More Info on Beverly McGowan case

[Or So It Seems]

Here's a recent article that talks a little more about the Beverly McGowan case that was updated tonight on Unsolved:

The Associated Press State & Local Wire

April 8, 2002, Monday, BC cycle

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 350 words

HEADLINE: Panhandle woman wanted in murder case kills herself

DATELINE: PANAMA CITY, Fla.

BODY:
A woman wanted for questioning in a murder 12 years ago fatally shot herself while police, responding to tips after an "America's Most Wanted" telecast, waited outside her bedroom for her to get dressed.

The woman was identified through fingerprints Monday as Elaine Antoinette Parent, 59, said police Cmdr. Mitchell Pitts. She had been profiled on the TV crime show Saturday night shortly before she shot herself. Investigators were on hand Monday from St. Lucie County, where the mutilated body of Parent's former roommate, Beverly McGowan, was found in a canal on July 19, 1990.

They joined Panama City police in a search of her possessions, including passports, trying to find clues that would link her to McGowan's slaying and possibly other crimes, Pitts said.

Shortly after receiving the viewer tips Saturday, police found the woman and her landlord at the home they shared in this Florida Panhandle city.

The suspect said she wanted to change her clothes before answering questions, Pitts said. Officers agreed because they thought it might be a case of mistaken identity.

Pitts said the woman looked different than the description given by "America's Most Wanted," and also gave the officers identification with another name.

One officer realized the ID was a fake and knocked on the bedroom door. She told officers she was still dressing and then she shot herself in the chest with a revolver, Pitts said. She died on the scene.

After McGowan had disappeared, Parent tried to use her credit cards, which had been canceled by the victim's brother, at Heathrow International Airport in London, St. Lucie investigators said.

British police checked flights bound for the United States and searched London for Parent for almost a week but never found her.

In May 1991, police found Parent in Miami where she had been sleeping in a car. They arrested her under an assumed name, Charlotte Cowan, for failing to return a leased vehicle.

She posted bond a few days later and was last seen in 1994 working as a clerk in a Sears store in Nashville, Tenn., police said.

[Martha Lavaburger]

That case has always scared the living daylights out of me! More than most of the cases UM has profiled. As a woman, you would never expect another woman to do such a horrible, atrocious thing to you.

I found another very good article about Parent. It's a very in depth profile, although it is in French. By searching through Google.com, you can translate the page into English by clicking on a nearby link.

BTW, I wonder if the police are still pursuing the accomplice. The man in drag who purchased the plane ticket. I have a feeling he was very much a part of the murder or at least the mutilation.

[Or So It Seems]

I tried to find the link on google but had no luck. Could you post it here?

I'm glad this case is finally solved, it was one of the spookiest Unsolved ever did. But I also wonder about the guy with the Cleopatra wig who rented the car. He must have had something to do with the murder. The biggest question that will never be answered is: why? Why such a brutal crime for so little money, $1000 max. Kill someone for a rental car and a plane ticket? It makes no sense.

[Jed]

I just came across this site last night, and I'm really glad that I did. I've always loved UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

The Beverly McGowan case probably scared me more than any other UM segment. I was 9 years old when it first aired back in 1991. The guy with the cheap Cleopatra wig scared the hell out of me.

I too came across the French article on Parent. I didn't know that you could translate the page to English, so I had a friend translate it for me. Here it is. The words that my friend didn't recognize and couldn't find in a dictionary are in brackets.


THE END OF THE CHAMELEON KILLER

The Sunday Telegraph, London

She usurped the identity of her victims. Throughout the years, the woman with twenty faces flouted investigators before taking her leave for good.

The police tracked her down over twelve years, pursuing her between the United States and Great Britain. She finally was collared. But the elusive "serial killer" gave them the slip for good. With her customary panache, Elaine Parent, the "chameleon killer" stabbed herself right in the heart while the police waited outside her room to finish dressing to put her into handcuffs. In an ultimate snub at the investigators, she carried to the grave the secrets of her long and strange criminal career.

The 60 year old American who lived in London and who voluntarily passed for an Englishwoman particularly interested Scotland Yard, who wished to interrogate her about the the murder of her old [coloctaire]. Beverly McGowan, 34 years old, employed in a Florida bank. Elaine Parent used so many identities that the American investigators feared that Miss McGowan wasn't her only victim. Her modus operendi consisted of following single women and assassinating them to usurp their identity. At the end of the 1990s, she spent five years on the run in Great Britain, where she perfected a very British accent, hid herself with an old lover, and enjoyed herself teasing the detectives in Florida. In 1998, she sent them a photo of her oil portrait. On the back, an inscription read: "All my wishes, your chameleon." Nora Pfeiffer, examining magistrate of the prosecution in Florida, was on the trail of Madame Parent since the murder of McGowan. "It's the most difficult case I've ever had to deal with," she confided. "She always was one step ahead of us: for days, for months, not to say for years. Master of the art of disguise, she had more than twenty false identities. She was sighted in London, in Paris, in Turkey, in Austrailia, and in South Africa. And twelve years after the murder of Beverly, I had no shade of fact." The police began looking for Madame Parent in July 1990, after the body of McGowan was found mutilated and decapitaded on the bank of a canal in the South of Florida. She had severed the hands and the head by a jigsaw to delay the identification of the body; on her abdomen, the tatto of Pan-Pan, the Walt Disney rabbit, was savagely dug out. But the killer forgot a tattoed flower on her ankle. It was this that allowed the police to identify the victim. The investigators also discovered that in July 1990 Beverly McGowan published an small ad in the "Sun-Sentinel": "Woman, 34 years old with two cats, to share two rooms, $290 + 50% expenses." Elaine Parent responded to the ad between the 10th and the 14th of July. Introducing herself by the name of Alice, and pretending to be a transferred English employ of IBM in Florida, the charming [armaqueuse] made an excellent impression on the young woman. McGowan therefore rented the room to Alice, who quickly won the confidence of her [coloctaire]. Alice talked of herself as an expert in numerology and convinced McGowan to give her numbers for Social Security, bank card, and driver's license - indispensable to her predictions. They were given. seventy-two hours later, McGowan was assassinated and Elaine Parent adopted her identity. Provided with credit cards of her victim, she spent some hundreds of dollars, them embarked on British Airwaves flight 292 for London. At Heathrow, she rented a car from Avis, but made payment in Cash because, meanwhile, a hold was put on the credit card. The incident aroused the suspicion of Scotland Yard. The London sleuths immediately threw themselves on the trail of the Lady McGowan. But when they recognized that the owner of the card had been assassinated, they turned their searching toward England. But Elaine Parent had already left.

In London, the chameleon killer had an old mistress set up with a big buisness. The investigators would wait five more years, but the couple had cohabited for many years before breaking up, defeated by the mood swings and extravagances of Elaine. She even had blackmailed her lover. The schemer made up with her old mistress. When the police despairingly spread a net over the city, their prey was living tranquilly in a plush house Southwest of London. Soon, the relationship of the couple deteriorated again, Madame Parent deployed the treasures of her imagination: she sent threats of death to her companion, kidnapped her dogs, took them to the United States, and demanded a ransom. She afterwords was arrested in Miami Beach in position of papers claiming three different identities. Also unbelieving that could be published, the police failed to record her name in the file of wanted persons and let her go on bail. She later was found in New Mexico, where she ran a restaurant. In 1992, even though the Florida police searched in the case of Beverly, she filed a complaint against the state -under another identity- after a fall in a restaurant. She won settlement, but the police refuse to reveal the amount of damages she collected. In 1994, they lost all trace of her.

In fact, no one new anything about the real Elaine Antoinette Parent. Those who kew her-or lived with her- speak of a beautiful woman, charming, intelligent, and bisexual, but also of her less lustrous sides: the chameleon woman was aggessive, subject to mood swings and could be menacing. Only daughter of an American father and a French Canadian mother, she spent her childhood in the bronx in New York. At age 30, she lived in Florida, three years later, the theft of a car started her police record. However she spent the essential part of her adult life deceiving her world: among her twenty identities, certain ones were purely and simply stolen from women she had met and seduced but she had not killed, others were invented out of whole cloth. The investigators again questioned about the other aliases, believing she had hidden other victims. Dr. Barbara Kirwin, eminent psychologist specializing in criminology, drew up the profile of Elaine Parent several months before her death. " I am persuaded that she had a compulsive manner: she stole the indentity of others to fill in an emptiness in her own personality," she confided. The psychologist thinks equally that that if Parent feared the hunt of which she was the object, she nevertheless had profound need of it.

Early in April, judge Pfeiffer was informed that Elain was again in Florida under a new alias. She had been picked up in front of her apartment building but the chameleon killer made the police wait in front of the apartment. When one of them anxious, knocked on the door, she stabbed herself in the chest. - Tim Tate

[dynoguy88]

Wow!!! I'm so thrilled that this case was actually solved. It's one of the many Unsolved Mysteries cases where you stop yourself and think.. "Damn! This case will probably never be solved." But sometimes, the least likely thing happens.

But I have to agree with other posters here, I wonder who the guy in the wig and dress was. He must have had a part in this as well.

The lengthes that some sicko people will go to is amazing. If they wanted to kill Beverly, you would expect it, (doesn't make it right) but they didn't just kill her, they plain MUTILATED her. Some people are just so amazing.

[SitcomsAreTheWay]

Originally posted by Or So It Seems
Here's a recent article that talks a little more about the Beverly McGowan case that was updated tonight on Unsolved:

The Associated Press State & Local Wire

April 8, 2002, Monday, BC cycle

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 350 words

HEADLINE: Panhandle woman wanted in murder case kills herself

DATELINE: PANAMA CITY, Fla.

BODY:
A woman wanted for questioning in a murder 12 years ago fatally shot herself while police, responding to tips after an "America's Most Wanted" telecast, waited outside her bedroom for her to get dressed.

The woman was identified through fingerprints Monday as Elaine Antoinette Parent, 59, said police Cmdr. Mitchell Pitts. She had been profiled on the TV crime show Saturday night shortly before she shot herself. Investigators were on hand Monday from St. Lucie County, where the mutilated body of Parent's former roommate, Beverly McGowan, was found in a canal on July 19, 1990.

They joined Panama City police in a search of her possessions, including passports, trying to find clues that would link her to McGowan's slaying and possibly other crimes, Pitts said.

Shortly after receiving the viewer tips Saturday, police found the woman and her landlord at the home they shared in this Florida Panhandle city.

The suspect said she wanted to change her clothes before answering questions, Pitts said. Officers agreed because they thought it might be a case of mistaken identity.

Pitts said the woman looked different than the description given by "America's Most Wanted," and also gave the officers identification with another name.

One officer realized the ID was a fake and knocked on the bedroom door. She told officers she was still dressing and then she shot herself in the chest with a revolver, Pitts said. She died on the scene.

After McGowan had disappeared, Parent tried to use her credit cards, which had been canceled by the victim's brother, at Heathrow International Airport in London, St. Lucie investigators said.

British police checked flights bound for the United States and searched London for Parent for almost a week but never found her.

In May 1991, police found Parent in Miami where she had been sleeping in a car. They arrested her under an assumed name, Charlotte Cowan, for failing to return a leased vehicle.

She posted bond a few days later and was last seen in 1994 working as a clerk in a Sears store in Nashville, Tenn., police said.

You've just refreshed my memory! I knew I've heard of the name name Beverly McGowan before.I've seen this case before on both UM and AMW. In my opinion, Elaine Parent was a coward. Any person who commits a crime and then decides to either run, take their own lives or do both is a COWARD! :mad:
She didn't want to face the consequences of everything she had done so she took the easy way out.

[browserhead]

This interesting cases brings to mind a few details about unsolved murders .... in arizona

these two cases Angela Brossco

http://www.nmco.org/gallery/homicides/brosso.html

and Melanie Bernas

http://www.nmco.org/gallery/homicides/bernas.html


they were done in the early 90's when Parent was in New mexico as a cook ? access to knives and close to Phenoix

coincidence? or was she trying to assume the id of the victims ?

I quote from the article "

. She afterwords was arrested in Miami Beach in position of papers claiming three different identities. Also unbelieving that could be published, the police failed to record her name in the file of wanted persons and let her go on bail.

She later was found in New Mexico, where she ran a restaurant.


In 1992, even though the Florida police searched in the case of Beverly, she filed a complaint against the state -under another identity- after a fall in a restaurant"

the way of killing was similar even with a canal nearby ,
and the method of losing one's head was also in the latest kill with mutilations


who knows ?
:confused: :confused: :eek: speculation ...

[Michael McGowan]

Wow!!! I'm so thrilled that this case was actually solved. It's one of the many Unsolved Mysteries cases where you stop yourself and think.. "Damn! This case will probably never be solved." But sometimes, the least likely thing happens.

But I have to agree with other posters here, I wonder who the guy in the wig and dress was. He must have had a part in this as well.

The lengthes that some sicko people will go to is amazing. If they wanted to kill Beverly, you would expect it, (doesn't make it right) but they didn't just kill her, they plain MUTILATED her. Some people are just so amazing.
Your right, but it was her only killing and she did what she thought was right to not be caught. **** her and **** the man who helped her. Life has its way of catching up to you, i hope people learn to not trust as much we want to. Please take that from this case...
Bev was my aunt, we loved her with all of hearts. She is safe now...

[curiousasever]

[great i am so glad the chameleon killer is gone and dead now so she can't do another innocent person like that, that was cruel to do such this was a very nice case me and my dad watched it yesterday and he said she must have been into witch craft to do something like that to that poor beautiful woman. i agreed with him i feel so sorry for all the other women as well and the woman whom was mutilated i am glad this case was solved and that she is not loose anymore she made me mad! :mad:

[honeygirl7846]

I've often wondered if the man-in-drag was actually Elaine Parent, doing the "woman playing a man playing a woman" kind of thing. Except that the composite sketch doesn't really look like her in the face.

[cocytus]

Just saw this segment on the UM shown on Spike TV last night. Thanks DVR!

This was one the most odd cases ever presented on UM. The amount of stolen from this Ms. McGowan was almost insignificant compared w/ the brutality of the crime perpetrated against her. Parent really must have had some serious mental/emotional issues to have committed this crime in this manner.

You have to wonder if there aren't other crimes overseas that this woman may have committed in addition to her crimes here in the US.