High Point police charged Kymberli Bowden with first-degree murder in her 13-year-old daughter's death.

The Oct. 8 release is a new murder count on a case the department charged in 2025 as felony child abuse and concealment of death. It is not a trial. The murder-charge release says she remains in jail with no bond. WXII reported a violent-offense hold and a $1 million bond on the older counts. The 2025 release listed her age as 44. The murder-charge release, WXII, and FOX 35 Orlando list 45.

The High Point Police Department said Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, that detectives charged 45-year-old Kymberli Bowden with first-degree murder in the death of her 13-year-old daughter. The department said the girl was found dead at a home in High Point last October, that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the manner of death was homicide, and that the autopsy cause was acute necrotizing pneumonia and inanition in the setting of caregiver neglect. FOX 35 Orlando, in a story published Saturday, described inanition as severe malnutrition and physical wasting. The department said detectives charged Bowden that afternoon at the Guilford County Jail in High Point, where she was already being held on the 2025 charges, and that she remains in jail with no bond. The release said no additional information was available. A murder count added to an open case is still a charge.

The 2025 case is the one the murder count sits on. The department’s Oct. 30, 2025 release said patrol officers responded on Oct. 13, 2025, to a welfare check at a home on East Farris Avenue, that a 13-year-old girl was found dead, and that a 13-year-old boy was also in the home. It said Special Victims Unit detectives arrested Bowden, then listed as 44 and of High Point, on two counts of felony child abuse and concealment of death, and that her bond was $1 million. The release lists case number 2025-25652. It said no one else had been charged, and that the department would not release more because of the children’s ages and the investigation. The daughter is not named here. Neither is the boy.

WXII reported she appeared in court Friday, Oct. 9, on the murder charge. The station reported officers said the girl was on her bed with no pulse, that she weighed 35 pounds, and that a feeding tube near the bed had an empty, discolored bag. WXII reported the medical examiner’s account that she was bedridden from birth defects after pediatric strokes, that Bowden was her primary caretaker, that she used a wheelchair and a feeding tube, and that prepackaged food near her had expired in 2023. The station reported the examiner’s account that family members had seen her several months earlier, later asked to see her, and were not allowed in, and that postmortem blood testing showed starvation and dehydration. WXII reported prosecutors said they could not file the murder charge until the examiner’s report arrived. FOX 35, citing an arrest warrant the News & Observer obtained, reported the warrant alleges she failed to provide adequate food and medical care, “which resulted in bodily injury and ultimately her death,” and that she concealed the death by keeping the girl’s remains in the home. FOX 35 reported investigators have not said how long the girl had been dead, and that the warrant describes the boy as her twin and says he had no access to proper nutrition, clothing, or sanitary living conditions and was in the home with his sister’s body. Those are warrant allegations and a medical examiner’s findings as those outlets reported them. They are not a verdict.

WXII reported the next court date is Dec. 18 and that she is held on a violent-offense hold, with a $1 million bond on the other charges. The Oct. 8 department release says no bond. The 2025 release set the older counts at $1 million. FOX 35 reported she remains jailed without bond and that the earlier bond was $1 million. A hold and a bond figure are jail conditions. WXII’s Dec. 18 date is the next appearance that station reported. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.