COLUMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — A registered sex offender will spend life in prison after being found guilty of murder in the 2023 death of an 18-year-old woman found burned in a Columbia County field.

On Wednesday, 47-year-old John Leonard Bowen Jr. was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Coyoete Kathren Cheyenne Turner, 18. Bowen was also convicted of tampering with evidence, for which he was sentenced to an additional 23.1 years to be served consecutively.

Turner’s body was found partially burned in a field off SW Haltiwanger Road on Sept. 3, 2023. 

Detectives interviewed several persons of interest, but Bowen became the focus after investigators discovered several pieces of evidence and other inconsistencies about his whereabouts at the time of Turner’s murder. 

When Turner’s body was found, investigators located items beneath her body, including a letter with a Suwannee County address, Bowen’s arrest report states. Detectives went to the address and discovered that Bowen was one of the residents living there, the report states. Bowen’s sex offender registration did not list the residence and instead listed an address near where Turner’s body was found. 

The arrest report states that detectives told Bowen to update his registration on the next available date. 

On Sep. 7, 2023, Bowen went to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office regarding his sex offender registration. He confirmed to detectives that he falsified his address and was arrested for violating his sex offender registration, the report states.

After Bowen was read his Miranda Rights, detectives questioned him about Turner. The report states that Bowen made “multiple statements about the [Turner’s] death,” but changed details in his story. 

Everything Bowen told detectives regarding Turner’s death was redacted from his arrest report. 

The day Turner’s body was identified, a person who described herself as Turner’s aunt said Turner lived with her and her boyfriend, who was identified as Bowen, years earlier. It’s unclear if Bowen was a registered sex offender at the time he allegedly lived with Turner.

Following Turner’s death, investigators obtained surveillance video from businesses near where her body was found. 

Detectives identified Bowen in surveillance video changing his clothes inside a red Dodge Journey before entering a Sunstop store in Ellisville. The store is located just south of Howell Road, which intersects the road where Turner’s body was found.

First Coast News spoke with Turner’s mother weeks after her death.

“Coyoete was a special woman. She loved everybody, she loved her family, and she wanted to have a beautiful life,” Turner’s mother, Eleanor Houston, said. “She didn’t deserve what she got. Nobody deserves something like that. People don’t understand what you’re going through when you lose a child, much less the way she died.”

Houston claimed at the time that Bowen was a family friend who could never hurt her daughter.

“He wouldn’t harm a child like that. You’ve got to have certain traits to do what you have done to my daughter, and he doesn’t carry those traits,” she said.