After more than six months of investigating, Montgomery County Police on Friday night obtained a warrant charging a Calvert County woman with killing her two daughters, whose bodies were found in a basement freezer last year.

Renee Bowman, who has been held in jail in Calvert County since September on child abuse and later attempted murder charges in relation to a third child, could be served with the warrant this week, said Officer Melanie Brenner, a Montgomery police spokeswoman.

Bowman's attorney, Dorothy Gardner-Hodge, a public defender in Calvert County, could not be reached for comment by Gazette press time Tuesday.

County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said recently that detectives had determined a few months ago that while the girls' bodies were found in Lusby, police believed their deaths occurred "within a month of each other in 2006," while they were living in a rental home in Aspen Hill.

After Bowman was arrested in Calvert County, Montgomery police searched the Aspen Hill house and yard where she had lived.

The state Medical Examiner's Office in Baltimore had determined in December that the two girls died of asphyxiation.

The bodies of Jasmine Bowman, who would be about 9, and Minnet Bowman, who would be about 11, were found Sept. 27 when the Calvert County Sheriff's Office searched the home of their mother, Bowman, 43, of the 700 block of Buckskin Trail in Lusby, after a third daughter, then 7, was found wandering the streets of Lusby. The child had jumped from a second-floor window after being left home alone and locked in her room, police said. The girl, whose body police said was covered with cuts and bruises, has since turned 8 and is in the care of Calvert County Department of Social Services.

Bowman has been indicted on first- and second-degree attempted murder charges and other child abuse charges in Calvert County in relation to her youngest child, officials there said. The attempted murder indictment was handed down Oct. 20 and is tied to Bowman's admission that she beat the child with a hard-heeled shoe.

Bowman's March 2 plea hearing on those charges was vacated and her scheduled jury trial, which was postponed twice, is now set to start Sept. 28 in Calvert County Circuit Court, according to judicial records.

The Montgomery County warrant charges Bowman with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of child abuse resulting in death and one count of child abuse relating to the surviving 8-year-old girl.

Brenner said Bowman will first face charges in Calvert County. She will then be brought to Montgomery County to face the new set of charges.

Bowman adopted all three children in Washington, D.C. She had lived on Vandalia Court in Aspen Hill from 2005 to November 2007 before moving to Calvert County in February 2008, county police said. Detectives confirmed that she also lived in Prince George's and Charles counties and Washington, D.C.

Staff Writer Carol Harvat contributed to this report.