At least, that’s what she told Penn Hills police when they inquired about the children’s whereabouts for the past 10 years — that she had sold the pair of fraternal twins to a woman named Barbara. But then, she said that wasn’t true.
It’s one of many statements she offered to police before almost immediately retracting them.
The end result: Two children from Penn Hills, Penn., northeast of Pittsburgh on the Allegheny River, are missing and potentially have been for a decade.
No one has any idea where they might be.
On Tuesday, police said Fowler, 47, was charged with obstruction, child endangerment, unsworn falsification to police and two counts of concealing the whereabouts of a child, TV station WTAE
reported.
Court records don’t list an attorney for Fowler, and she hasn’t responded to interview requests from media outlets.
The case began June 20, when police arrived at Fowler’s house to remove the children living there from her care. They did so at the behest of the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families.
The reason for removing the children remains unclear. Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton
told WTAE they were removed because Fowler was “in violation of what CYF had told her to do,” but he couldn’t provide more details under state law.
Police removed four children from Fowler’s care, but on July 6, they received a call from the agency.
Fowler had six children, not four.
Two were missing — fraternal twins Ivon and Inisha Fowler, who were born in 1998. They would be about 17 or 18 years old.
They couldn’t be found, but both the police and children’s agency were sure this wasn’t a clerical mix-up because the agency had removed those children from Fowler’s care years ago for a few days.
“They do exist, because at one time, when they were 3 or 4 years old I believe, CYF did take those two children from Fowler,” Burton
told WTAE.
The age the children were when they were initially removed is unclear.
According to TV station
WPXI, it happened after 2-year-old Ivon was burned in the bathtub in 2000. He received second- and third-degree burns on 46 percent of his body, according to police.
That is the only identifying information for the twins that exists. Police have no recent information on what the two look like, as no one has seen photographs of them for the past 10 years.
In fact, no one seems to know anything about their whereabouts for the past decade. There are no school records for either child. No one can recall seeing them.
Nothing.
Just a blank where two young lives should be.
“CYF has been unable to verify the whereabouts of the children for 10 years,” according to court records obtained by
WPXI.
Police haven’t had better luck.
“No one seems to know where they are,” Burton
toldthe Pittsburgh Tribune‑Review. “No one seemed to care. They just moved on.”
They questioned Fowler.
“The more we dug into it, the more confusing it became,” Burton
told the newspaper.
First, she claimed the children were in the care of a Cory Brooks and Cheryl Walker in South Carolina, and she provided a phone number and address for the two. Neither was correct, police wrote in a complaint
obtained by the Tribune-Review.
The children’s father, who is unnamed, said that to his knowledge, the twins were living with Fowler’s sister in South Carolina.
When police found Walker, whose last name was now Avery, she said she had never seen the children.
The Allegheny County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI became involved.
Fowler then went on to claim that the twins were with Brooks and another woman, before retracting that statement.
After that, Fowler said the twins were with a high school friend, but then she retracted that statement, as well.
Finally, she told police that the children were alive but that she didn’t have custody of them.
Instead, she had sold the children for $2,000 each to Barbara, who was the friend of a man who she had met at a bar “several years ago,” the newspaper
reported. She didn’t give a last name or know how to locate this person, nor did she offer information on why she would have sold her children.
“She’s adamant that they are alive, but again, we can’t confirm that,” Detective Michael McGuire of the Penn Hills Police Department
told WTAE. “That she sold them to Barbara for $2,000 each. But we can’t locate Barbara or even make any sort of determination if she even exists.”
Then police informed her of the criminal severity of selling her children, and she retracted that statement too.
“When confronted with the penalties of selling a child, she stated the children were not sold,” police wrote.
Police are baffled.
“That’s the problem with her: She’s all over the place,” chief Burton
told WTAE.
Fowler’s neighbors are just as dumbfounded.
“It’s sad. I mean from what I understand, from what I’m watching, I don’t know if she actually did sell the children or, God forbid, if they’re passed away,” Fowler’s neighbor Brian James
told KDKA.
“It’s terrible because you’re a mother, and as a mother your job is to protect your children,” Shayla Claytor, another neighbor,
told KDKA. “To make sure they’re safe. I can’t believe it. I’m appalled.”
A preliminary hearing for Fowler is scheduled for Monday. Meanwhile, the search for the twins continues.
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