Thirty-four-year-old Beverly “Bev” McGowan lived in Pompano Beach, Florida, thirty-five miles north of Miami. She was unmarried and had worked for two years in the loan department at the Glendale Federal Bank in nearby Fort Lauderdale.

In July 1990, Bev placed an advertisement for a roommate in south Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper. The ad read “POMP SE—Share 2-2 condo, female, 34 plus two cats. $290 plus ½ utilities.”

Little could Bev have known that this innocuous posting would lead to her brutal death, and little could police have known it would lead them on a twelve-year investigation into one of the strangest murders in Florida history.

Bev McGowan

Jane McGowan spoke to her sister on July 17. Bev was in good spirits and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Last Contact From Bev

Two days later, Jane and her brother Steve received identical handwritten letters from Bev reading in part, “I’ve got to make some major changes in my life. I quit my job, sold the condo and furniture, and am leaving for a while.”

Several other family members and friends also received similar letters from Bev. The most detailed letter was mailed to friend Mike Lubore. It read “Hi Mike- I just had to say goodbye to you too. I’m taking off for awhile [sic]. Do you believe it? But I’ll be back. Hope I can track you down when I do. I’m off to improve me & my life. What else can I tell you. This will make my life so much better. I’ll try to keep in touch while traveling cause I do want to see you again when I get back. So for now Adios, Bev.”

Bev offered no explanation in any of the letters for the sudden and drastic changes. The handwriting in all of the letters was hers, but the tone and content seemed out of her character and analysts believed they were hastily written. All of the letters were postmarked from Miami and all addresses had incorrect zip codes, delaying delivery for several days.

The following day, Bev’s mortgage company received a telegram from her, authorizing them to foreclose on her condo and dispose of her belongings.

Strange Letters Received From Bev

Bev had missed the last two days of work without explanation.  She had not, however, informed her bosses that she was quitting as she had indicated in the letters to family and friends.

A No-Show At Work

Jane and Steve were confused and concerned about their sister. They became alarmed after finding Bev’s telephone had been disconnected. When they arrived at her condo, neither she nor her car were there. Her two beloved house cats, Keaton and Zeba, were also missing.

No Sign Of Bev

At 5:30 p.m. on July 19, the day Jane and Steve received the strange letters from their sister and two days after Bev was last seen, fisherman Jesse Moorehead found the mutilated body of a woman at the end of a drainage canal west of Fort Pierce in St. Lucie County, approximately one-hundred miles north of Pompano Beach.

Upon viewing the body, even seasoned homicide detectives were startled. The woman’s head had been decapitated, probably from either a chainsaw or a machete. Part of her abdomen had been cut off, only a small portion of her lower jaw remained, and all but five of her teeth had been pulled from her mouth. Her hands had been severed and her throat had been slit.

The killer had gone to great lengths to prevent the victim from being identified but had overlooked a tattoo of a yellow rose on the women’s ankle. Bev McGowan had such a tattoo.

The rose tattoo, along with dental records of the five remaining teeth, ultimately confirmed the decapitated woman was Bev McGowan. Authorities believe the killer had cut her abdomen to hide another tattoo of the Disney rabbit Thumper.

Bev Is Found Brutally Murdered

In searching Bev’s condo, Steve and Jane had found the names and phone numbers of the people who had responded to her ad for a roommate written on a notepad. All of the names and numbers checked out, with the exception of one in which Bev had written “Alice, Tues, 6:30.”

“Alice” Is Not identified

Bev had eagerly told several friends that she had chosen Alice for her roommate, and that she was going to be moving in on July 17, the day Bev was last seen. Bev had mentioned Alice was attractive, English, and that she drove a nice car and appeared to be a successful career woman. Alice said she worked for IBM in England and was on loan to the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, office.

Bev had also told friends she and Alice had a common interest in the New Age Movement, particularly Numerology, the study of the numerical value of the letters in words and names.

Bev Was Excited About Her New Roommate

Bev’s friend, Cindy Sabourin, said Bev told her she had given her bank account number, social security number, passport, and her birth certificate to Alice so that she could give her a “chart reading.” A search of the contents in Bev’s condo found all of these items were missing.

Whoever Alice was, she appeared to be a con-woman who had done a real number on Bev.

Bev Was Conned Then Killed

Investigators discovered that on July 18, the day before Bev’s body was found but by which time she was already believed dead, someone, likely Alice, had used an ATM machine in Miami, thirty-five miles south of Pompano Beach, to virtually drain Bev’s bank account by withdrawing $1,000. In addition, after checking with IBM in an effort to determine Alice’s true identity, police were told that the company had no one on loan from England to the South Florida area and did not even have an office in Fort Lauderdale.

Several of Bev’s neighbors recalled seeing Alice and helped police develop a composite sketch.

Composite Of “Alice”

On the following day, July 20, a woman resembling the composite was seen in several local shopping stores using Bev’s credit card to make purchases totaling roughly $2,500. The card was later used in North Miami to reserve a rental car at London’s Heathrow Airport. The travel agent believed the person making the reservation was a man dressing as a woman. He or she wore glasses and a cheap, black-Cleopatra wig, spoke with a British accent, and appeared knowledgeable of London’s Heathrow area. The man or woman was flying to London on British Airways Flight 292, which was scheduled to depart at 6:00 p.m. Florida time on July 22.

Beverly McGowan’s name was not on that flight nor on any other traveling to London that day.  The following day, however, a person wearing a cheap wig and posing as her picked up an Avis rental car at London’s Heathrow Airport. The woman was forced to pay for the car with cash after Bev’s ATM card had been rejected; her family had by then learned the card had been stolen and had put a freeze on it.

Two days later, Bev’s car was found in the parking lot of a Day’s Inn Motel near Miami International Airport. Police determined it had been there for at least five days. The only significant clue found in the vehicle were four strands of black synthetic wig hair.

A Man Or A Woman?

Either Way, A Crook And Probably A Killer Too

No significant leads subsequently surfaced in the murder of Bev McGowan for six years.

The Case Goes Cold

In 1996, after rechecking the British Airway Flight 92 manifest of the flight they believe Alice took to England, investigators finally determined her true identity.

The plane ticket was found to have been purchased under the name Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson, a thirty-nine-year-old British woman who had not been seen for several years. Through their investigations, American and British authorities believe her identity was stolen by fifty-two-year-old American Elaine Parent, who was found to have applied for a passport under Sylvia’s name.

Faint traces of handwriting found on a tablet in Bev McGowan’s condo were identified as Parent’s. Forensic evidence also was obtained showing that Parent had been in Bev’s car.

It was soon apparent that Elaine Parent was no ordinary criminal.

Elaine Parent

Parent, a former Miami real estate agent, was wanted for skipping bail on a theft charge in 1985. She fled to England where she obtained work with a telecommunications company in East London and began a romantic relationship with a female senior executive.

For the following six years, including before and after Beverly McGowan’s murder, Parent crisscrossed the Atlantic between Britain and the United States under at least twenty different identities stolen from women in both countries. Some of the names were of deceased people, others were those of women she had befriended, while more were obtained through advertisements she had placed in the lonely-hearts column of London’s Time Out magazine.

A Master Of Assumed Identities

Those who knew her from her days as a realtor described Elaine Parent as affable and charming. She was soon learned to also be manipulative, cunning, vengeful, and vindictive.

Having been dumped by her British lesbian lover, Parent sent her a note using numbers cut from a newspaper, threatening to kill her. She even kidnapped the woman’s dogs, and, somehow, took them to the United States and attempted to ransom them.

A Vengeful Woman Scorned

On May 23, 1991, nearly one year after Bev McGowan’s murder, a woman was stopped by police in North Miami for driving an overdue rental car with a stolen plate. She was arrested and found to have two forms of identification; one identified her as Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson and the other as Charlotte Cowan. The woman posted bail and was released before police learned her real identity was Elaine Parent.

Cowan, a forty-one-year-old American animal welfare worker, was soon arrested on the belief that she was Parent. The women had begun a romantic relationship after meeting at an Orlando bar called Faces; Parent was again masquerading as a British woman.

Like Bev McGowan, Charlotte Cowan willingly gave Parent her bank account and social security numbers, passport, and birth certificate for a Numerology reading. Parent soon disappeared with the documents. Unlike Bev, Charlotte had not been brutally murdered and, oddly, an apologetic Parent mailed Charlotte’s birth certificate and passport back to her after police learned she had stolen them.   

Parent Slips Away

Parent was determined to have briefly run a restaurant in New Mexico before returning to Florida in 1992, where she was still being sought by authorities on the 1985 theft charge. Under one of her pilfered identities, she filed a civil negligence suit against the State of Florida after she slipped and injured herself in a restaurant.

Parent won her claim under an assumed identity. The courts will not say how much she was awarded in damages.

Brazen Parent

Elaine Parent’s pilfered identities helped her stay on the lam for nearly seventeen years. In April 2002, however, her luck finally ran out.

Police received tips saying Parent was back in Florida, this time in the Panhandle, living in Panama City under the name Darlene Thompson. After detectives arrived at the woman’s apartment, she agreed to accompany them to the police station for questioning.

As the woman was changing clothes in her bedroom, she shot herself in the heart with a .357 Magnum. She was posthumously confirmed as Elaine Parent.

Parent Trapped

Parent’s suicide left the secrets of her bizarre lifestyle and criminal career unanswered. Authorities believe she killed Beverly McGowan for her identity, but they are perplexed by the savage nature of the murder for only $1,000 in cash and approximately $2,500 in credit card purchases. The brutality and sophistication of the murder leads police to believe Parent had killed others.

One of those victims may have been the real Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson, who has not been heard from in over twenty-nine years. She is listed as missing in several newspaper articles, but I could not find a picture of her.

Bad Parent

In 1998, eight years after the murder of Bev McGowan, a photograph of an oil painting of a woman resembling Elaine Parent was mailed to the Pompano Broward County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office. Addressed to several detectives involved in investigating Bev’s murder, the words “Best wishes: your Chameleon” were typed on the back.

Investigators believe Elaine Parent herself had done the painting and had mailed it. She henceforth became known as “The Chameleon Killer.”

Did Parent Mail The Oil Painting?

A 1999 article from The Guardian states investigators had not, at that time, determined if Elaine Parent is the her actual given name. Parent’s Find a Grave site and Wikipedia page both state she was born in Panama City, Florida, in 1942, but 2002 articles from the Telegraph state she was born in the Bronx.  Her Find a Grave site also states no birth certificate has been found for an Elaine Antoinette Parent.

Young Parent (Or Whoever)

Police have not determined the identity, or even the gender, of Sam, the man or woman who used Bev McGowan’s credit card to reserve a rental car at London’s Heathrow Airport. He or she likely wore a wig of stringy black hair, and appeared to be between five-feet-five and five-feet-seven inches tall, with a medium build, dark eyes, and a rough complexion.

Some investigators believe Sam was an accomplice of Elaine Parent, but others believe Parent herself was Sam.

“Sam” Remains Unidentified

If Elaine Parent and Sam were one in the same, she (Parent) was a woman pretending to be a man, but who was perceived as a man pretending to be a woman but not the woman she really was. Then this man or woman boarded a plane using the identity of another woman and then the man or woman rented a car posing as the dead woman who had been murdered either by the real woman who was still pretending to be a man or a real man still masquerading as a woman.

I think.

Got It?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/161965004/beverly-anne-mcgowan

SOURCES:

• The Guardian
• Murderpedia
• The Stuart News
• Sun Sentinel
• The Telegraph
• Unsolved Mysteries