The body found burned Sunday at Clinton Lake was identified Friday as that of a 40-year-old Johnson County woman who had been through a contentious divorce.

But it’s still unclear to investigators whether the death of Carolyn A. Bower was the result of an accident, suicide or foul play.

“We’re not going to guess on that,” said Lt. Kari Wempe, a Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

Bower was reported missing about 3:30 a.m. Sunday by her teenage son, according to Olathe Police. The son said she had last been seen about 2 p.m. Saturday.

A passerby called police about 11 a.m. Sunday after seeing a car on fire near Rock Creek boat ramp on the south side of the lake. The car, a white Mazda 626, was so badly burned that investigators had to dismantle it to find the vehicle-identification number. Bower was identified by dental records.

Bower was due in court Tuesday in Johnson County – about 48 hours after her then-unidentified body was found – for a hearing on an alimony and child-support dispute related to her 2003 divorce. Bower alleged in March that her ex-husband had fallen behind on housing payments, had sold a vehicle without giving her the proceeds and had withheld information about bonus compensation at work.

Bower

The hearing was postponed Tuesday after Bower failed to appear.

Carolyn Bower’s “attorney has not had any contact with her client, and she needs time to find out what happened to her,” a judge wrote after the hearing.

Chris Frey, who lives in a townhome across the street from where Bower lived on Mart-Way Drive in Olathe, said he knew her as “Cami” and that she drove a small, white car. She had a boyfriend, she had lived there for about a year and she often stopped to say hello, he said.

“She was a really nice lady, and a good next-door neighbor,” Frey said.

He said he had last seen her the Thursday before her death, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary.

Bower had attended nursing school, but her employer was listed on a police report as the Courthouse Bar & Grill, 105 E. Park St., in Olathe.

Bower and her ex-husband, Guy Bower, had two teenaged sons and an 18-year-old daughter, according to court records.

Reached by telephone Friday, Guy Bower said he didn’t know anything about the circumstances of the death other than what had been released by the sheriff’s office. He declined to talk further about her.

“They (the sheriff’s office) asked us not to say anything,” he said.

Guy Bower wrote in a May 2003 court document that Carolyn Bower had recently attempted suicide.

She had been arrested in 2003 for throwing a brick through the window of her then-husband’s apartment, according to court records.

In September 2005, she was charged in Johnson County with falsifying a prescription for hydrocodone, a painkiller. Bower was sentenced to one year of probation and a substance-abuse evaluation, according to court records.

In October 2005, a court filing said she had been disabled in a motorcycle accident and was expected to be in a wheelchair for two months.

Her death is being investigated as an “unattended death,” according to the sheriff’s office. Lab results and a final report from coroner Erik Mitchell are still pending.

Wempe said she could not discuss details of the sheriff’s investigation, such as what interviews were being conducted.