County’s Oldest Retired Peace Officer Honored

When Howard Bowman joined the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in 1937, there were 19 deputies on the force. Today, there are more than 700.

In Bowman’s day, they patrolled in pairs while rambling around rolling ranchland. Bowman was often called upon to serve as both deputy and coroner when a dead body was reported, he said.

“We were just kind of cut loose,” a smiling Bowman said of being dispatched for a typical shift.

Standing before flashing cameras and a crowd of cops and reporters, the 95-year Ventura resident, who retired in 1963, recently was honored as the oldest retired peace officer in the county.

In addition to a certificate presented by Sheriff Bob Brooks, the president of the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs’ Assn. gave Bowman a black baseball cap emblazoned with a patch of the force’s familiar gold badge.

“Howard doesn’t miss a trick,” Brooks said, describing how the retired captain still drives himself to annual department barbecues to eat and mingle with current deputies.

Bowman, a tall, white-haired man who fancies cowboy hats, was born in 1904 and raised on a Kansas farm. After moving to California, he worked for the state’s Fish and Game Department before becoming a deputy.

The case he remembers most is working an arson in the 1940s in which a wild animal compound in Thousand Oaks was destroyed. Bowman said then, as now, Ventura County wasn’t exactly the wild, wild west.

Bowman credits his longevity to good genes, 57 years of marriage to his wife, Mary, and limiting himself to one martini every New Year’s Eve.

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Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, very slowly.

Such is the case for Anthony Roy Shivers Jr., a 31-year-old former CHP dispatcher who is charged with murder in the gruesome August 1997 killing of his ex-girlfriend, Jeanette Cohen of Glendale.

Shivers is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles later this month for allegedly killing Cohen, stuffing her in a box and setting it on fire and dumping it near Simi Valley.

He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Authorities found the 28-year-old woman’s body inside a bloody 2-by-3-foot box about 100 feet down the slope of a remote, brush-covered ravine off Santa Susana Pass Road on Aug. 15, 1997.

Ventura County firefighters responded to the area to douse a small fire five days before Cohen’s body was found. At the time, the fire was not thought to be suspicious and none of the firefighters saw the box.

The case is being tried in Los Angeles because authorities believe Cohen was killed inside Shivers’ Studio City apartment. Deputy Dist. Atty. Ernie Norris said the trial should be interesting.

A key piece of evidence is a four-page handwritten note found at Shivers’ home. Stashed inside his journal, the note is a blow-by-blow account of Cohen’s torture, authorities say.

“He commits a series of acts. For example, he strangles her and then before she begins to go he lets her come back to life,” Norris said.

Authorities also allege that Shivers hit Cohen with a barbell and bound and stuffed her in the box while she was still alive. He was apparently angry, they say, because the couple had split up after dating for about eight months.

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Although Oxnard Police Department crime analyst Jane Alvarez has worked in criminal justice for 20 years, she tells anyone who will listen that she believes the system is flawed, big time.

The 49-year-old feels this way because she spent nearly two years trying to adopt three children away from a home in which they were believed to have been beaten, bloodied, drugged and starved.

The hitch, she thinks, was that the youngsters are the offspring of Alvarez’s adopted daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend, who was alleged to have been responsible for the cruelty. Alvarez believes judges often try to keep families together when it isn’t necessarily in the best interest of the kids.

“We are here to protect children and we are putting them back into situations that harm them more,” Alvarez said. “I could tell you horror stories.”

She eventually prevailed and has raised the children--two boys and a girl--for the past nine years.

Alvarez has documented her crusade in an unpublished booked entitled “Blinders.” She has an agent and hopes to have it published this year.

Besides her own struggle, the book has lots of statistics, including one that states 120,000 children a year are emotionally, physically or sexually abused in the state.

For example, during the past three years, an average of 300 cases of sexual abuse against Ventura County juveniles have been reported annually, Alvarez said.

Authorities believe the reported cases in the county and the state are probably only half the total number that occur, she added.

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Considering cops were out in force on New Year’s weekend in anticipation of a serious number of drunk drivers celebrating the new millennium, the number of arrests is surprising.

The California Highway Patrol reported 31 drunk-driving arrests between 6 p.m. Dec. 31 and 6 a.m. Jan. 3. That’s only seven more than the 24 arrests during the same four-day period a year earlier.

Of the 31 arrests, 26 occurred New Year’s Eve and early New Year’s Day. There were no fatalities during the holiday period and only a half a dozen injury accidents.

Maybe drinkers are getting the message: Don’t drive when you imbibe.

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Holly J. Wolcott can be reached at Holly.Wolcott@latimes.com.