Wallace Bowman Jr - Repeat Sex Offender Charged with Murder

Mindy Daffern was a familiar face to many in the close-knit community of Scotland, and friends saw her when they stopped by The Grocery Store.

Family meant everything to her, and she was close to her children and grandchildren.

The violence that ended her life has shaken the small community and has left many questions about why it happened.

“We don’t really know why,” Archer County Sheriff Ed Daniels said.

There are no words to describe how bad it is, he said.

Daffern disappeared from The Grocery Store near the intersection of U.S. 281 and F.M. 172 Friday afternoon. Images from the store’s security camera show a man aiming a gun at her face before she turns to the register. Another clip, taken a few seconds later, shows him ushering her out of the store, the weapon pointed at her back. They left in a black Ford Explorer.

Investigators said they found Wallace Bowman Jr., 30, of Bowie at a motel in Bowie Saturday morning, but Daffern was not with him. Crews concentrated for much of the day on an area in Archer County where he said she had left the vehicle.

The suspect later told a Texas Ranger that remains found Saturday in Montague County were hers, Daniels said. The man told the Ranger where he had left her and admitted he killed her, the sheriff said.

Bowman is now charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping, and will be charged this week with capital murder, Daniels said. Bond on the two charges he currently faces totals $3 million. Bowman is being held in the Jack County Jail.

Bowman has had run-ins with the law before. He is a registered sex offender, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records.

The 1997 aggravated sexual assault of a child conviction involved a girl who was 12 when the incident occurred, the records show. Bowman received seven years in prison for the crime.

The DPS site shows pictures of Bowman from 2004, and another from this year.

Bowman, whose record reveals that he received deferred adjudication for burglary in 1996, was also convicted of failure to comply with sex offender registration and served prison time related to that, according to a search of his criminal history.

He is required to register on an annual basis. The DPS site shows that he registered with the Texas Department of Corrections in November 2007 and with the Bowie Police Department on Aug. 12, just a few days before he was arrested in connection with the robbery and abduction of Daffern.

The investigation into the case in Scotland has brought together agencies from Archer County, the state of Texas, Wichita Falls, Montague County and Clay County.

The violence came as a shock and has been unsettling for people who have always felt safe in the rural Archer County town of just a few hundred residents.

“Even though it’s a small, remote county, things do happen,” Daniels said. “It’s not just the big cities. It’s everywhere.”

The world is a different place today than it used to be, he said, and these aren’t times when people should feel safe leaving their doors unlocked. Smaller communities might see less crime because they have smaller populations, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen, he said.

“We’re not immune from the violence, as much as we’d like to think we are,” he said.

Daniels said the question of why this happened still does not have an answer, and he also did not provide details about what happened to Daffern.

Daffern was a fixture at the small store, and her presence didn’t go unnoticed. In 2003, a Texas Department of Transportation district engineer included her in a letter to the editor. The letter thanked Scotland residents for the support and help they provided as emergency crews spent hours working at the scene of a major accident there.

“Then Mindy Daffern, owner of The Grocery Store, sent down some soft drinks and chips,” the letter stated, describing her contribution to the emergency workers.

Friday, as investigators worked inside the area blocked off by yellow crime scene tape, the store’s neon “Open” sign was dark.

Authorities held out hope in the hours Daffern was missing that she would be found safe. Daniels stressed she needed to be with her family, and they needed her. On Friday, he held a family portrait, showing a smiling Daffern surrounded by family.

The news that came Saturday was heartbreaking for the entire community.

The investigation has been a difficult one for Daniels, who knows Daffern and her family and considers them good friends.

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"

.........Sarah Tofte