In the life of Gordon Bowen, home break ins were a common occurrence. While at Bonneville Communications in the early Eighties, Bowen attributed the destruction of his residence to evil spirits. The police attributed the damage to a dispute between gay lovers. Bowen denied being gay when asked by the police, as did his friend Brad Nyygren. The reality was that Bowen was a homosexual man, as evidenced by his journals, which detailed his efforts to exorcise the female spirits he blamed for making him a gay man.
He routinely invited homeless men and boys into his home for overnight stays, attributing his absences from work or his missed meetings to his efforts to help such individuals. Bowen’s secretary Michelle Avantario claimed that Bowen had boys from Utah staying with him in New York, along with various other boys he encountered. At Young and Rubicam, Ken Yagoda spoke about Bowen hiring young boys to be production assistants on commercial shoots. Annie Pratt alleged that boy had a “sickly, strange looking boy” staying with him at his home in Salt Lake, and she and her mother witnessed the boy while having dinner at Bowen’s house. His associates spoke of Bowen attempting to lure their children to stay overnight in his home.
Whenever Bowen encountered the consequences of his actions, in the form of an assault or a vandalised residence, he attributed those consequences to evil spirits who were trying to obstruct the work he was doing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. There were times, however, that Bowen did not attribute the the damage to his home to evil spirits.
In July 1987, Bowen called the police to his home at 22 Club Way in Hartsdale, New York to report that someone had entered his home on Saturday night or Sunday morning, damaging nine paintings, a lamp, planers, vases, and a mirror. He speculated that the incident may have been related to an earlier dispute, the nature of which was unspecified.
Less than two years later, in May 1989, Bowen would report a burglary at the same residence, with over $17,000 in missing items. The police viewed the burglary as one in a string of burglaries around Hartsdale. Bowen claimed that the burglary occurred between Thursday and Sunday.
His friends and coworkers spoke of a group of teenage boys breaking into his home in New York and smearing feces on the wall. This would likely be a separate incident from the incidents outlined in the preceding paragraphs, and it would mean that on at least four occasions, Bowen’s residences had been burglarized and vandalized in two separate states.