Doctor Held After Wife Found Slain -- Port Angeles Physician Later Tried To Stab Himself To Death, Police Say

Police say a Port Angeles doctor killed his wife with an ax, tried to make her death look like a traffic accident, and then tried to stab himself to death as they were interviewing him at his home.

Dr. Bruce Rowan, 34, was taken early yesterday to Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles, where he has worked for two years as an emergency-room doctor. He's in serious condition.

The Clallam County Sheriff's Office said this morning that it does not yet have a motive in the slaying of 33-year-old Deborah Rowan.

There is no known history of domestic violence at the Rowan home, according to Chief Criminal Deputy Fred DeFrange.

"They were great people. Everybody loved Bruce and Debbie," said Dr. James McKenna, director of the residency program at The Family Practice in Beaver Falls, Pa. Rowan completed his residency training there, after graduating from the University of Washington Medical School in 1992.

Deborah Rowan, who was training to be a social worker, was known in the community for her philanthropy, McKenna said.

"They were always bringing people into their house, teenagers who were having problems. That's the kind of people they were - salt of the earth."

The news of Deborah Rowan's death and her husband's arrest spread quickly through Olympic Memorial Hospital, where Rowan was regarded as a popular physician.

"We were all shocked and surprised by the event of yesterday," said hospital administrator Tom Stegbauer.

DeFrange said deputies found the murder weapons - an ax and a bat - in a shed behind the Rowans' house, in the 200 block of Yellow Rock Lane at the city's eastern limit, about three miles from Highway 101.

The case began around 1 a.m. yesterday, after a deputy found Deborah Rowan dead in her car in a ditch down the street from her house. When deputies went to the house to tell Bruce Rowan, they found evidence his wife had died there rather than in her small, crumpled sedan, according to DeFrange.

At about the same time, DeFrange said, a forensic pathologist was examining Deborah Rowan's body in the car, and concluded "she died as a result of trauma to the head, which is not the result of the accident."

DeFrange said he then went to the home and, after being briefed by deputies, used a cell phone in his car to call a magistrate and get a search warrant for the Rowan home.

While DeFrange was on the phone, he said Rowan went into the bathroom and stabbed himself in the neck and chest five times with a butcher knife.

DeFrange said this morning that much of the attack on Deborah Rowan appears to have happened in the master bedroom.

He said her body was dragged outside and left in the driveway for a time before being placed in the car.

The car was found 200 yards from the intersection of Yellow Rock Lane and Mount Pleasant Road. It had traveled much of that distance in the ditch before ramming a fence and then a culvert, DeFrange said.

The couple's 2-year-old daughter, who was home at the time, was put in the care of friends last night and will be turned over to the couple's relatives.

Neighbors describe `a neat couple'

"They were a neat couple. They seemed to fit well," said Gary Behnke, who lives nearby. "But in these houses, in this kind of neighborhood, you can't tell what's going on inside."

He and his wife, Mary Behnke, described Rowan as neat and meticulous, even a perfectionist. Deborah Rowan, they said, was more talkative, with a kind face and easygoing manner. She was a stay-at-home mother to their little girl.

The State Medical Quality Assurance Commission, which regulates physician licenses, yesterday filed a complaint against Rowan, launching its own investigation.

Another shock to community

It's the second time in less than three months that an incident has rocked the Olympic Peninsula medical community. A Port Angeles pediatrician is being investigated for an incident in January in which hospital staff said he stopped the breathing of a 3-day-old infant the doctor said was brain-dead.

The Medical Quality Assurance Commission has accused Dr. Eugene Turner of unprofessional conduct for hastening the death of the baby. Turner's attorney has said that Turner blocked the little boy's dying breaths only after the baby had been brain-dead for four hours and could not possibly have survived.

Rowan is not accused in that case, and DeFrange said he does not think the cases are linked.

Times staff reporter Dee Norton contributed to this report.