spoke out to defend the decision.

Similarly, The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping received praise upon its release, but some viewers were left feeling frustrated that justice wasn’t served in the end. Even director Katherine Kubler herself says, “This story does not have a happy ending, and the story is far from over.”

This certainly can’t be helped in many ongoing cases. Nonetheless, Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter takes place at a time when it’s able to conclude the story while still delivering a fresh perspective on a case that hasn’t been widely covered. 

As for Cathy, her journey through the proverbial fire isn’t over just yet. “I’ve got to get that monster’s name off of my daughter’s birth certificate,” she told Netflix’s Tudum. 

“Imagine having to fight that system. But I’m going to do it, and I’m going to use this [documentary] as the teeth and take it right to the governor. I want his name off of it, and then I’m going to adopt her into my name. So then I might be through the fire.”

Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter is streaming on Netflix now. For more true crime, read about the true story of the Menendez Brothers, what really happened with the Laci Peterson case, and the latest with the smartschoolboy9 saga.