A judge sentenced Jordan Bowers to 43 months in prison Monday after she accepted a last-minute plea deal in an identity theft case, not linked to her missing daughter Oakley Carlson.
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Missing girl Oakley Carlson kept 'locked in a cell' under stairs, new court docs reveal
A judge sentenced Jordan Bowers to 43 months in prison Monday after she accepted a
last-minute plea deal in an identity theft case, not linked to her
missing daughter Oakley Carlson.
Judge Katherine Svoboda gave Bowers the top end of the sentencing range, more time than the plea deal she had made for 36 months.
"I just don't buy this that Ms. Bowers maintains that she was helping these people. You can't have it both ways, that she was so drug addicted and so were the victims that their credibility is questionable but yet, she's the person that they would turn to for help. It just doesn't make any sense," Svoboda said. "She targeted vulnerable victims. She took advantage. She really has not in any meaningful way taken responsibility so it merits a sentence at the top of the standard range. It's all the court can do. 43 months followed by community custody of 12 months."
Bowers did not agree to the restitution amount requested by the prosecutor to pay the victims $26,850.58. A hearing to address that will be held at a later date.
Recently released court records show that that prior to her disappearance, Oakley was kept in a locked "cell" underneath the stairs.
When her sister was interviewed by investigators looking for Oakley, she told them that Oakley had started the house fire with the mother’s torch and was subsequently beaten for it. She also told them that Oakley was "under her mother’s bed and in the woods."
That's one of the details mentioned in a Washington Court of Appeals opinion published this month involving the release of Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) records regarding Oakley and her siblings to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office. Jordan had tried to block the release of dependency and juvenile court records to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office, who requested them in an effort to find information to locate Oakley. The juvenile court specified that it was releasing the records on the "emergent basis" of locating OC, who remained "missing…and [was] extremely endangered."
In previous FOX 13 News coverage, we reported that Oakley’s sister would later tell Grays Harbor County investigators that Bowers "told her not to talk about Oakley," adding that Oakley had "gone out into the woods and had been eaten by wolves."
In the court ruling, her sister confirmed another sibling's statements regarding the mother’s physical abuse of Oakley and that Oakley was not safe in her mother's care.
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