A MURDERER who killed his wife and dumped her weighted-down body in a forest reservoir has been released again after twice being recalled to prison.

The daughter of Sandie Bowen, whose remains were found in the isolated Wentwood reservoir nearly 20 years after disappearing from her Wye Valley home, has spoken of her anger at discovering Michael Bowen has been paroled for a third time, despite being returned to jail for over four years for making threats.

BBC News has revealed that Anita Fox was at the airport about to fly to Spain on her honeymoon before Christmas when her victim liaison officer phoned to tell her the 72-year-old killer was free again.

Her mother Sandie Bowen, 53, disappeared from her Llandogo home in August 1997, and despite police finding no trace of her body, Michael Bowen was convicted of her killing the following year.

The forestry worker refused to reveal her whereabouts behind bars and has never admitted his guilt.

But despite his silence and being considered 'high risk', he was still released in 2015.

BBC News have now revealed he was returned to jail almost immediately for breaching his licence, and spent another nine months behind bars.

Five months after his second release in February 2017, Sandie's body was finally found, chained to a sink in the woodland reservoir, four miles from Shirenewton, which was being drained for the first time in a century.

Despite the gruesome discovery, the CPS and police decided to take no further action against Bowen.

But in May 2020, the killer – who now uses the name Raymond – was recalled to jail again after making threats, serving another four-and-a-half years before going free for a third time just weeks ago.

BBC News reported that the parole board considered such risks as his "wanting to control a partner" and "jealousy", but heard he had taken courses designed to address his violence.

They claimed they were "satisfied that imprisonment was no longer necessary for the protection of the public".

But Anita Fox told the BBC: "He should never have been let out in the first place... He took away my mum, my opportunity to grow old with her and for my grandchildren to meet her.

"I've never had real closure, because he's never, ever admitted to murdering my mum."

Bowen told detectives he had dropped Sandie off outside Newport train station to visit her daughter in Kent, but Anita told officers no such arrangement had been made.

Sandie, who was working at Llandogo’s Sloop Inn, had grown tired of his jealousy, and their five-year-old marriage was falling apart, police discovered.

His trial at Newport Crown Court heard that specks of her blood in the bedroom, her false teeth in a waste bin and her credit cards in the grate pointed to Bowen strangling her in a rage before hiding her body in the woods.

Jailing him for life, and decades before her body’s discovery, Mr Justice Eady said he had "embarked on a remarkably callous and cold exercise in disposing of her remains".