Louisa woman to plead guilty to putting boyfriend’s body in well

A woman linked to three mysterious deaths will plead guilty next week to discarding her boyfriend's body in a well on his property in Louisa County, her attorney said yesterday.

Ulisa Mary Chavers has confessed to authorities that she put Reginal Cody Bowles' body in the 33-foot-deep well, said her attorney, Mike Caudill. The body, wrapped in sleeping bags, was found in March in some water at the bottom of the unused well. Bowles disappeared in early 2007.

The state medical examiner's office still is trying to determine his cause of death. Chavers denies killing him, and she is not charged with his death.

Chavers says Bowles died of natural causes, but she admits she disposed of his body. She also admits she buried the body of her second husband in Amelia County in 1994 and later beheaded his corpse, according to authorities and Caudill. She is not charged with any crimes in the Amelia case.

Authorities believe she kept Bowles' body in a garage on his property and later moved it to the well after her daughter and son in-law complained about a smell, Louisa sheriff's Lt. Howard Porter said.

Chavers' daughter and son-in-law were living in a trailer, and Chavers lived with Bowles in a house on the same property. Chavers told the couple the smell was from a dead animal.

Chavers, 60, will plead guilty Wednesday -- the day she is set to go to trial -- to charges of concealing a body, possession of a sawed-off rifle, identity theft, and credit-card fraud, Caudill said.

The defense attorney and prosecutors have reached no agreement on Chavers' sentence. She faces up to 40 years in prison.

"I couldn't run the risk of putting her up before a jury," Caudill said yesterday. He emphasized that his client denies killing anyone and is sorry for using "extraordinarily poor judgment."

"It just kind of spiraled out of control," Caudill said.

Chavers told her attorney she found Bowles dead on a bedroom floor and thought he died of a heart attack, Caudill said. She said she wrapped the body in a sleeping bag and left it in a garage detached from the house.

She also told Caudill and investigators that the body was in the garage when sheriff's officials went inside the house and the garage soon after they began their search for Bowles. She claimed that a deputy had stood beside the covered body in the garage, making her nervous and prompting her to move the body to the well soon after the deputies' visit.

But Porter said that claim is false.

He said Chavers invited him and another officer into the house Oct. 27. They searched the garage, and there was no body or sleeping bag there, Porter said.

Investigators believe Chavers moved the body to the well sometime in 2007 after her daughter and son in-law complained of the smell.

Authorities say Chavers also admits she buried the body of her second husband, Clent Chavers, in their backyard in Amelia in 1994. She has said he died of natural causes and that she dumped his body from his wheelchair into a hole and buried it.

Authorities believe she collected Bowles' and Clent Chavers' Social Security money after they disappeared.

Law-enforcement officials exhumed Chavers' remains in the couple's former backyard in April. His skull was missing.

Authorities said this week that Chavers admitted she had removed his head with a shovel about a year after she buried the body and threw out the skull at a landfill in Amelia.

She told authorities she initially planned to remove all of his remains from the shallow grave because she was planning to move and was afraid they would be found.

But after she started digging, according to her statement, she noticed the sound of traffic and heard a plane overhead. Fearing someone might see her, she removed only the head.

She said she put it in a trash bag and left it in a trash bin at the landfill.

"Truth is stranger than fiction," said Caudill, who represented a woman in 1998 who was convicted in the killing of a man whose body was burned, dismembered and thrown into a well in Louisa.

In the Amelia case, it took authorities several months to confirm through DNA testing that the remains are those of Clent Chavers, who was 68 when he died. Advanced decomposition prevented the state medical examiner's office from concluding the cause of his death or how his skull was removed.

His remains recently were taken to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where they are under examination by renowned forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, who hopes to determine the cause of death.

Also raising eyebrows are the circumstances surrounding the death of Bowles' mother, Eleanor K. Bowles.

In July 2004, Chavers reported finding Eleanor Bowles' body in the trailer beside the house where Chavers was living with Cody Bowles, who still was alive.

Eleanor Bowles, 69, was discovered in a chair with food and vomit in her mouth. Her death was ruled to be by natural causes, and no autopsy was conducted.

Now that authorities have discovered the two men's remains, they would like to have an autopsy performed on Eleanor Bowles' body. However, the remains were cremated.

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