ROCHESTER, Minn. – A Mayo Clinic doctor charged with murder in his wife’s death may have tried twice to poison her, according to newly released court documents. A woman-friend of Betty Jo Bowman told investigators that the husband had made Betty Jo  a smoothie a couple weeks before she died. The next day she asked the woman-friend  to taste the smoothie, then threw it out. Two weeks later, apparently from another smoothy made by the husband, Connor Bowman,  Betty Jodrank a lethal amount of colchicine. The court documents quote Betty Jo’s woman-friend that she was over visiting August 10, and Betty Jo asked her to try a smoothie that Connor had made. The friend called the taste “very bad — bitter and salty, not like a smoothie would be expected to taste.” The friend thought it was strange that Connor had made Betty Jo the smoothie, because, she said, he hardly ever made anything for anybody. “Out of character,” she said. Betty Jo’s friend said she joked that  Connor must be trying to poison her. Both laughed. The friend told investigators that she hadn’t thought much about the smoothie until Betty Jo died 10 days later. Bowman, arrested October 20, is in jail in lieu of $5 million bail.

Marriage gone rocky

Other information in the new batch of court documents:

> Connor and Betty Jo Bowman’s relationship wasstrained, and she was planning to divorce.

> They were “polygamists,” although that isn’t elaborated on.

> Connor had begun to see a new woman frequently and developed an emotional relationship, of which BetTy Jo had become aware.

> Two days after Betty’s death, Connor invited a couple out for drinks and “appeared to be happy or at least indifferent to Betty’s death.”

> Connor had hidden debt from Betty, which Betty discovered from bills in the mail without him knowing.

> Connor told a friend he had received $500,000 from a life insurance policy.

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Betty Jo Bowman. A day at the lake. Photo from her family’s collection.

Connor Bowman. At jail when booked for murder.

Barbituate dosing

Bowman was under jnvestigation by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. He was alleged to have over-treated a patient with a barbiturate. At the time Bowman was a resident physician at Mayo. His residency, for which he was paid $60,000, had ended over the summer.