Ella Bowe

Key character from Series 3 (Episodes 3 and 4).

After the gruesome discovery of a severed hand followed by a torso, Ella Bowe becomes the team's initial suspected victim, as she has been listed as missing for 6 months and fits the body profile. Her religious mother tells the police that she left home to follow and support her favourite band, 'The Devil's Architect'. After taking a DNA sample from Ella's mother, the body is dismissed as being Ella's. Three more bodies are discovered, and all the deaths, including the first, are attributed to cantharadin poisoning. Chandler suspects that the girls are being unintentionally poisoned by a man with dissociative identity disorder, who is feeding the girls cantharadin, in hopes it will serve as a love potion of sorts. His disorder means he maybe unaware he has killed the girls or later dismembered them, owing to the presence of multiple personalities. DC Riley further investigates 'The Devil's Architect', Ella's favourite band, and discovers they have a new name. She finds their location and along with Kent and Mansell, visits them. Ella is found safe and well with the band. Chandler believes Ella may in fact be the catalyst for the other girls' murders. Ella tells Chandler and Miles that her former boss at a local sweet shop, Nathan, fell in love with her, but she rejected him as she only saw him as a friend. The trauma of being rejected by Ella causes Nathan to 'change' to an 'alter' personaility, and he became a different person on cue. After Ella stops working at the shop, in his desperation and dissociative state, Nathan begins to give Cantharadin to all his future shop assistants, who purposely all resemble Ella, the girl he lost. Far from the love potion of Nathan's mind, the substance causes the girls to die in agony, much to his horror. His other, more malevolent personality, Max, always takes over to dismember and get rid of the bodies.