04/03/2026
Breaking News REPORT RELEASED: Police say in a report that the husband of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen told a relative he "couldn't take it anymore" when asked why he killed her. He's now facing a first-degree murder charge.
Vice mayor’s husband told uncle he ‘couldn’t take it anymore’ when asked why he killed her: Docs
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — According to a newly-released arrest report, the husband of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen had told his mother Tuesday afternoon that he had a “panic attack” he was going to speak with his wife about. The next day, the elected official would be found shot dead in her home.
Police said her husband was responsible for the “premeditated” domestic killing.Stephen Bowen, 40, now faces first-degree murder and evidence tampering charges after being captured in Plantation.
According to the report from the Coral Springs Police Department, colleagues of Metayer Bowen became concerned on Wednesday morning after the vice mayor failed to show up to a meeting.
An hour after the meeting’s start, police said a city staffer texted Stephen Bowen asking if he could have his wife call.“Texted her,” Stephen Bowen said. “She is not picking up.”But police said he had actually killed her overnight.
They went to the couple’s home in the 800 block of Northwest 127th Avenue to conduct a welfare check at around 10:20 a.m. and saw no cars in the driveway and got no response from anyone inside the home; Stephen Bowen, they said, wasn’t picking up his phone.
His parents showed up about an hour later after Metayer Bowen’s mother contacted them and asked them to check the home, police said. The report states that Stephen Bowen’s mother mentioned that he spoke with her at around 4 p.m. about having a “panic attack at work” and said he would speak with his wife about it.
“She did not know of any marital issues between the couple,” CSPD Officer Daniel Powers wrote in the report.Police said they launched a missing persons’ investigation and a detective surveyed the outside of the home at around 12:30 p.m., noticing damage to the home “consistent with force” and “damage caused by projectiles.”Police said they tracked down Stephen Bowen’s pickup to an apartment complex at 551 NW 42nd Ave. in Plantation and began watching him as he handed a shotgun bag to another man.
Meanwhile, they said a 911 call from his uncle just before 2 p.m. allowed them to access the couple’s home and make the disturbing discovery.Stephen Bowen’s uncle had said that Bowen showed up to his home at around 10 a.m. and told him that “he did something to her,” meaning his wife, and that “she was not alive,” the report states.
That call allowed police to enter the home without a warrant, where they found Metayer Bowen’s body in a second-floor bedroom, lying in bed and wrapped in blankets and garbage bags.
Additionally, they said they later found three shotgun shells and a pillow with burn marks and string “as if it were fashioned as a makeshift silencer.”By 2:35 p.m., Stephen Bowen was taken into custody at the Plantation apartment complex and invoked his right to a lawyer, police said. Investigators said the man he was with told them that Bowen had requested to meet him, saying the two are Freemasons and “met to discuss an upcoming meeting.”
Police said Stephen Bowen would remove the tag from his truck and ask his fellow Mason to take a gun bag and ammo boxes.
The man said he was unaware of what criminal act his friend may have committed, but “recalled that as they were being taken into custody, Stephen Bowen said, ‘Oh s---, they’re here for me.’”Investigators said during an interview on Wednesday evening, Stephen Bowen’s uncle would elaborate more on his encounter with his nephew.
Police said Stephen Bowen asked his uncle to hold a shotgun “for a couple of weeks, but warned him that he would need a pair of gloves or a bag.”
His uncle asked if he shot someone, eventually eliciting from Stephen Bowen that he shot Metayer Bowen “three times with a shotgun the previous night and then slept downstairs.”
Police said he then described to his uncle what he did with his wife’s body.“When asked why (he killed her), Stephen Bowen said that he ‘couldn’t take it anymore,’” the report states.Stephen Bowen eventually said “he was going to meet an attorney in 40 minutes, with the understanding that (his uncle) would bring him to the attorney,” but left on his own before his eventual capture, police said.
As of Thursday, he was being held without bond in the Broward Main Jail.Tributes for Metayer Bowen began pouring in shortly after news of her death became public. State and local leaders remembered the vice mayor, the city’s first Black and Haitian American woman commissioner, as a trailblazer and rising star in South Florida politics.
