Posturing as “the next big” killer, she threatened an Adam Lanza-style attack on Gateway Community College’s downtown campus. Like the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, she surfed the web to learn how to make weapons.
But when she appeared in a nearly empty federal courtroom Thursday, Amanda Bowden was a forgotten woman pleading guilty to a felony charge — and pleading for permission to leave prison to get the Zoloft she needs.
No friends or family appeared to support Bowden (pictured in a photo she posted on Facebook) in U.S. Magistrate Judge William I. Garfinkel’s fourth-floor courtroom in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport as she entered a plea of guilty to one charge of perpetrating a criminal hoax in connection to the bombing threat that led to her Feb. 19 arrest.
No curious onlookers appeared. No regional or national reporters.
Bowden, 19, of East Haven, was led into the room in handcuffs, wearing white canvas sneakers and a blue prison uniform.
In a soft voice, Bowden agreed to the facts unearthed by federal agents in an undercover operation sparked by threats she sent via text message to a friend threatening to blow up Gateway Community College.
“The whole damn place is going down,” she wrote, according to court documents. “I want people dead.”
Bowden faces up to 5 years in prison at a sentencing set for July 18 in Hartford. Based on a plea deal reached between her public defender and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she will likely get less time. The plea deal calls for a lesser sentence of 1 to 12 months, based in part on Bowden’s cooperation with the feds. The plea deal gives no guarantee of prison time; the final call will be up to U.S. District Judge Michael Shea. If Shea hands down a sentence on the lower end of the spectrum, as the defense is urging, Bowden may be able to leave prison after her sentencing based on time served.
Bowden is currently being held in a federal prison in Wyatt, Rhode Island. In court Thursday, assistant federal public defender Ron Resetarits asked Judge Garfinkel to set Bowden free so that she can get help for longstanding mental health problems.
Bowden has suffered from problems with alcohol and depression, according to Ron Resetarits. She used to take Zoloft, a medication used to treat depression, but quit taking the drug when she had her first child, he said. She has sought to restart the medication while behind bars, he said; so far the institution has failed to fill her prescription.
Resetarits asked that Bowden be released so that she can join a program that would offer her mental health treatment. He suggested a program through the Salvation Army, which would allow her access to a doctor who could get her back on Zoloft.
Despite her text-messaged threats to “kill myself,” he said, she has never attempted to do so. At Wyatt, she has been “harassed” by other inmates and a correctional officer based on the charges she faces, Resetarits said.
Garfinkel declined Resetarits’ plea to let Bowden go free on bond. He said while she does not present a high flight risk, he still has “concerns” about whether it would be safe to release her, and he does not have enough information to make that determination at this time.
Her arrest was based on a series of disturbing text messages at Bowden allegedly sent to a friend — and then to an undercover FBI agent pretending to be the friend — between Feb. 4 and Feb. 16. In the text messages, she threatened to use homemade napalm bombs or guns to blow up Gateway, a school she did not attend at the time.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry Kopel read aloud some highlights from the text messages during Thursday’s hour-long hearing.
In the messages, she threatened to “shoot up my school.”
“We’ll be killing people and I’ll be so happy,” she wrote, according to Kopel.
Court documents document other text messages she allegedly sent, including:
• “Shooting things is one of the few ways I have fun.”
• “i’ve always wanted to shoot up a mall”
• “I’m killing myself though.”
•“If Im going to commit suicide might as well take people down with me who made me miserable”
• “The people the whole damn place is going down”
• “I was pissed when the sandy hook happened lol”
• “Cuz I wanted to be the next big one”
• “I want people dead” “not injured”
• “they will die”
• “When I die I won’t be miserable because I already have been living in hell here”
“I love power Ill have over people”
“Then be in the news after all over the Internet ad dumb ass people will be like ‘why did this happen’”
• “I want the whole place to just explode Imfao wouldn’t that be funny”
• “Ill shoot a cop”
• “I just made a bomb for us so we can set it off the day we plan this out” “A napalm one”
• “gasoline, styrafoam mix the styrafoam until it turns into a jelly fill a glass bottle with the napalm then code the rag in napalm put it in the bottle leave a piece of the rag hanging out then light when you want to throw it at something”
• “there’s also a lightbulb bomb I make take the napalm then heat up the metal piece on the lightbulb so it’Il come off put the napalm in it have hot glue to reattach the metal piece screw it on then uften it’s turned on it covers the person in napalm and they die lol” “then they BURN!”
A subsequent raid on Bowden’s home turned up none of the bombs or guns she purported to have. After her arrest, she told authorities she was just pretending to plan an attack. According to the criminal complaint, she claimed to have been “seeking to be accepted by the people with whom she was exchanging text messages.”
Bowden owned up to sending the text messages as part of the plea deal, and in statements in court Thursday.
“Did you make claims in text messages that you did intend to shoot up your school or use a bomb to injure people?” asked Judge Garfinkel.
“Yes,” Bowden quietly replied.
“Did you really intend to do that?”
“No.”
The judge asked her if she knew that someone might perceive the threat as real.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s something that it’s clear that you regret, is that right?” Garfinkel asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
This young woman was never a threat. She should get probation, counseling and mental healthcare. That would be justice.