![\"Judge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/tfl-l-stephen-bowen-metayer-01.jpg\")
Judge Ernest Kollra looks on as Stephen Bowen is led into the courtroom at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday. His attorneys entered a written not guilty plea after he was indicted in the murder of his wife, Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen. (Joe Cavaretta\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n
A grand jury had indicted Bowen in the murder last week, as is standard in all first-degree murder cases, though the indictment was kept under seal. Judge Ernest Kollra on Tuesday ordered that the indictment be unsealed after speaking with Stephen Zaccor, the assistant state attorney in charge of the Broward State Attorney\u2019s Office Homicide Unit.<\/p>\n
The unsealed indictment formally charges Bowen with murdering Metayer Bowen with a firearm and tampering with evidence. The evidence he is accused of tampering with includes firearms and a cellphone, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n
Bowen allegedly shot the vice mayor to death at their home with a shotgun that had been muzzled with a pillow, according to a probable cause affidavit. The next morning, on April 1, a city employee received a text message sent from Metayer Bowen\u2019s phone number, titled \u201cDiscussion Items,\u201d that was related to a meeting she had been scheduled to attend 30 minutes later.<\/p>\n
After Metayer Bowen didn\u2019t show up at the meeting, the employee texted Bowen asking if he could tell his wife to contact her, the affidavit said. Bowen replied that he \u201ctexted her. She is not picking up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that morning, Bowen went to his uncle\u2019s house, where Bowen gave him a gun and told him he needed him to hold it for a couple of weeks, the uncle told police, according to the affidavit. Bowen met with a different man that afternoon and gave him a gun bag and ammo, the man later told police.<\/p>\n
A status check is set for May 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The husband of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen appeared in a Broward courtroom Tuesday, days after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[112,28,29,249,251,250,114,115,99,109],"class_list":["post-250503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}