Sexual Identity and Gordon Bowen, Pt. 3: New York, New York I
The Lives and Lies of Gordon Bowen
Gordon Bowen had once again evaded culpability for his unethical behavior, having lied his way into a job at Bonneville Productions by claiming he had graduated from the University of Utah, and following that with various power plays that resulted in the removal of his immediate supervisor Ross Richins, as well as the fall of Heber Wolsey and John Kinnear in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ Public Communications Department. Bowen had successfully shifted production away from the Church’s internal departments over to Bonneville, where he consolidated his fiefdom in the creative department.
During his tenure at Bonneville, Bowen had shown the traits that would define him over the course of his life. He could ingratiate himself to others, learning the vernacular of their core values and beliefs, portraying himself as a godly and spiritual man. According to Stan Ferguson, from the time Bowen arrived at Bonneville until the day he was fired, he was constantly manipulating and maneuvering to obtain his objectives by any means. Those objectives included advancement and control. Anyone who Bowen perceived as an obstacle to his objectives was to be circumvented, undermined, discredited, and disposed of with ruthless efficiency.
One of Bowen’s journal entries in his divorce provided an insight into his thinking.
Gordon Bowen was a tactician, a strategist who sublimated all activities towards winning the argument, and obtaining the objective. He knew that by defining the terms and parameters of an argument, he could control the outcome on something other than the merits. The merits had to be avoided at all costs, because Gordon Bowen was not an original thinker or a particularly good creative mind. He was instead a salesman, a master of the pitch who could connect with people on a deeper level by identifying what they valued and desired.
According to Bruce Bell, an acquaintance of Gordon’s father Wes, Gordon’s old boss Bob Fotheringham described Bowen as the “best pitch man ]he’d] ever seen.” To his credit, Gordon Bowen knew what a good idea looked like, and he was able to identify such ideas and pitch them to clients. It was not enough for Bowen to pitch a good idea, he needed to take credit for the idea itself and the execution of the idea. At Bonneville, Bowen claimed credit for the Homefront series even though he did nothing to create or execute the advertisements in question.1
Nevertheless, Gordon Bowen managed to glide through life by identifying what people wanted, because when he knew what people truly wanted, he knew who they were at their core. He had managed to overrun and dispose of his enemies within Bonneville and the Church’s Public Communications Department. He had done this by identifying their weaknesses, and by identifying the true power within the Church: the men who made up the Quorum of the Twelve, including Boyd K. Packer. Bowen cultivated a direct relationship with Packer that enabled him to circumvent his enemies. Once Bowen had the ear of an apostle, his enemies had no chance whatsoever.
Towards the end of his time at Bonneville, he was no longer pitching to the Communications Department or any other intermediaries. He was going directly to men like Boyd K. Packer.2
There was only one problem: Bowen was abusing his expense reports, and he allegedly paired that with a campaign to get rid of his boss, Dick Alsop. Alsop was not inclined to go down without a fight, and he found his justification for eliminating Bowen in padded expense reports. He might have found justification in Bowen’s clear improprieties as a gay man, or in Bowen’s mental instability as a man who believed evil spirits were tearing his home apart. Either of those would have forced Alsop to confront Bowen over his sexuality, when Bowen had the ear of Boyd K. Packer and others. Instead, Alsop had a less controversial and far more clear cut reason to fire Bowen: he was allegedly stealing from Bonneville through his expense reports.3
Bowen was escorted off of the premises by security, and the locks were changed. His reputation had grown to the point where he was perceived as physically dangerous. According to Ellen Richardson, the Vice President of Human Resources, she received a phone call at 3 a.m. from the night watchman at Bonneville Corporate saying that Bowen was banging on the door demanding to be let in. Richardson came in at 5 a.m. to escort Bowen to his office, where he packed his belongings in boxes before leaving.
For three days after he was terminated, Bowen allegedly sat across the street from Bonneville at the Triad Center, waiting for Arch Madsen to come out. This went on for two to three days, according to Richardson.
When Bowen finally recovered from the shock of being terminated, he went about plotting his next move. According to Curtis Dahl, Bowen took two spots Dahl had created and placed them in a reel he submitted to Ogilvy and Mather as part of his job application. The first spot, “The Good Samaritan,” won a Clio; the second spot, “Water Fight,” won a Bronze Lion at Cannes. When the awards came into Bonneville, Bowen took them to his house. He denied doing so, but visitors to his house reported seeing the awards.
His ploy worked. Ogilvy and Mather hired Bowen, Lynn Dangel, Kevin Kelly, Parry Merkley, and Tom Pratt. Why those individuals went east with Bowen after his documented bouts of erratic, unprofessional, and unethical behavior at Bonneville is unclear. Nevertheless, Bowen and his allies left for New York, where they encountered the reality of New York apartment prices. They were given a $3,000 stipend to fund an apartment, which they shared.
Kevin Kelly and Gordon Bowen shared the king bed, while Tom Pratt took the couch. According to Kelly, Bowen used the cover of sharing a bed to make unwanted physical contact. Kevin Kelly admitted that his colleagues at Bonneville had warned him about Bowen, but he insisted that he refused to listen because he was charmed by Bowen’s flattery and apparent sincerity. Khaliel Kelly stated that Bowen had “some sort of God complex, identifying himself with Deity.”
Khaliel Kelly also related that Gordon had told her she could attend Stephanie Pace’s class at the University of Utah free of charge, only to find out that Bowen had told the same lie to others. Pace was Bowen’s former girlfriend. The beginnings of the fallout between Bowen and the Kellys was hinted at in Khaliel’s affidavit:
Later Kevin and I learned Lynn Dangel and Tom Pratt were paid $20,000 more than Kevin and Parry Merkley. This was a clear betrayal as they were all a group of friends going as a team.4
Before the Kellys realized that Bowen’s deceit extended to financially depriving them, they had relationship where Gordon was apparently comfortable enough to tell them about his improprieties. Khaliel Kelly relayed the story Bowen had told her about receiving a massage from a young a man, causing “ a thrill to [run] through my body.” According to Khaliel, Gordon Bowen told her the young man told him that he was Jesus. Bowen also allegedly told Khaliel Kelly about standing naked in front of a hotel room window, claiming to be unaware that people could see him through the glass.
The Kellys would tell of Bowen’s claim that a man had come into his Yale Avenue home, pinning him against the wall, “and starting a rhythmic sexual thing against him.” Kevin Kelly recounted Gordon Bowen trying to snuggle up against him one night in bed, booking only one room with one bed for them to share on a business trip, and he expressed his concern that “those designs could target other unsuspecting young men.”
In 1988, Kelly claimed that on a business trip to Europe, Jim Bogner warned him that Gordon was in love with him. Bowen allegedly claimed that there was something wrong with his room, and ended up in Kelly’s room, which had two single beds. When Kelly came out of the shower, Bowen had pushed both beds together.
At a visit to David Ogily’s estate two hours south of Paris, Kelly claimed that Bowen came into the changing room with him while Kelly was getting into his swim trunks. This was followed by Bowen booking one hotel for them, which Bowen claimed was to save on expenses. Bowen’s inappropriate acts with respect to the changing room were paralleled by his conduct with ex-Bonneville colleague Michael McLean, who alleged that Bowen had walked in on him while he was in the shower in Bowen’s Central Park West apartment. Bowen was accused of doing the same thing by his stepson.
Despite this behavior, Kevin and Khaliel Kelly allowed Bowen to watch their children on at least two occasions. This is known because Bowen’s secretary at Ogilvy, Michelle Avantario, told of the Kelly children calling her in the middle of the night “crying that they wanted to come home” after being left with Bowen. Despite this, Avantario left the children with Bowen for a day and a night during a week in which she was supposed to watch the Kelly children. She had an overnight party. The children began crying and asking her not to leave them with Bowen, not to let him near them, and not to make them sleep with him.”
Why Avantario would have considered allowing the Kelly children to stay with Bowen at all after the initial incident is unclear. Avantario also claimed that Bowen had boys from Utah staying with him in New York, including one sixteen year old boy who waited for Bowen in the work cafeteria all day. When Avantario asked him why he was waiting in the cafeteria, she claimed the boy told her that Bowen had promised that if he stayed at Bowen’s house, Bowen would pay to get his teeth fixed.5 6
This allegation is corroborated by Tom Pratt’s wife Annie’s claim that when she had stayed at Bowen’s home in Salt Lake City, she and her mother had noticed “sickly, strange boy who said he was staying there.” According to Annie Pratt, her mother said “That’s not right. Something’s wrong here.” Pratt said Bowen was always involved with young children, and tried to lure her children to stay the night by saying he had a giant slide and offering them gifts. Annie Pratt claimed she and her husband always declined the offer.7
In New York, Bowen would encounter David Lee Hamblin, who was doing his graduate work for his Ph.D in clinical psychology at Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division in White Plains. The Hamblin children explicitly allege that Bowen, the Kellys, the Christensens, and others were frequent attendees at LDS Church of Satan ordinances held in the Hamblin apartment at 77 Touraine in Portchester.
By Gordon Bowen’s own admission, he attended therapy session with David Hamblin during his time in New York. Bowen’s home in Hartsdale was a mere five minute drive from the Scarsdale meetinghouse where Hamblin served as a seminary teacher for ward youth for two years.
Bowen’s behavior was obvious enough to merit a warning from James Bogner to Kevin Kelly.
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Bowen’s deposition made it clear that his relationship with the Kellys was defined by his gravitation towards people who had sexual identity issues.
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The affidavits offered up by the Kellys make it clear that their initial falling out with Gordon Bowen was centered on two areas:
First, the revelation that Bowen was paying Kevin Kelly and Parry Merkley $20,000 less than Lynn Dangel and Tom Pratt.
Second, Bowen pilfered a commercial Kelly had produced on honesty for the reel Bowen submitted to McCann-Erickson when he applied for a position.
Third, an alleged confrontation with Bowen in a car when Kevin Kelly and Jim Bogner confronted Bowen about his behavior, including “lies and manipulations.” Bogner claimed that Bowen began shaking and admitted to the alleged conduct, and the men on his team began verifying with each other that Gordon was telling them the same things.
In January 2003, Bowen was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In much the same way that the alleged LDS Church of Satan membership had distanced themselves from David Lee Hamblin after his fall from grace and excommunication, Bowen’s associates would begin distancing themselves from Gordon Bowen. When Bowen had attracted negative attention to himself in the form of behavior sufficient to warrant excommunication, he would have been of no use to the LDS Church of Satan, which had excommunicated David Lee Hamblin for drawing negative attention to himself by mixing the LDS Church of Satan’s doctrines with those of the Native American Church of James Mooney while failing to remain publicly compliant with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Khaliel Kelly had warned Barbara Timothy in 1994 about Gordon Bowen’s homosexuality, but the reality was that homosexuality within the alleged LDS Church of Satan was rampant. The female members of the group allegedly engaged in lesbian sex, and the Hamblin girls claimed that they were routinely forced to perform oral sex on female adults within the group.
There is nothing in the record to prove that either Kevin or Khaliel Kelly brought their concerns about Gordon Bowen’s homosexual proclivities or improprieties to the attention of the Church before 2003. Despite Bowen’s erratic behavior continuing from Salt Lake to New York, he remained immune from consequence. He was not discreet, and he openly advertised his propensities to men and women he worked with, telling Michelle Avantario’s boyfriend he was hoping that he had returned to Bowen’s apartment to rape him.
Put simply, it strains credulity that anyone who knew of Bowen’s conduct at Bonneville would uproot their families and leave their jobs to follow Gordon Bowen east to New York. It strains credulity that Bowen would have a shred of credibility at all after building a reputation as a master manipulator and liar while at Bonneville.
Next: Part 4: New York, New York II
According to his ex girlfriend, Bonneville’s Human Resources VP Ellen Richardson: “Gordon couldn’t write a tag line or create a strategy. He is talented in assembling bright people to do the creative work. He is a predator using bright people.”
Ellen Richardson alleged that Bowen had purchased expensive gifts for Packer as a means of ingratiating himself.
Alsop could have also highlighted Bowen’s truancy from work, because Bowen was frequently late to meetings or asleep on shoots. Bowen would claim it was because he had taken homeless people to breakfast, but over time it would become apparent to those who knew him that Bowen spent his nights pursuing homosexual liaisons with homeless men, teenage boys, and men who would ultimately engage in violent reprisals against him.
Khaliel Kelly Affidavit, paragraph 29.
The most chilling part of Michelle Avantario’s statement is her claim that she thought the authorities would find the dead bodies of boys under Bowen’s house.
Khaliel Kelly and Jim Bogner both claimed that Gordon Bowen told them about boys from his Hartsdale neighborhood vandalising his home and smearing feces on the walls.
Jim Bogner’s Affidavit reveals that Bowen openly advertised bringing homeless men and boys to his apartment overnight “so that he could help them.”