Affidavit unsealed in case of man found in Louisa well

Reginal Cody Bowles had been missing for a long time when two investigators visited his girlfriend Dec. 16 at the couple's home in Mineral.

One told Ulisa Marie Chavers that investigators thought her boyfriend was dead -- and that she was covering it up.

"So you think I buried him out on this property," Chavers replied, according to a police affidavit unsealed in Louisa County Circuit Court this week.

Bowles had not been buried on the property. But his body was found in the bottom of a well there.

Authorities discovered his body wrapped in sleeping bags in some water at the bottom of the 33-foot-deep, unused well on Friday, a little over 2½ months after Chavers' conversation with the investigators.

Chavers, 60, was charged Saturday with concealing a dead body, identity theft, credit-card fraud and possession of a sawed-off rifle. She is set to appear in court tomorrow.

Investigators believe Bowles had been missing at least since early 2007.

They positively identified his body by the serial number on his pacemaker. They hope to know the cause of death by the end of this week. They also don't know when the body was put in the well.

Investigators believe Chavers was present when he died, said Maj. Donald A. Lowe of the Louisa County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities first started looking into Bowles' disappearance late last year after a son in Florida reported to authorities that he hadn't seen or heard from his father in three years.

Chavers gave neighbors varying explanations as to what had become of her boyfriend, they have said.

When authorities asked Chavers last year where Bowles was, she told them he had gone with a friend to a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., where he met several people belonging to a motorcycle gang and a militia, according to the affidavit. She said Bowles later moved to live with these acquaintances in a place with no electricity in Butte, Mont.

Bowles' Social Security checks were being cashed while he was missing. According to the affidavit, Chavers told Social Security investigators that her boyfriend was riding his motorcycle around Texas and the Gulf area, doing charity work and cleaning up after hurricanes.

At one point in February, Chavers told investigators that Bowles had come through town on Christmas Eve and stayed until Christmas night, the affidavit says. She said she had been unable to call investigators so that they could come and verify that Bowles was alive.

But Chavers showed the investigators a picture of Bowles that she said was taken with a digital camera on Christmas Day while he was in Mineral. The date stamp of the photo was Dec. 25, 2008.

Investigators downloaded photos from the camera's memory card. They took a good look at them.

Some of the photos showing Bowles and Chavers together looked blurry, as if someone had taken a picture of a picture, according to the affidavit. The investigators also noticed that Chavers looked younger in some of the pictures.

One of the investigators e-mailed copies of the photos to Bowles' son, Lee Bowles, in Florida. Without any prompting, according to the affidavit, the son said the pictures looked like someone had taken a picture of another picture.

Lee Bowles noticed something else about the pictures. He said his father and Chavers looked the same way they had looked around the time Bowles disappeared.

Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .