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Speaker 7: You are now listening to true Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 9: Good eeting you want to know what happened? Ask ann
Speaker 9: serial killer William Devin Howell. A monster was on a
Speaker 9: killing spree. In just nine months, seven people went missing,
Speaker 9: all of their bodies eventually discovered in a wooded lot
Speaker 9: behind a suburban strip mall. But the investigation that led
Speaker 9: law enforcement to their suspect, William Devon Howell, is only
Speaker 9: part of the story behind his Garden Conversations with a
Speaker 9: serial killer. A practicing attorney, author and k Howard first
Speaker 9: contacted Howell while he was serving a fifteen year sentence
Speaker 9: for the murder of one of his seven victims. He
Speaker 9: was about to be charged for the remaining six murders.
Speaker 9: A unique and disturbing friendship between the two began, comprised
Speaker 9: of written correspondents, face to face, prisoned visits, and recorded
Speaker 9: phone calls. Howell, who had been unwilling to speak to
Speaker 9: any members of the media, came to trust Howard In
Speaker 9: the years that follow the suspect shared his troubled history
Speaker 9: with Howard, but refused to discuss the charges against him,
Speaker 9: promising only to tell her everything when the case was over.
Speaker 9: That time has come. His Garden probes the complicated and
Speaker 9: conflicted mind of William Devon Howell, Connecticut's most prolific serial killer.
Speaker 9: Both sacred and profane in its narrative style, the story
Speaker 9: on these pages explores the eternal question of human evil
Speaker 9: and it's an impact on others, including the woman he
Speaker 9: chose to hear this horrific confession. The book they were
Speaker 9: featuring this evening is His Garden. Conversations with a Serial
Speaker 9: Killer with my special guest attorney and author and Kay Howard.
Speaker 9: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 9: agreeing to this interview. And Kay Howard, thank you, Dan,
Speaker 9: thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Very anxious
Speaker 9: to discuss this book with you. Very very interesting. You
Speaker 9: open this book in July twenty fifth, two thousand and three.
Speaker 9: We already alluded to that you had contacted William Devin
Speaker 9: Howell while he was in prison. Let's get to the
Speaker 9: person that he was in prison for for murdering, and
Speaker 9: as you do in the book, you introduce Nilsa Arismondy
Speaker 9: and angel Ace Sanchez and have a mispronounced her name
Speaker 9: and maybe could correct that for me. And you take
Speaker 9: us to July fifth, two thousand and three, tell us
Speaker 9: where they are and describe, as you do in the book,
Speaker 9: the relationship that they have together and what they are
Speaker 9: doing at that time that puts them in the crosshairs
Speaker 9: of William Devin Howell.
Speaker 10: Certainly well, Milsa Eira is Mendy. Unfortunately, as is the
Speaker 10: case with six out of the seven victims of William Devin, Howell,
Speaker 10: was addicted to heroin along with her boyfriend, her longtime
Speaker 10: high school sweetheart, Ace Sanchez. And so at the start
Speaker 10: of the book, the reader sees Nilsa Eras Mendy and
Speaker 10: a Sanchez. They're walking along the Berlin Turnpike also known
Speaker 10: as Gasoline Alley, and it was in Hartford and Weathersfield, Connecticut,
Speaker 10: where they were walking along the highway. They had just
Speaker 10: had a busy night of scoring drugs, and Nilsa, in
Speaker 10: order to support their mutual drug habit, had been working
Speaker 10: the streets as a prostitute, and so they were walking
Speaker 10: back along the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut, returning to their
Speaker 10: hotel where they had rented a room and a cheap
Speaker 10: motel along the highway. It was at that time that
Speaker 10: they bumped into an acquaintance, William Devin Howell. They actually
Speaker 10: knew this killer. Unlike Howell's other victims, Nilsa Arismendi was
Speaker 10: the only one that Howell actually knew, and so she
Speaker 10: went over. I believe it was two or three in
Speaker 10: the morning and during July of two thousand and three,
Speaker 10: on a hot summer night, and she went over to
Speaker 10: Howell's van, parked in a grocery store parking lot, just
Speaker 10: to say hi. I think she also wanted to see
Speaker 10: if he could drive her to a location to cop
Speaker 10: some drugs, and she got into his van, which ultimately
Speaker 10: led to her demise.
Speaker 9: You talk about a Sanchez. He's not her pimp. He's
Speaker 9: the longtime boyfriend. He knows the lifestyle. He's addicted. She's addicted.
Speaker 9: He sees her get into the van, it's the last
Speaker 9: time he sees her. What does he do the following day, Well.
Speaker 10: He does return to the motel and wait for her
Speaker 10: for a time, and then he both and and consults
Speaker 10: with other people in the neighborhoods where they would frequent
Speaker 10: to find out if they have.
Speaker 3: Seen his girlfriend.
Speaker 10: It's highly unusual for her not to return to the
Speaker 10: motel within a matter of hours. Ace is naturally concerned.
Speaker 10: He does eventually talk to family members and voice that
Speaker 10: concern that his girlfriend has disappeared. He's worried that maybe
Speaker 10: she overdose, and so he does communicate that she is
Speaker 10: off the grid to family members and friends. Eventually, you know,
Speaker 10: within a matter of weeks, Ace is locked up for
Speaker 10: a drug possession and while in jail, he again communicates.
Speaker 10: This time he gets a letter through the jail chaplain
Speaker 10: to be sent to the Hartford Police Department stating that
Speaker 10: he's very worried that his girlfriend is missing. And it
Speaker 10: was about a month after Nielsa Aras Mendy went missing
Speaker 10: that the Weathersfield Police Department got to work on the
Speaker 10: case and started to aggressively look for Nilsa Eras Mendy.
Speaker 9: Now you introduced William Devin Howell born in February nineteen
Speaker 9: seventy and his mother's name Melissa and father John. Again,
Speaker 9: this is unusual when you have to talk about a
Speaker 9: serial killer and the very very normal his background. So
Speaker 9: tell us about this seemingly normal background that he grew
Speaker 9: up in.
Speaker 10: Yes, it's true, you know in the book, I kind
Speaker 10: of compare it to the Andy Griffiths show the way
Speaker 10: that Bill Howell would describe to me his childhood in Hampton, Virginia,
Speaker 10: where you know he had a modest upbringing. His father
Speaker 10: was a machinist, a very strong work ethic in the family.
Speaker 10: His father went to work bright and early at dawn
Speaker 10: every day and predictably returned for dinner every night. His
Speaker 10: mother held a couple of jobs on the side, part
Speaker 10: time jobs to contribute to the family income. There were
Speaker 10: always homemade meals on the table. He enjoyed fishing behind
Speaker 10: in the ditch behind his house, riding his dirt bikes.
Speaker 10: He had friends in the neighborhood. So by all accounts,
Speaker 10: based on what Bill Howell has shared with me over
Speaker 10: the course of our three and a half year author
Speaker 10: subject relationship, it was a relatively normal childhood. He was
Speaker 10: the last of four children, and there was a large
Speaker 10: gap in age between Bill Howell and two of his
Speaker 10: older brothers. In fact, one of his brothers was serving
Speaker 10: in Vietnam when was born, and both of the older
Speaker 10: brothers had families of their own they were grown adults,
Speaker 10: so he was born to a mother who was forty
Speaker 10: and the father was forty five at the time. You know,
Speaker 10: I think it wasn't until the age of twelve, though,
Speaker 10: that things went downhill for Bill Howell and he was traumatized,
Speaker 10: I believe, by the illness of his mother. Melissa Howell
Speaker 10: had very serious breast cancer diagnosed, and there were several
Speaker 10: years from the ages of twelve to fifteen when Bill
Speaker 10: Howell was observing his mother, who for most of that
Speaker 10: time was bedridden, whether it was from the chemo and
Speaker 10: radiation treatments or finally, in her final year, multiple strokes
Speaker 10: that led to her death when Howell was fifteen years old.
Speaker 10: So it was during that early puberty that I think
Speaker 10: that that tragedy touched howells lives life, and not coincidentally,
Speaker 10: at the age of twelve, that's when he started to
Speaker 10: drink alcohol, and he said he would literally drink every
Speaker 10: day starting at.
Speaker 3: The age of twelve.
Speaker 10: At the age of fourteen, at the height of his
Speaker 10: mother's medical drama, he solicited his first prostitute in the
Speaker 10: red light district of Newport News, Virginia, which again it's
Speaker 10: very deviant behavior for someone of that age.
Speaker 3: And thereafter he.
Speaker 10: Became addicted to he had a sexual addiction to soliciting
Speaker 10: prostitutes that only grew over time. Often people say to me,
Speaker 10: ask me what he abused as a child, because we
Speaker 10: think serial killers were allays abused, which in fact is
Speaker 10: not true. Some are, some aren't. In house case, he
Speaker 10: was spanked quite a lot by his parents, especially his mother,
Speaker 10: who was a strict disciplinarian. But I don't think it
Speaker 10: was anything out of the ordinary for someone in that
Speaker 10: era growing up down South. And he does not believe
Speaker 10: himself that he was abused. He thinks that the spankings
Speaker 10: were always warranted, and he certainly places absolutely no blame
Speaker 10: on his parents or his childhood for the ultimate heinous
Speaker 10: crimes that he committed.
Speaker 9: He also include that his father died when he was nineteen,
Speaker 9: so five years later his father is out of his
Speaker 9: life as well.
Speaker 10: Yes, I think there really was a tremendous void of
Speaker 10: loneliness and powerlessness in Howell at an early age that
Speaker 10: only grew over time through the deaths of his parents,
Speaker 10: you know, the mother of his children. He got a
Speaker 10: girl pregnant in high school, a longtime girlfriend at a
Speaker 10: very early age. I believe he was only sixteen, dropped
Speaker 10: out of school. And so I think all of those
Speaker 10: events did contribute to a sense of loneliness and powerlessness
Speaker 10: in Howell's life. And certainly I see in my one
Speaker 10: on one prison visits, when I visit him to this
Speaker 10: day on a monthly basis, I still see that a
Speaker 10: desperate need for human interaction, for social attention, for kindness
Speaker 10: and French.
Speaker 9: Yes, you talked about the worth ethic that was instilled
Speaker 9: by his parents, and they were you know, upstanding people,
Speaker 9: it seemed. And and in regards to his was he
Speaker 9: a drug user? And what was it with this work ethic?
Speaker 9: Was he employable? Was he gainfully employed all the time?
Speaker 9: And if so, what type of employment did he gravitate towards?
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 10: Well, you know you read in the book that he
Speaker 10: did dapple in drugs. You know, he he most certainly
Speaker 10: was not a drug addict. And he tells me he
Speaker 10: never tried heroin, but he did, you know, try crack
Speaker 10: cocaine on one or two occasions. He tells me he
Speaker 10: did not like it.
Speaker 3: You know, he.
Speaker 10: Certainly loved to smoke marijuana. He states that the marijuana
Speaker 10: actually had a calming effect on him, and that in contrast,
Speaker 10: it was the alcohol that that caused problems and ignited
Speaker 10: aggression within him and caused his aggression and anger to surface.
Speaker 10: And alcohol, to some extent was involved in most of
Speaker 10: his crimes. Certainly it was not a big contributing factor,
Speaker 10: but it did have a way of bringing out his anger.
Speaker 3: So you know, he was not a big drug user.
Speaker 10: Aside from you know, smoking marijuana. But with reference to
Speaker 10: his his work ethic, he like his parents, does have
Speaker 10: a very strong work ethic. He takes great pride in
Speaker 10: that he never took welfare. He he never was a
Speaker 10: lazy person who who went on on employment and sought
Speaker 10: an easy ride. But unfortunately, because he dropped out of
Speaker 10: school in I believe it was the tenth grade in
Speaker 10: high school, you know, he really had no skills to
Speaker 10: speak of. While in school, he was in special education classes,
Speaker 10: and he did have a learning disability.
Speaker 3: Certainly in the.
Speaker 10: Letters, and you know, I've got hundreds of pages of
Speaker 10: letters that he's written to me over the course of
Speaker 10: the last three years. His letters do reflect someone with
Speaker 10: deficient writing skills. There are a lot of spelling errors.
Speaker 10: That said, I believe that Howell's level of intelligence, not
Speaker 10: that I have had access to any IQ testing. On
Speaker 10: getting to know him, I.
Speaker 3: Believe he has an average.
Speaker 10: If not slightly above average IQ. He has very good
Speaker 10: reasoning abilities, and so you know, talking to him, he's
Speaker 10: very sharp, he's very alert. Certainly in the three years
Speaker 10: that we conversed before he finally did confess to me
Speaker 10: his crimes in September of twenty seventeen, he was always
Speaker 10: very shrewd and very careful about not divulging any details
Speaker 10: of what he did until he was ready and legal
Speaker 10: resolution had taken place. So the only skills he really
Speaker 10: had were landscaping and mowing lawns.
Speaker 3: And at the time of.
Speaker 10: His killing spree in two thousand and three, during that
Speaker 10: nine month period, he was living out of his van.
Speaker 10: It was this ghastly nineteen eighty five Ford Equano line
Speaker 10: van that he had purchased from an ex girlfriend's parents
Speaker 10: for four hundred dollars, and to save money, he slept
Speaker 10: in that van at night and would shower at the
Speaker 10: local YMCA. He worked during the day at the grocery
Speaker 10: store and the Delhi department, and he also worked as
Speaker 10: a roofer, and so at the time of the king
Speaker 10: spree he stopped doing those two minimum wage jobs and
Speaker 10: decided just to pursue his own long care business. And
Speaker 10: he had a busy long care schedule. He had shown
Speaker 10: me the journal that he kept with all of the
Speaker 10: dates and the customers he had in and around New
Speaker 10: Britain Connecticut, and I sadly that long care schedule did
Speaker 10: figure into the commission of his crime.
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Speaker 10: Times because he had confided in me that if he
Speaker 10: did not have a lawn care schedule the following day,
Speaker 10: if there were no lawns tom, then he knew he
Speaker 10: would be free to find a victim the night before
Speaker 10: and engage in that twelve hour crime of holding that
Speaker 10: victim captive in the back of his van, repeatedly engaging
Speaker 10: in raping them and verbally berating them and ultimately strangling them.
Speaker 10: So it was entirely dependent on his long care schedule.
Speaker 9: You talk about the customers that he encountered with his
Speaker 9: long care business, the people that he worked with, the
Speaker 9: bosses that he worked with, the acquaintances, and the friends.
Speaker 9: Based on his behavior, based on his disposition, this is
Speaker 9: going to be important later when they find out about this,
Speaker 9: But how is he regarded, How is he regarded in
Speaker 9: terms of temperament, How is he regarded in terms of socially.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, after so many people about that, people
Speaker 10: came out of the woodwork while I was working on
Speaker 10: this book. People that he knew in Virginia growing up,
Speaker 10: people that he knew in Connecticut when he moved here
Speaker 10: in two thousand and one. People he worked with, friends,
Speaker 10: ex girlfriends in Connecticut, and they all consistently say that
Speaker 10: Howell was a very friendly guy.
Speaker 3: A nice guy.
Speaker 10: Some say, you know, he's the guy that will give
Speaker 10: you the shirt off his back. You know, there was
Speaker 10: one story our reference, I think I mentioned it in
Speaker 10: the book, where a woman had told me that she
Speaker 10: lost her purse with her wallet in it, and Howell
Speaker 10: showed up at her house the next day. They were acquaintances.
Speaker 10: He had found the purse and he had returned it,
Speaker 10: and all of the cash and credit cards were there untouched.
Speaker 10: So they describe him as well as a very honest guy,
Speaker 10: a guy that you could trust now, and he certainly
Speaker 10: loved a good party. He was a very sociable guy,
Speaker 10: which again flies in the face of a lot of
Speaker 10: the myths that we have of these Hannibal Lecter type
Speaker 10: of or Jeffrey Dahmer type of serial killers who have
Speaker 10: no friends and our social recluse. That certainly was not
Speaker 10: the case with Howell. He has told me that he
Speaker 10: prefers to be in the company of other people and
Speaker 10: he hates to be alone, which is one of the
Speaker 10: reasons why now being alone in his cell and a
Speaker 10: high max prison is just torture for him. Now, all
Speaker 10: that said, there is also a dark side, obviously to
Speaker 10: William Devin Howe, and there were times when friends and
Speaker 10: acquaintances would see that dark side surface. With the mother
Speaker 10: of his children, along with the ex the former girlfriend
Speaker 10: who he was with at the time of the killing spree,
Speaker 10: who is now deceased, there were allegations of some domestic violence,
Speaker 10: you know, on the scale of one to ten, you know,
Speaker 10: in terms of the level of violence involved, you know,
Speaker 10: maybe a five or six. It was often with his
Speaker 10: last girlfriend at the time of the commission of the crimes,
Speaker 10: more of a mutual pushing and shoving and fighting. So
Speaker 10: he did exhibit an anger in.
Speaker 3: Some of his relationships.
Speaker 10: But when I think about it, you know, being a
Speaker 10: practicing attorney, having you know, known many people who have
Speaker 10: been involved in domestic violent situations. While the behavior was deviant,
Speaker 10: it's certainly not out of the ordinary in terms of
Speaker 10: the domestic violence that some of my clients may share
Speaker 10: with me. And I don't think in any way it
Speaker 10: could have indicated to an observer that this man was
Speaker 10: going to wind up being a serial killer.
Speaker 9: Right now, let's get back to Nilsa and her boyfriend Ace,
Speaker 9: because the police got a As we know all true
Speaker 9: crime listeners and readers know, the police have to concentrate
Speaker 9: on the most likely usual typical suspects, and that being
Speaker 9: A Sanchez. Yet the same thing is there. At the
Speaker 9: same time, there is some evidence from him. He says
Speaker 9: that he had thrown out a long care flyer from
Speaker 9: Howell from his long care business with his phone number
Speaker 9: on it. And also that so tell us how it
Speaker 9: becomes that the police get an inkling that he has
Speaker 9: something to do with this. And also we haven't mentioned
Speaker 9: this New Britain avenue where really a lot of this,
Speaker 9: well most of this goes down originates.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, A Sanchez was the last person to
Speaker 10: see Nilsa Eirismendi alive. And he watched from a distance
Speaker 10: as Nilsa walked in to Howell's van. You know, if
Speaker 10: we did not have Ace Sanchez offering that witness testimony
Speaker 10: to law enforcement after Nilsa Arasmendi's disappearance, I think it's
Speaker 10: fair to say that William Devin Howe would possibly never
Speaker 10: have been connected with any of these seven murders because
Speaker 10: all of his other victims, he was very careful to
Speaker 10: choose strangers, to choose women who he had never met before,
Speaker 10: who did not know his name. He removed the license
Speaker 10: tag on his van at the time of the crimes.
Speaker 10: So Sanchez and his observation was crucial in convicting Howell
Speaker 10: of the murder of Nilsa Arismendi at the trial that
Speaker 10: took place in January of two thousand and seven. Eight
Speaker 10: was initially a suspect, which of course would be very
Speaker 10: the traditional route that police would take to look to
Speaker 10: the boyfriend first. And Ace and nils given their reckless lifestyle,
Speaker 10: were known to have one of those kind of pushing
Speaker 10: and shoving relationships, and so they thought, well, maybe maybe
Speaker 10: things got out of hand, and Ace was the one
Speaker 10: who did it, So he was initially a suspect. I
Speaker 10: think what changed things for the police in the investigation
Speaker 10: in the early months was that they gave Ace a polygraph.
Speaker 10: The first polygraph was showed deception, so they were still
Speaker 10: interested in Ace, but then the second polygraph showed that
Speaker 10: it was not deceptive, and so it was based on
Speaker 10: that polygraph result that they started to look closer at
Speaker 10: William Devin Howell and go to his house or to
Speaker 10: his girlfriend's house where his van was stored in the garage,
Speaker 10: to see if he may be the likely culprit. New
Speaker 10: Britain Avenue though that is in the heart of Hartford, Connecticut,
Speaker 10: and you know, as with the landscape of this entire story,
Speaker 10: because this I really believe Connecticut is a character in
Speaker 10: this story just as much as any of the other
Speaker 10: main characters.
Speaker 3: William Devin Howell's.
Speaker 10: Radius, his demographic of where he picked up his victims
Speaker 10: and ultimately where he buried them, was really within a
Speaker 10: thirty to forty mile range. It was pretty narrowly defined.
Speaker 10: And so we're talking about in the case of New
Speaker 10: Britain Avenue, you know, the Cedy district of Hartford, which
Speaker 10: is right next to a t the University of an
Speaker 10: upscale University, and you're going to find that when when
Speaker 10: you read the book. Throughout the book is that there
Speaker 10: is this juxtaposition of these. For example, the Upscal shopping
Speaker 10: mall directly across the street from the burial ground where
Speaker 10: William Devin Howe left his bodies. I mean, this is
Speaker 10: a shopping mall where if you look at the parking lot,
Speaker 10: you're going to see a lot of Mercedes Benzes and
Speaker 10: you know, nice sports SUVs and whatnot. And so Connecticut
Speaker 10: in the region I talk about, you know, you can
Speaker 10: drive through a few neighborhoods and see these beautiful colonial
Speaker 10: and brick homes and nicely landscaped, lots of money, lots
Speaker 10: of wealth in Connecticut, it's a higher income state. And
Speaker 10: then within you know, a few blocks, everything can dramatically change,
Speaker 10: and you're in an area where you know, people are
Speaker 10: pushing drugs and women are walking the streets. And I
Speaker 10: think that in large part reflects probably two things that
Speaker 10: are going on all over our country right now, but
Speaker 10: especially in my part of Connecticut, which is that Connecticut
Speaker 10: has lost its manufacturing based base. You know, back in
Speaker 10: the sixties and seventies, it was the capital of plastics
Speaker 10: and brass manufacturing, so all those factory jobs have gone away,
Speaker 10: resulting in a devastating loss to the blue collar people
Speaker 10: of our state. And also it's a reflection of the
Speaker 10: opioid epidemic and crisis, which ultimately leads people often to
Speaker 10: doing heroin. So you've got these two big socio economic
Speaker 10: things going on that are a backdrop to the story
Speaker 10: that I write about.
Speaker 9: You introduce characters Detective de Royan and Davis, especially the
Speaker 9: detective de rouyin is quite important. And while Ace is
Speaker 9: still a suspect and we say he's been incarcerated on
Speaker 9: some other charges, they monitor his phone calls and letters
Speaker 9: as you write. But by September thirteen, you write in
Speaker 9: your book that Howell became a potential suspect and they
Speaker 9: found out who this van was registered, and it was
Speaker 9: Howell's girlfriend, Dorothy Holcombe. So tell us how they proceed
Speaker 9: with finding out and narrowing their focus on Devin Howell
Speaker 9: as a suspect.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Detective de rone he absolutely fascinates me, and I
Speaker 10: really wish I had the opportunity to meet him. I
Speaker 10: tried many times to reach out and talk to him.
Speaker 10: I would love to have had an interview with him,
Speaker 10: but he's an extremely private man. He did read the manuscript,
Speaker 10: which was interesting and did not have any problems with
Speaker 10: the contents of the book. But Detective Drone was was really,
Speaker 10: if there's a guy wearing a white hat in this book,
Speaker 10: a cowboy with the white hat, it's going to be
Speaker 10: Detective d'erne, because he was very tenacious and he really
Speaker 10: treated this case as though this missing woman were one
Speaker 10: of his family members. I really, I really believe he
Speaker 10: deserves tremendous credit, and he doesn't want that credit. He
Speaker 10: wants the team of officers in the New Britain Serial
Speaker 10: Task Force to take the credit for.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 10: But I think truthfully, he's in large part what broke
Speaker 10: all of this. So what happened was Dorone, I believe,
Speaker 10: and this is based on discussions with other detectives who
Speaker 10: are friends with that Drone followed his gut instincts as
Speaker 10: a detective. I mean, he'd been on the force for
Speaker 10: decades and I think there was just something in this
Speaker 10: man's gut that said, Howel's my man. And so he
Speaker 10: went to Dorothy Holcombe Howel's Girlfriend's house and found the
Speaker 10: van there. He lied, which is allowed detectives do it
Speaker 10: all the time. He lied and said, you know, we're
Speaker 10: here for some long care thefts that have been reported
Speaker 10: in the area, and we'd like to know if William
Speaker 10: Devin Howell lives here, and how at that time, was
Speaker 10: visiting his girlfriend and he was hiding in the shadows
Speaker 10: of the kitchen of Dorry Holcombe's house and Detective Davis
Speaker 10: peeked through the window and saw Howell hiding away in
Speaker 10: the kitchen, and Dorry Holcombe was furious, standing in her
Speaker 10: doorway saying, no, you're you know you're not coming in
Speaker 10: and Howell doesn't live here, and I don't know what
Speaker 10: you're talking about. That's my van. I'm the only one
Speaker 10: who drives it. And and so the detective knew that
Speaker 10: she was covering for him, while Hulcolm, I believe, never
Speaker 10: knew what William Devin Howell was up to during that
Speaker 10: nine month killing spree. I think she knew that, you know,
Speaker 10: they were suspecting him of something, and so she was
Speaker 10: trying to protect her boyfriend. Thereafter, in the weeks that followed,
Speaker 10: Howell jumped ship. He drove down to his hometown of Hampton,
Speaker 10: Virginia to visit some friends in November of two thousand
Speaker 10: and three, and he and a friend cleaned out his
Speaker 10: van at the friend's house. And while they were cleaning
Speaker 10: out the van, this friend of his later told police
Speaker 10: that he saw Howel remove blood stained cushions from the
Speaker 10: back bench of that van and throw them away way
Speaker 10: and that the van had a foul smelling odor, So
Speaker 10: that also was used would have been used against Howell
Speaker 10: at Nilsa eras Mendi's trial if the trial went on.
Speaker 10: As it turned out, Howell took an Alfred plea where
Speaker 10: he worked out a plea deal so that evidence didn't
Speaker 10: get entered. But that's what happened, was that the friend
Speaker 10: observed this. Now, it wasn't until a few months later,
Speaker 10: in February two thousand and four, that Detective de Rone
Speaker 10: made the eight hundred mile trip down to Hampton Well
Speaker 10: in this case, North Carolina. By then Bill Howell had
Speaker 10: moved to be with a friend in North Carolina, and
Speaker 10: he made that trek down from Connecticut to North Carolina
Speaker 10: to arrest Howell and extradite him back to Connecticut just
Speaker 10: based on some minor probation violations. But it was what
Speaker 10: d Rone needed to do to at least get this
Speaker 10: guy locked up and safely stowed away from the community
Speaker 10: at large lest he kill anymore, and also to have
Speaker 10: some time to pursue the investigation on an even deeper
Speaker 10: level and get the evidence that he needed against Howell,
Speaker 10: which would ultimately lead to his conviction at that murder
Speaker 10: trial in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 9: You also include the because it's as you write Ashley
Speaker 9: Martin's story, the guy that cleans out of the vent,
Speaker 9: it changes and he becomes a hostile witness later. He's
Speaker 9: not very not cooperative at all, but they fool him
Speaker 9: how into giving up the information about cleaning the vent.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, if I that they that they said that they
Speaker 10: were actually watching from the driveway, that they watched him
Speaker 10: clean out that van, and I think Ashley did feel
Speaker 10: pressured to divulge that information. It was a long interrogation, uh.
Speaker 10: He the public defender for William Devin how Howell at
Speaker 10: trial subsequently tried to argue that Ashley was under police
Speaker 10: coercion at the time, but he was free to leave
Speaker 10: at any time. And and they they told him that
Speaker 10: they were aware that he had helped clean out this
Speaker 10: van and that they had watched him do it.
Speaker 9: Now. When Drone finally talks to Bill, Bill realizes again
Speaker 9: he's not a stupid person. He says, why would you
Speaker 9: travel eight hundred miles for a misdemeanor warrant? And so
Speaker 9: dron you know, doesn't lie at this point, what does
Speaker 9: he tell him and what does he do and what
Speaker 9: is his reaction?
Speaker 10: Yeah, and they're driving back from North Carolina where Drone
Speaker 10: arrested Howell back in February two thousand and four, to Connecticut.
Speaker 10: The first few hours of the drive were going fine.
Speaker 10: Drone and Howell are in the backseat of the of
Speaker 10: the car and just chatting about Howel's you know, childhood,
Speaker 10: the weather. Howell is feeling very relaxed and being a
Speaker 10: smart man. No, he does ask Dorone a few hours
Speaker 10: into that drive, why on earth are you guys wasting
Speaker 10: all your time coming eight hundred miles just to arrest
Speaker 10: me on these misdemeanor charges? And d rohn And says,
Speaker 10: do you really want to know? And and Howell looks
Speaker 10: at him, yes, and Doerome pulls out an envelope and
Speaker 10: from that envelope he pulls out a picture of Nilsa
Speaker 10: Era's Mendy and Dorone reported in a subsequent Affid David
Speaker 10: that when he did that, Howell's face went just chalk white.
Speaker 10: The blood drained from his face instantly, and Howells said,
Speaker 10: at that point in the time, well he claimed his
Speaker 10: Miranda rights, he said, I'm not going to talk about
Speaker 10: anything from this point forward without a lawyer. At first
Speaker 10: he did before saying that, he did say I don't
Speaker 10: even know.
Speaker 3: Who that is?
Speaker 10: Who is that?
Speaker 3: He lied?
Speaker 10: And Dorone said this woman is Nilsa Eira's Mendy. How said,
Speaker 10: I I don't know any Nilsa Eras Mendy. Now that
Speaker 10: was not entirely a fib because us Howel knew her
Speaker 10: as Maria, which was the name that Nilsa used when
Speaker 10: she was working the streets. Nonetheless, the bigger point being
Speaker 10: Howell knew at that point that he was in trouble.
Speaker 3: He was wise to.
Speaker 10: Demand a lawyer from that point forward. And de Rone
Speaker 10: finally got the confirmation he needed that this man was
Speaker 10: responsible for the crime, based solely on the reaction that
Speaker 10: he had to seeing that picture.
Speaker 9: April two thousand and four, again that this is not
Speaker 9: how the book is written. It's revealed differently, But you
Speaker 9: introduced a character very important character, Jonathan Mills. How is
Speaker 9: it that Mills tell us who he is and what
Speaker 9: he finds out speaking with with him?
Speaker 10: Yeah, Mills. Jonathan Mills is himself a serial killer by definition.
Speaker 10: Jonathan Mills is a quadruple murderer who back in two
Speaker 10: thousand in Connecticut, in Guildford, Connecticut, he went into a
Speaker 10: woman's house and killed this single mother. A few months later,
Speaker 10: he went into his aunt's house, and in this home invasion,
Speaker 10: he was hungry for drugs and wanted drug money. He
Speaker 10: brutally stabbed his aunt and her two young children. His
Speaker 10: aunt he stabbed to death over forty times, and each
Speaker 10: young child who was sleeping in bed with this woman
Speaker 10: he stabbed six times each. So he is a very
Speaker 10: violent man. And he was the cellmate with William Devon
Speaker 10: Howell back in two thousand and four, and I believe
Speaker 10: again in two thousand and seven that they were cellmates
Speaker 10: together at various prisons in Connecticut. Now I believe it
Speaker 10: was not until however, two thousand and fourteen, when again
Speaker 10: Mills and Bill Howell were locked up again together, that
Speaker 10: Bill Howell devised the plan that he was going to
Speaker 10: commit suicide because he had heard through the.
Speaker 3: Grapevine that maybe.
Speaker 10: He was a suspect in these serial murders, that with
Speaker 10: the bodies being found behind the Strip Mall in New Britain, Connecticut,
Speaker 10: and so Bill Howell in twenty fourteen asked Jonathan Mills
Speaker 10: if he could get him a bag of heroin because
Speaker 10: he planned on ingesting it and committing suicide. And Howell
Speaker 10: had also saved up his anti anxiety the medications that
Speaker 10: were prescribed in the prison, and he planned to simultaneously
Speaker 10: take those with the heroine and hang it all up.
Speaker 10: But before doing so, his plan was to get these
Speaker 10: crimes off of his chest.
Speaker 3: He tells me. The motive was that.
Speaker 10: He wanted the victims' families to finally know about it
Speaker 10: and have closure. So he planned to commit suicide, but
Speaker 10: first to confess to Jonathan Mills what he had done.
Speaker 10: And that's just what happened. They were playing with a
Speaker 10: cold case criminal card deck that we have in the
Speaker 10: prisons in Connecticut. This is a deck of cards that
Speaker 10: has pictures of individual missing persons or murdered persons in
Speaker 10: hopes that prisoners get a loose tongue and start shooting
Speaker 10: the breeze while they're playing cards and someone might say
Speaker 10: I'm responsible for this, And so that is what happened.
Speaker 10: In the early stages with Mills. He saw a picture
Speaker 10: of one of his victims, Javelin Martinez. She was his
Speaker 10: last victim, very beautiful young woman, and he said, you
Speaker 10: see this girl, I'm the one who killed her. And
Speaker 10: he went on to tell Mills about his other six victims, not.
Speaker 3: Just you know.
Speaker 10: How he did it, but where he put the bodies.
Speaker 10: And he even went so far as to draw a
Speaker 10: diagram for Jonathan Mills of the location of those bodies
Speaker 10: behind the Strip Mall.
Speaker 3: Now, the suicide.
Speaker 10: Attempt failed, obviously, and Mills went on to report those
Speaker 10: confessions to authorities. And if you look at the whole
Speaker 10: case against Bill Howell, the prosecutions, by far their strongest
Speaker 10: piece of evidence was the affidavit from Jonathan Mills, which
Speaker 10: outlined where the bodies were buried, because in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 10: when he shared that information with the authorities, only three
Speaker 10: of the bodies had been found at that point of time.
Speaker 10: So Mills was the first to tell authorities. Howell told me,
Speaker 10: it's not just three people back there, it's seven.
Speaker 3: And not only that.
Speaker 10: Here's how he buried the bodies. Here's where they are placed.
Speaker 10: Sure enough, authorities took that diagram out to the back
Speaker 10: of the Strip mall and in those swampy woods they
Speaker 10: found the bodies just where Jonathan Mills told them that
Speaker 10: Howell said they were placed.
Speaker 9: Incredible. Now, while he is in custody and they're investigating
Speaker 9: further and they're making their case, you become decide to
Speaker 9: correspond with William Devinhowell. When we come back from this break,
Speaker 9: we will talk about how and why and everything included
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Speaker 9: hire now, and we I alluded to that for some reason,
Speaker 9: for very good reason, you decided to correspond with William
Speaker 9: Devin Howell. How did you do that? What is the
Speaker 9: strategy you used to be able to ensure in your
Speaker 9: mind that you would be able to correspond with this
Speaker 9: serial killer, this killer that you wanted to correspond with.
Speaker 9: How did you ensure that you would make sure that happened?
Speaker 10: Well, you know, it started off in a traditional way
Speaker 10: of my simply writing to him in the Himax prison
Speaker 10: facility where he resided in Suffield, Connecticut, back in July
Speaker 10: of twenty fifteen. Now at that time. You know, I
Speaker 10: had a blog, a true crime blog entitled serial Murders
Speaker 10: in Connecticut, where I was writing about various solved and
Speaker 10: unsolved murders in Connecticut. And so, you know, I was
Speaker 10: seeing on the news that this man was the main
Speaker 10: person of interest in the seven murders of the people
Speaker 10: found behind the Strip Mall. So I thought this would
Speaker 10: be a great true crime book if it ever came
Speaker 10: to fruition that this man was charged with these crimes
Speaker 10: and went on trial, and I could write the story.
Speaker 10: But of course I have to get to know him.
Speaker 10: So I simply wrote him a letter of introduction a
Speaker 10: few months after he was named as the person of
Speaker 10: interest in these crimes. He had not yet been charged
Speaker 10: for six of the seven murders. The charges were on
Speaker 10: the horizon. They happened a few months after that, but
Speaker 10: I reached out to him and told him right off
Speaker 10: the bat, I wanted full disclosure right from the get go.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm always kind of cognizant of the nightmare
Speaker 10: that happened with author Joe McGinnis when he wrote about
Speaker 10: Jeffrey McDonald, the doctor who killed his wife and children.
Speaker 10: That you know, when when dealing with you know, the
Speaker 10: subject of a few your book. It's always best to
Speaker 10: be as straightforward as possible and not hide your motives
Speaker 10: or intentions. And so I did tell William Devin Howe
Speaker 10: my first letter that I my sole interest was not
Speaker 10: as a practicing attorney in any legal capacity, certainly, but
Speaker 10: it was to write a book about him. And uh,
Speaker 10: and I you know, I threw in a few friendly
Speaker 10: lines that he seemed based on what I'd read online, like, uh,
Speaker 10: you know, apart from the charges that that were pending,
Speaker 10: that that he people had reported that he was a
Speaker 10: nice and friendly man, a good boyfriend.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: So, you know, to my surprise, within a matter of weeks,
Speaker 10: he wrote right back to me. He said he had
Speaker 10: struggled with whether or not he would write.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 10: Certainly, his his lawyers were strongly opposed to him having
Speaker 10: any interaction with a journalist pending trial. Uh and rightly
Speaker 10: so that you know, it's it's not a wise thing
Speaker 10: for for someone to do. But I think in the
Speaker 10: in in the early months and even the early years
Speaker 10: of our of our author's subject relationship, I think what
Speaker 10: secured it for me in terms of how well continuing
Speaker 10: to write me prolifically actually, you know, he writes. He
Speaker 10: would write every week long, you know, letters back in front,
Speaker 10: and he often would you know, stay up at night
Speaker 10: because he couldn't sleep, and he'd write me his thoughts
Speaker 10: as if I was kind of a personal journal to him,
Speaker 10: and really open up to me about his his childhood
Speaker 10: and his his feelings about his present day incarceration. But
Speaker 10: I think what secured.
Speaker 3: The trust was that when when we did.
Speaker 10: Initially write and that evolved into phone calls and in
Speaker 10: person visits, I was in no rush, and I don't
Speaker 10: think he felt pressured from me in any way that
Speaker 10: perhaps an ordinary reporter for a TV show or an
Speaker 10: online newspaper would would put that kind of pressure on
Speaker 10: how to try to get the next day's frontage scoop,
Speaker 10: you know. So I think what he sensed for me
Speaker 10: was that I genuinely wanted to get this get to
Speaker 10: know this man as intimately as possible. I wanted to
Speaker 10: get to know the inner workings of his mind. And
Speaker 10: so while of course at some point down the line,
Speaker 10: I was extremely interested in knowing what he did, how
Speaker 10: he did it, when he did it, and of course
Speaker 10: why he did it. In our first two years together.
Speaker 10: What I really wanted to know was who he was,
Speaker 10: because I don't think you can do an actuate and
Speaker 10: substantive true crime profile, you know, by projecting what you
Speaker 10: think someone is, or by giving questions that try to
Speaker 10: elicit some you know, grizzly details or salacious information. Rather,
Speaker 10: I wanted to approach him as I would an ordinary
Speaker 10: person in my life who I eagerly wanted to get
Speaker 10: to know on every level, And strangely, I think given
Speaker 10: his state of loneliness, he was more than a receptive
Speaker 10: to to.
Speaker 3: Play that game.
Speaker 10: He I think on many levels he greatly enjoyed that
Speaker 10: someone was asking him about, you know, his likes, his dislikes,
Speaker 10: his hobbies, his his past girlfriends growing up. I think
Speaker 10: he in many ways really enjoyed the process of being
Speaker 10: paid attention to apart from the focus of these rhymes.
Speaker 9: You talk about. Literally, in the very first correspondence, he
Speaker 9: talks about, Hey, it sounds kind of creepy, but I
Speaker 9: just really really need a hug.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 10: That gave me a little bit of pause. I have
Speaker 10: to admit, I thought, oh, what am I getting myself into?
Speaker 10: And actually, when I think about it, I think that's
Speaker 10: the only time. There were a couple other times in
Speaker 10: our early months of correspondence. I think after he met
Speaker 10: me for a prison visit, there were a couple references to,
Speaker 10: you know, I really love our visits and it's so
Speaker 10: nice to see your pretty face, or something like that.
Speaker 10: But for the most part, though, you know, my interactions
Speaker 10: with Howell have actually been extremely above board on his
Speaker 10: part in terms of the courtesy and the respect that
Speaker 10: he shows me. When when he wrote to me in
Speaker 10: that first letter, I'd really just like a hug. I
Speaker 10: don't I don't want to creep you out, and in
Speaker 10: his words he said, this made me laugh. I promise
Speaker 10: not to cop a feel. Uh you know, but I
Speaker 10: just I haven't been hugged in years. And you know,
Speaker 10: that did give me insight that that I think he
Speaker 10: he he genuinely is a man who who who craves
Speaker 10: human affection and attention. And you know, at that point
Speaker 10: he didn't know if I was a little old lady
Speaker 10: wanting to write a book about him. So I don't
Speaker 10: think that initial remark was was overtly sexual. But as
Speaker 10: as the years went by, though, you know, he he continually,
Speaker 10: uh would show me a level of respect I never
Speaker 10: felt uncomfortable like he was being lewde or making flirtatious
Speaker 10: into nations and.
Speaker 3: What he was saying.
Speaker 10: He really never did that. In fact, as time went on,
Speaker 10: you know, because I'm in my thirtieth year of marriage,
Speaker 10: you know, so you know, he Howelan, I would speak
Speaker 10: frequently about me and my husband, my adult children, what
Speaker 10: we did on the weekend.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 10: In the book, I reference that my husband, out of
Speaker 10: the blue, while I was writing the book, had a
Speaker 10: cancer diagnosis, which fortunately we've we've resolved now he's clear
Speaker 10: of that. But you know, Howlan, I spoke at lengths
Speaker 10: about about that personal crisis in my life. So he's
Speaker 10: he's always been quite respectful of my marriage, which, ironically,
Speaker 10: I think that goes towards this kind of twisted moral
Speaker 10: coat that William Devin Howe has that I discussed, you know,
Speaker 10: in the Commission of his crimes. One of the reasons
Speaker 10: I believe that he lacked such empathy towards the suffering
Speaker 10: of his victims was was that he had this polarity
Speaker 10: and how he sees people. So I was in the
Speaker 10: group of Anne's an upstanding person who's not a heroin
Speaker 10: addict working the streets, because if you're in that category,
Speaker 10: then then to Bill Howe, you you are a worthless object.
Speaker 10: So he you know, he always he always gave me
Speaker 10: that respect that ironically couldn't be further than what he
Speaker 10: showed to you know, the victims whose lives he destroyed.
Speaker 9: You talk about the relationship that you develop with him,
Speaker 9: and the trusts, and him being lonely and feeling that
Speaker 9: he doesn't have any really friends or family in the
Speaker 9: world to speak to. He got to the point where
Speaker 9: he in a will, in the Last Will and Testament
Speaker 9: or a will as agreed to send you all of
Speaker 9: his material all the discovery tell us about this agreement
Speaker 9: and his wish that you would have this material and why.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, you know, in September of twenty sixteen, he
Speaker 10: had yet to decide whether or not he was going
Speaker 10: to plead guilty, and he had been transferred to Bridgeport Correctional,
Speaker 10: which is a really you know, a prison in Connecticut
Speaker 10: that made the previous prison that he was at look
Speaker 10: like a country club. He was at Bridgeport Correctional, there
Speaker 10: was no air conditioning, and we were at the height
Speaker 10: of a heat wave, and the you know, one hundred
Speaker 10: degrees every day, and the cells didn't even have electricity,
Speaker 10: so he had no he couldn't put a fan in
Speaker 10: the outlet, he had no radio, no tight TV. He
Speaker 10: was deeply depressed and suicidal in September of twenty sixteen. Actually,
Speaker 10: there have been a handful of times in the last
Speaker 10: three and a half years where he has been suicidal
Speaker 10: and had to be put into segregation at a mental
Speaker 10: health facility with you know, wearing a Ferguson gown and
Speaker 10: with all of the preventions in place. So in September
Speaker 10: of twenty sixteen, the depression really escalated and he decided
Speaker 10: that he was going to kill himself. But before doing so,
Speaker 10: he was going to write out a will and have
Speaker 10: it witnessed by some of the higher ups at the institution.
Speaker 10: And he was going to give to me all of
Speaker 10: the legal discovery in the boxes in his cell that
Speaker 10: his defense counsel had provided to him, as they are
Speaker 10: constitutionally required to do pending trial, to show him all
Speaker 10: of the prosecution's evidence against him. And so he willed
Speaker 10: all of those items, plus the items in.
Speaker 3: His cell, to me.
Speaker 10: So that I could complete this book in the event
Speaker 10: that he died. And also uh so that I could
Speaker 10: inform any of his family members that he had died.
Speaker 10: And uh, part of this was a living will where uh,
Speaker 10: you know, he assigned me as the one to give
Speaker 10: the order not to resuscitate him if if that event
Speaker 10: came about. And I think that that shows uh the
Speaker 10: level of trust that he had in me at that
Speaker 10: point in time, that he continues to have in me.
Speaker 10: But but also the sad fact that because of the
Speaker 10: you know, terrible things that he has done, uh, he
Speaker 10: is a reviled man and he has appolutely no family
Speaker 10: members and no friends coming to visit him or even
Speaker 10: to write him. And so I am, with the exception
Speaker 10: of his defense counsel, and that's their job. I am
Speaker 10: the only person who is in contact with him and
Speaker 10: who you know, for the last few years has shown
Speaker 10: him any kind of human compassion or sympathy.
Speaker 3: That's not to say.
Speaker 10: I don't see he is a monster, and I haven't
Speaker 10: been absolutely disgusted and traumatized myself by the terror that
Speaker 10: he's inflicted in this world, but it is to say that,
Speaker 10: you know, he sees me in that role as his
Speaker 10: one two true friend at this point in time, and
Speaker 10: has come to rely on that.
Speaker 9: Yeah. In May two thousand and five, you introduce another
Speaker 9: character in the book, this Thomas Rodriguez aka Mason Marconi,
Speaker 9: a thirty five year old he's a say, he has
Speaker 9: a lengthy felony conviction record as well in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Speaker 9: And he met Bill at Chesshire Correctional Institute in May
Speaker 9: two thousand and five. What does he do immediately and
Speaker 9: what does Bill say to him? And tell us a
Speaker 9: little more of this story that again doesn't end with
Speaker 9: Thomas Rodriguez, but ties in some other characters as well.
Speaker 10: Right, Tommy Rodriguez was I guess what inmates call a
Speaker 10: jailhouse snitch. And you know, that's something I bring out
Speaker 10: in the book, that there is this underground, pervasive system
Speaker 10: in the prison system in America that a lot of
Speaker 10: people aren't aware of, but certainly prosecutors and detectives rely
Speaker 10: heavily upon other inmates, other jail house snitches to relate
Speaker 10: to them information about unsolved crimes in exchange, often for
Speaker 10: lesser sentences or perks from the Department of Corrections, you know,
Speaker 10: maybe a transfer to a nicer facility.
Speaker 3: So in the case of.
Speaker 10: Tommy Rodriguez, He had a long history of engaging in
Speaker 10: this kind of snitching where he would listen in on
Speaker 10: what other inmates were saying about the crimes that they committed,
Speaker 10: and he would go to authorities and relay that information
Speaker 10: with some kind of transactional benefit coming his way. And
Speaker 10: in Howell's case, he sat down with Howell and I
Speaker 10: think it was just at wrec time where they were
Speaker 10: shooting the breeze watching TV in the prison, and he
Speaker 10: started to ask Howell, you know, why are you in
Speaker 10: prison with such a long sentence. Why have you been
Speaker 10: charged with the crime of this woman when they don't
Speaker 10: really have anything on you. And Howell did gradually start
Speaker 10: to open up to Tommy Rodriguez and say, you know
Speaker 10: I at one point he said, yes, I pushed her
Speaker 10: out of my vehicle. I punched her in the face
Speaker 10: and pushed her out of my vehicle. And uh. And
Speaker 10: with that information, and Tommy Rodriguez did go to Detective
Speaker 10: Dorone right away, he called him from his cell that
Speaker 10: day to relay that information to Dorone. That Howell did
Speaker 10: say that he was somehow involved with the disappearance of
Speaker 10: Milsa Arasmendi and that there was blood that Milsa aras
Speaker 10: Mendy did shed in his van. That was the result
Speaker 10: of him punching her, beating her up, and pushing.
Speaker 3: Her out of his van.
Speaker 10: Tommy Rodriguez had previous he worked with Detective Dorone on
Speaker 10: on other cases, helping to snitch on those cases. So
Speaker 10: it was by sheer coincidence that Detective do Rone was
Speaker 10: involved in Howell's case, and so that that greatly assisted
Speaker 10: Detective Drone's investigation. Of course, at that point in time,
Speaker 10: once Tommy Rodriguez notified Dorone of that information, he became
Speaker 10: an agent of the state, and so legally Dorone was
Speaker 10: required to tell Tommy Rodriguez any more specifically about that
Speaker 10: particular missing person's case of Nilsa Eiris Mendi. You can
Speaker 10: ask him now about any other cases, any anything else
Speaker 10: he may have done. But as soon as a jail
Speaker 10: house snitch interacts with law enforcement to say I'm helping
Speaker 10: you on this case about this particular missing person, they
Speaker 10: be become an agent of the state, and any further
Speaker 10: information gleaned from those conversations that Tommy would have with
Speaker 10: how regarding Arismendi would not be admitted in a court
Speaker 10: of law. So at least he was able to tell
Speaker 10: Drone before he became an agent of the state. I
Speaker 10: got this information for you. Howell said Arismeny was in
Speaker 10: his van. He did beat her up and throw her
Speaker 10: out of the van. He did indicate that he may
Speaker 10: he may have killed her as well. And he also
Speaker 10: indicated to me that he hates prostitutes. He hates drug
Speaker 10: addicted prostitutes.
Speaker 9: Yeah, in this as well, when you talk about that
Speaker 9: he could talk and question him about other victims. That
Speaker 9: there was a Mary Jane Minard. And again, this is
Speaker 9: very very disturbing, the dialogue, the conversation he has with
Speaker 9: this snitch. So what does he say regarding that, you
Speaker 9: talk about a shock absorber?
Speaker 10: So this, ah, yes, that was actually with Jonathan Mills,
Speaker 10: the quadruple murderer, who heard all of his confessions in
Speaker 10: twenty fourteen. You know, Howell told him some of the
Speaker 10: details about how these women suffered what he did to
Speaker 10: torture them. And that was actually a perfect example of
Speaker 10: something that happened quite a lot. That I relay in
Speaker 10: the book is that the confessions that Howell gave to
Speaker 10: Jonathan Mills, that Mills shared with authorities were not entirely
Speaker 10: accurately conveyed to authorities, because it happened months after Howell
Speaker 10: told Mills these confessions that Mills then reluctantly spoke to authorities.
Speaker 10: So some of them are a mish mash of details
Speaker 10: that got confused with the wrong victim or the wrong time,
Speaker 10: as often happens like in a game of telephone, where
Speaker 10: the you know, the further the time goes, the more
Speaker 10: the information gets diluted or confused. And so what Mills
Speaker 10: told authorities was that this victim, Mary Jane Menard, was
Speaker 10: raped with a shock absorber by Bill Howell. That when
Speaker 10: Howell provided his confessions to me and wrote them down
Speaker 10: over the course of the few months following as guilty plea,
Speaker 10: he cleared up all of the inaccuracies in Jonathan mills
Speaker 10: confessions that were shared with police, and one minor inaccuracy
Speaker 10: is that one of the women was indeed raped with
Speaker 10: a shock absorber. It was not Mary Jane Lenard, as
Speaker 10: Jonathan Mills had told authorities. Rather it was Howell's to
Speaker 10: last victim, another prostitute named Diane Cusack. So and you know, sadly,
Speaker 10: when I talked to some of the victims' family members,
Speaker 10: the ones who wanted to know what happened to their
Speaker 10: loved ones. You know, it's sad to me that, you know,
Speaker 10: the daughter of Mary Jane Menard was able to say,
Speaker 10: was that true about my mother? And I could say
Speaker 10: that was not true. That did not happen to your mother.
Speaker 10: The testimony of Mills was inaccurate. It was another woman
Speaker 10: that happened to, not your mother, but this poor woman,
Speaker 10: Diane Cusack Howell. You know, in addition to doing what
Speaker 10: he did with all of his victims, holding them captive,
Speaker 10: you know, repeatedly raping them and then finally strangling them
Speaker 10: after twelve hour duration of time, he did rape her
Speaker 10: with a shock absorber. And when he described that to
Speaker 10: me in a letter, it really did show to me
Speaker 10: just how disassociated he is from the heinous nature of
Speaker 10: his crimes, because he completely understated it, made it sound
Speaker 10: like it wasn't a big deal. She seemed to be
Speaker 10: enjoying it. He said he saw it as some kind
Speaker 10: of a sex toy. Meanwhile, you know, I was in
Speaker 10: possession of all the crimes. He'd seen photos that he
Speaker 10: gave me that included pictures of that large, rusty old
Speaker 10: shock absorber and of course, it's just it's awful to
Speaker 10: think about, and it must have resulted in an excruciating
Speaker 10: pain to this woman. So yeah, that is, sadly a
Speaker 10: reflection of his paraphilia, of his sexual sadism.
Speaker 9: He called himself the sick ripper. I thought that was
Speaker 9: quite interesting. He even had a little nickname for himself.
Speaker 10: That's according to Jonathan Mills. He said that Bill called
Speaker 10: himself a sick ripper, And frankly, I think Mills was
Speaker 10: telling the truth about that. Bill claims to me, I
Speaker 10: never called myself a sick ripper, but you know, I
Speaker 10: haven't gotten a no Bill over a few years. It's
Speaker 10: just the kind of thing that he would say, so
Speaker 10: I think he probably did tell Mills that he called
Speaker 10: himself the sick ripper. He also told Mills, allegedly, according
Speaker 10: to Mills, that he had a name for the burial ground,
Speaker 10: which he called his garden, which is why I called
Speaker 10: the book his garden, And that he had a name
Speaker 10: for that nineteen eighty five forty Conoline van where all
Speaker 10: of his victims were raped and killed, which was the
Speaker 10: murder Mobile.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it took a while to identify these victims, and
Speaker 9: there was one male found was Danny Lee Wisnett, forty
Speaker 9: year old cross stressor and you incredible book that you
Speaker 9: have here. He has conversations pretty well about all of
Speaker 9: the victims and his total disregard for these people. You know,
Speaker 9: he's a real tough guy in his conversations about murder.
Speaker 9: What is it? What are the reasons you as you
Speaker 9: included in the book. What are some of the reasons
Speaker 9: for problems with identification of some of the victims even
Speaker 9: though they were found years before the other victims in
Speaker 9: two thousand and.
Speaker 10: Fifteen in reference to the DNA problems, is this Yeah, Well,
Speaker 10: the Connecticut crime Lab was in a state of total
Speaker 10: dysfunction at the time that these crimes took place. So
Speaker 10: when the first fifty bones of three unidentified victims were
Speaker 10: found behind that mall back in August of two thousand
Speaker 10: and seven, uh, they were sent to the crime lab
Speaker 10: and ordinarily, UH the DNA found within these bones could
Speaker 10: be easily matched to a national database.
Speaker 3: Within within months, uh, if.
Speaker 10: Not, if not days or weeks, And unfortunately, in some
Speaker 10: of these cases, it took years before the identity identification
Speaker 10: of those three victims took place because, uh, the database
Speaker 10: had some kind of there was an algorithm misconfiguration, something
Speaker 10: was wrong with the computers and the database back in
Speaker 10: two thousand and seven, where when when they were inputting
Speaker 10: the DNA information to line it up with missing persons nationally,
Speaker 10: it was not linking to the national database at all. Basically,
Speaker 10: it was going into a big black hole and nothing
Speaker 10: was being done about the identification of these victims. And
Speaker 10: so as a result, the victims families, you know, they
Speaker 10: had an inkling that it may have been one of
Speaker 10: their loved ones behind them all because their loved one
Speaker 10: was missing. Also, there were you know, sketches provided to
Speaker 10: the families of the torso of one of the victims,
Speaker 10: of the head of one of the victims. So the
Speaker 10: victims families were left in the dark, sometimes for years,
Speaker 10: until somebody came in to take over that Connecticut crime lab.
Speaker 10: And this man took over and the other two men
Speaker 10: who were involved with the crime lab, who according to
Speaker 10: some newspaper reports, these these men were busying themselves with
Speaker 10: testifying for significant amounts of money at other high profile trials,
Speaker 10: so they're making money on the side.
Speaker 3: So the crime lab in.
Speaker 10: Connecticut just continued to be in this state of dysfunction
Speaker 10: until those ten two men were let go, and in fact,
Speaker 10: the crime lab had lost its license, had lost its
Speaker 10: crediting because of the mess ups of these people who.
Speaker 3: Were running it. When the new man came in.
Speaker 10: Ghee was his first name, and I forget the last bit,
Speaker 10: you can read it in the book, when he took
Speaker 10: over that crime lab instantly, he instantly transformed it into
Speaker 10: a working, functional, highly productive crime lab, so that when
Speaker 10: the next four bodies were found in April of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 10: they were identified within a matter of weeks, which sadly
Speaker 10: could have been done with the first three bodies were
Speaker 10: found when the first three bodies were found, but for
Speaker 10: the mistakes of the crime lab at that time.
Speaker 9: Police did bring in assistance at that time in terms
Speaker 9: of the form of police dogs cadaver dogs. So that's
Speaker 9: how they found the other four bodies in an area
Speaker 9: they'd already searched. I thought, that was again amazing.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, these bodies over time, when you're when
Speaker 10: you're leaving these bodies out in in a terrain like that,
Speaker 10: the animals and the elements will just wreak havoc on
Speaker 10: the crime site. And so I think, what happened. I
Speaker 10: mean to some extent. I there may have been some
Speaker 10: incompetence in the actual search process of by the local
Speaker 10: authorities early on, and maybe they weren't searching intensively, you know,
Speaker 10: I don't know, but they did go back every year.
Speaker 10: But it wasn't until though the FBI cadaver dogs came
Speaker 10: in to assist, and also of course until they had
Speaker 10: the map given to them by Jonathan Mills that showed
Speaker 10: the exact location that they were able to unearth the
Speaker 10: remaining for bodies, the bones that I've seen in the
Speaker 10: crime scene pictures. You know, there was only one body
Speaker 10: that was still intact for the most part, that was
Speaker 10: laying down. You could see the entire body, which just
Speaker 10: gave chills up my spine because it just brought home
Speaker 10: the reality to me of what this man that I've
Speaker 10: gotten to know actually did to see a human skeleton
Speaker 10: lying face down in a shallow grave. But you know,
Speaker 10: you can see how the animals stole off with a
Speaker 10: lot of the bone. They were found in different locations
Speaker 10: apart from the graves, and the first item that was
Speaker 10: discovered back in two thousand and seven was a skull
Speaker 10: of a woman's head and you know that was found
Speaker 10: by someone who was just wandering the ground looking for
Speaker 10: a place to hunt, even though he wasn't supposed to
Speaker 10: be there. So even though they were buried in shallow
Speaker 10: graves by Bill Howell because the earth was so swampy,
Speaker 10: if he dug any deeper the water would come up.
Speaker 10: You know, it was still a pretty remote location. And
Speaker 10: I think authorities really did have a hard time of
Speaker 10: it trying to locate all of those bodies.
Speaker 9: It took till twenty fifteen, right May NBC. He was
Speaker 9: considered a main suspect in the New Britain serial murders
Speaker 9: at that time, how do police proceed and tell us
Speaker 9: about and his rule?
Speaker 10: Well, by then Derone had been was a secondary player.
Speaker 10: His main role was in the first murder of Nilsa
Speaker 10: Eiras Mendy and making sure that Howell was convicted of
Speaker 10: that crime. At the time Howe was convicted of the
Speaker 10: Nilsa Eiras Mendy murder, her body had not been unearthed.
Speaker 10: It had only it hadn't even been unearthed until April
Speaker 10: of twenty fifteen, which secured for police the fact that
Speaker 10: Howell is the man that is therefore responsible for the
Speaker 10: remaining murders, because he's in prison for Eras Mendy's murder
Speaker 10: and now here we find her body along with the
Speaker 10: six others. But so Drone at that point was merely
Speaker 10: part of the New Britain Serial Killer task Force that
Speaker 10: was formed a few years earlier, offering a one hundred
Speaker 10: and fifty thousand dollars reward to anyone who could give
Speaker 10: any information surround these at the time unsolved New Britain
Speaker 10: serial murders. Ironically, I mentioned in my book, Uh, guess
Speaker 10: who got that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars award,
Speaker 10: quadruple murderer Jonathan Mills. He may have not gotten all
Speaker 10: of it, but he certainly got a large portion of
Speaker 10: that award. But you know, really, by the time Howell.
Speaker 3: Was named as a suspect.
Speaker 10: On on PV in May of twenty fifteen, the police
Speaker 10: did that because they were extremely confident that he was
Speaker 10: the man. And the reason was not only because they
Speaker 10: had just found Nilsa Aras Mendy's remains behind the other
Speaker 10: six remains, but also because by then, through several different
Speaker 10: searches of Howell's murder mobile, they had found six of
Speaker 10: the seven DNA samples of Howell's victims. So they had
Speaker 10: extremely strong forensic evidence through blood droppings that were found
Speaker 10: in his van and some hair, some hair that was
Speaker 10: attached to the roots with the skin that was in
Speaker 10: Howell's van. So those items alone the DNA really gave
Speaker 10: them the confidence to arrest him in September of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 9: What does he say to you regarding these developments at
Speaker 9: that time.
Speaker 10: Well, he did a very good job of keeping everything
Speaker 10: close to the vest and not sharing with me any
Speaker 10: of his thoughts about the pending charges. The six DNA
Speaker 10: samples found in his van, he did not share any
Speaker 10: of it with me. The only crime that he would
Speaker 10: speak about in our first years together before he ultimately
Speaker 10: pled guilty in September of two thoy and seventeen was
Speaker 10: the crime involving Nilsa Arismendi, which he argued he did
Speaker 10: not commit. So for a full two and a half
Speaker 10: to almost three years, I met with a man knowing
Speaker 10: full well that he committed the seven murders of these people,
Speaker 10: knowing that the forensics that that was damning against him,
Speaker 10: and that he would go down at trial and he
Speaker 10: was locked up for life. I was certain of it. Nonetheless,
Speaker 10: he would not share with me any information about those
Speaker 10: pending charges. And actually I did not ask because I
Speaker 10: was in close relations with the with his defense counsel
Speaker 10: in the last three years. Early on, they asked me
Speaker 10: to uh to meet with them.
Speaker 3: UH.
Speaker 10: They had strongly advised Howel not to have anything to
Speaker 10: do with me. When he overrode their advice. UH, they
Speaker 10: knew they had a problem on their hands, and so
Speaker 10: they decided to to to sit me down and see
Speaker 10: if we could work an arrangement, knowing that I was
Speaker 10: writing a book about their client. UH. And we did
Speaker 10: agree in our preliminary meetings on some strict parameters that
Speaker 10: I would follow UH with respect to, you know, not
Speaker 10: inquiring of Bill Howell about the crimes that that he
Speaker 10: had been alleged to have committed, and not in any
Speaker 10: way interfering with any future litigation in her proceedings. I know,
Speaker 10: I certainly didn't want to be subpoena to the stand
Speaker 10: by the prosecution someday at trial as the woman who
Speaker 10: brought Howell down. So I was only too happy to
Speaker 10: promise them that I would not ask Bill Howell anything
Speaker 10: about these crimes until he was ready to talk about
Speaker 10: it and legal resolution had taken place. Because you know,
Speaker 10: as an attorney as well, I'm passionate about the Constitution,
Speaker 10: and no matter how heinous the crimes, I believed it
Speaker 10: was important as an attorney that this man get a
Speaker 10: fair trial and that I not interfere in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 9: When did you get the go ahead to be able
Speaker 9: to write this book, at least in terms of permission
Speaker 9: from him, Not that that's what you needed.
Speaker 10: But Howell had always, right from the first letter he
Speaker 10: wrote me, understood that I was writing a book and
Speaker 10: that I.
Speaker 3: Was free to relay to the readers.
Speaker 10: Anything that he shared with me in his letters or
Speaker 10: in our face to face visits or phone calls. So
Speaker 10: I got to go ahead from him right away. I
Speaker 10: knew that I wouldn't have a good book unless he
Speaker 10: either confessed to me eventually or went to trial and
Speaker 10: the truth came out at trial. So I knew I
Speaker 10: had a weight on my hands, and so did he.
Speaker 10: But at all times he understood that everything he told
Speaker 10: me I could disclose publicly at a future date in
Speaker 10: my book. I did not. I always suspected, based on
Speaker 10: little things he would say that he was headed in
Speaker 10: the direction of pleading guilty. Right from the first few
Speaker 10: months we would talk, he would reference the possibility of
Speaker 10: just being done with this by pleading guilty. Not that
Speaker 10: he was guilty, he would say, but just wanting this
Speaker 10: to be over with. It wasn't until the spring of
Speaker 10: twenty and seventeen, in about April, during our jailhouse visits,
Speaker 10: where he started to talk to me about the fact
Speaker 10: that he and his attorneys were headed towards the plea
Speaker 10: deal with the prosecution, which wasn't much of a plea
Speaker 10: deal at all. It was he would get three hundred
Speaker 10: and sixty years the maximum sentence for sixty years for
Speaker 10: each of his remaining six victims.
Speaker 3: So I knew in.
Speaker 10: April twenty seventeen he would plead guilty. He promised me
Speaker 10: that once he pled guilty, he would tell me everything.
Speaker 10: I did not know if he was going to lie
Speaker 10: to me and let me down and just say, well,
Speaker 10: I just took the plea deal, but actually I'm innocent. Well,
Speaker 10: that would be awful if he did that. But in fact,
Speaker 10: he was true to his word and he did tell
Speaker 10: me everything. So as soon as he confessed everything to
Speaker 10: me during the months of September through December of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: I furiously wrote it down.
Speaker 10: I wrote one third of the book in just really
Speaker 10: like three months. I wrote that final confession section as
Speaker 10: quickly as possible and then sent it off to the publisher,
Speaker 10: but not before sending him the manuscript for his review.
Speaker 9: And what was his review?
Speaker 10: He hated it.
Speaker 3: He hated it.
Speaker 10: He felt betrayed. He felt absolutely betrayed. He felt, and
Speaker 10: I state this in the book, and I stayed a
Speaker 10: lot about this in the footnotes of the book where
Speaker 10: I give his response to parts of the book, that
Speaker 10: he felt like I stabbed him in the back, he
Speaker 10: felt like I duped him, I conned him, that he
Speaker 10: was naive that when we met, he was meeting a friendly,
Speaker 10: smiling woman who was very nice to him, and when
Speaker 10: he read the final manuscript, I don't. I mean, I'm
Speaker 10: to this day, I'm still baffled about what did he
Speaker 10: expect me to write. You know, he's a serial killer,
Speaker 10: He's done despicable things, He's caused enormous suffering. How on
Speaker 10: earth did he think I was going to portray portray him?
Speaker 10: But you know, and and I think, in fact, a
Speaker 10: lot of the criticism you know I get from people
Speaker 10: who have yet to read the book, is why you
Speaker 10: be nice to this guy? So, you know, if anything,
Speaker 10: you know, I thought, I thought I was kind of
Speaker 10: nice to him over the course of the last three
Speaker 10: years and in how I handled him in the book
Speaker 10: and my portrayal of him. But he felt very differently.
Speaker 10: He felt like I depicted him as a monster, that
Speaker 10: I was afraid of.
Speaker 3: That you know.
Speaker 10: That that I was phony in our interactions. And I
Speaker 10: think he felt betrayed by my narrative voice, because when
Speaker 10: we talk it is in a very friendly way, and
Speaker 10: my narrative voice in the book, especially in the last
Speaker 10: confession section, is is rather stern. And and and I'm
Speaker 10: disgusted by what he did, and I'm I'm heartbroken by
Speaker 10: what I what I see he's put the victims' family
Speaker 10: through because I've met with these people, I've looked at them,
Speaker 10: I've you know, I've seen their pain, and and so
Speaker 10: that contributes to my my stern kind of tone of
Speaker 10: voice in the last section of the book. And I
Speaker 10: think he he did not expect that I would do that.
Speaker 9: You also talk about the include when we're speaking about that,
Speaker 9: that he had a very viewed. Pardon me a skewed
Speaker 9: viewpoint about certain things, like he would complain about you
Speaker 9: talk about, complain about small things, and yet not seem
Speaker 9: to be cognizant of the bigger picture where he's a
Speaker 9: killer of seven people. Maybe you can explain.
Speaker 10: Exactly exactly I think he is in profound denial to
Speaker 10: this day about what he's done. You know, in one exchange,
Speaker 10: you know, he said, you know, it's just I feel
Speaker 10: like you see me as a monster. And I said, Bill,
Speaker 10: what you did was monstrous, and how could I not
Speaker 10: see this way? How could I not see you as
Speaker 10: a beast? And he said to me, you know, I
Speaker 10: guess the strange thing is that you, along with others,
Speaker 10: see me as a monster, whereas I still can't get
Speaker 10: my mind around that I'm a monster. I still can't
Speaker 10: get my mind around that I'm.
Speaker 3: A serial killer.
Speaker 10: And I think he still refuses to accept the level
Speaker 10: of mental sickness that he has that brought about these crimes.
Speaker 3: When he told me.
Speaker 10: That when he was engaged in these twelve hour periods
Speaker 10: of rape and torture, that he felt like he was
Speaker 10: in a movie and he was the bad guy acting
Speaker 10: out a part I think that was really telling that.
Speaker 10: I think he had told me that he started fantasizing
Speaker 10: about raping prostitutes in his early twenties while in prison
Speaker 10: in Virginia, and I think while he was doing it,
Speaker 10: he was in a fantasy state of mind, highly disassociated
Speaker 10: from reality. And to this day, I almost think like
Speaker 10: he has not embraced the reality of that he actually
Speaker 10: did these things. It's still almost like something compartmentalized in
Speaker 10: his mind. He tells me that he never dreams about
Speaker 10: the victims. He doesn't think about the victims. He doesn't
Speaker 10: dream about them, which is so strange to me because
Speaker 10: I have dreamt about the victims and had nightmares about
Speaker 10: what he's done, and yet he's the killer and he
Speaker 10: hasn't had any nightmares or dreams about it. So I
Speaker 10: think he shut it out of his head. And he
Speaker 10: tells me that he still can't believe that he's a
Speaker 10: serial killer. He almost has a victim mentality, like how
Speaker 10: did this come upon me?
Speaker 9: Yes? Incredible, And I want to name these victims, and
Speaker 9: I'm missing one victim here, but Nilsa Aris Mendy, Melanie
Speaker 9: Ruth Camalini, Marilyn Gonzales, Diane Cusack, Danny Wistnett, Joe Ellen Martinez,
Speaker 9: and one more victim.
Speaker 10: M hmm. So we have Melanie Cammerini, Marilyn Gonzalez, Danni Wissnet,
Speaker 10: Nielsa Eiris Mendy, Uh, Mary Jane Menard? Is that the one?
Speaker 10: Diane Cusack and and uh Jobling Martinez And you know,
Speaker 10: the two that really strike.
Speaker 3: In my mind would be Melanie Cammerini.
Speaker 10: The first because her sister. For the Inside the Mind
Speaker 10: of a Serial Killer show on Netflix that's going to
Speaker 10: air next season, we had Melanie Cammerini's sister interviewed for
Speaker 10: that show, and she shared on that show information about
Speaker 10: her sister, one of Howell's victims, and and she's a
Speaker 10: strikingly beautiful woman. She looked like Natalie Wood, you know.
Speaker 10: And and then the other victim that really touches me
Speaker 10: in terms of I've gotten to know so much of
Speaker 10: her backstory was Mary Jane Menard, who was herself a
Speaker 10: substance abuse counselor before she engaged in heroin.
Speaker 9: Right with this as well, what is the what do
Speaker 9: you think? I mean we talk about the motive for this,
Speaker 9: what do you think overall? His motive was for murder?
Speaker 3: I think his motive.
Speaker 10: Was a desperate need for power, that he had no
Speaker 10: power in his life. I remember about a year and
Speaker 10: a half into getting to know him, when I was
Speaker 10: still just absolutely at a loss for why this kind, friendly,
Speaker 10: southern guy I was getting to know would do such
Speaker 10: terrible things. I were sitting out on my screened in
Speaker 10: porch for an entire afternoon, and by then I had
Speaker 10: around two hundred pages of letters from him, and just
Speaker 10: reading letter after a letter, and when I put it
Speaker 10: down because and I was looking for what was written
Speaker 10: in between.
Speaker 3: The lines, why did he do this?
Speaker 10: And I closed it, and I remember that's when it
Speaker 10: came to me the overall theme in all of his
Speaker 10: letters up until then was powerlessness. That whether it was
Speaker 10: as a high school dropout with no skills, as a
Speaker 10: man whose both parents died, he had no money, he
Speaker 10: had no social status. The mother of his children, who
Speaker 10: he loved, his high school sweetheart, took the two little
Speaker 10: babies out of state and married another man, and he
Speaker 10: could never see them again because he was always in
Speaker 10: trouble with the law. So if he went to see them,
Speaker 10: she would report him to the probation office. So he
Speaker 10: couldn't see his children, and then he was chronically incarcerated,
Speaker 10: starting at the age of sixteen through his entire twenties
Speaker 10: and early thirties simply for driving without a license. That's
Speaker 10: the only reason for those incarcerations. It's hard to believe,
Speaker 10: but he had no violent offenses or felonies. It was
Speaker 10: just as an habitual offender. All of that incarceration. I
Speaker 10: think that state of powerlessness built a rage within him,
Speaker 10: and he channeled all of that in those twelve hour periods.
Speaker 10: Because he told me that during those twelve hour periods,
Speaker 10: he felt this incredible adrenaline buzz, this rush of chemicals
Speaker 10: and excitement during the commission of his crimes. It was
Speaker 10: as if he was on crack cocaine. That's how it
Speaker 10: was affecting his reign to have that power over his victims.
Speaker 10: And one person, I believe it was one of his
Speaker 10: defense attorneys, asked me, you know.
Speaker 3: How do you think he.
Speaker 10: Oh a detect? Do you think he killed them alone?
Speaker 10: Because some of these women were pretty big, healthy women.
Speaker 10: Neil Fayre's many, for example, was a very strong, muscular woman.
Speaker 10: Or Danny Wisner, he was a man, and he was
Speaker 10: a tall, lanky man. But these were not weak people.
Speaker 10: So how did he overcome them and strangle them? Because
Speaker 10: he's about five ten and he's a big, hefty guy.
Speaker 10: Now he's put on a lot of weight since he's
Speaker 10: been in prison. But you know, I've thought about it.
Speaker 10: It was that rush of power. I think it also
Speaker 10: gave him a kind of inhuman strength when he overcame
Speaker 10: them in the final moments of their life.
Speaker 9: Yeah, very very interesting. I want to thank you very
Speaker 9: much and Kay Howard for coming on and talking about
Speaker 9: his garden Conversations with a serial Killer. It's been fascinating.
Speaker 9: Could you also remind us of the Netflix upcoming Netflix
Speaker 9: special that you're talking about and also your blog sure Kinetics.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, a production company, first Look Productions, came to Connecticut
Speaker 10: in May and we filmed for two shows that air
Speaker 10: on Netflix. The first that will air will be a
Speaker 10: new show that this production company has coming out called
Speaker 10: twenty first Century Serial Killers that's going to air at
Speaker 10: the end of twenty eighteen. The producer is going to
Speaker 10: give me the link to that show.
Speaker 3: I've actually already watched it, he sent me by email.
Speaker 3: The show the rough draft.
Speaker 10: It's really quite good. So he's agreed that when the
Speaker 10: draft is all polished, and hopefully in a few months
Speaker 10: from now, I will be able to post that link
Speaker 10: on my Serial Murders in Connecticut Facebook page if your
Speaker 10: listeners were to go to my blog, which is entitled
Speaker 10: Serial Murders in Connecticut, So if you just search that
Speaker 10: with Ian K. Howard, you're going to find my blog.
Speaker 10: And then with the blog, there's a little icon for Facebook.
Speaker 10: So if they were to press the Facebook icon and
Speaker 10: like the Serial Murders Facebook page, then when that twenty
Speaker 10: first century show comes out, I will provide that link
Speaker 10: for previewing months before the show airs on Netflix, just
Speaker 10: for my Serial Murders and Connecticut Facebook followers. But what
Speaker 10: fascinates me about that show, of course, is that it's
Speaker 10: about what is it about this killer that makes his
Speaker 10: crimes unique to our era, and of course with how
Speaker 10: it's the heroin epidemic, it allowed these women to become prey,
Speaker 10: made them vulnerable to a serial killer. And the second
Speaker 10: show is the second show would be Inside the Mind
Speaker 10: of a Serial Killer for season two, so some of
Speaker 10: that footage will be used for the Inside the Mind
Speaker 10: show to air later in twenty nineteen. Also, if your
Speaker 10: listeners were interested in going to the Crime Watch Daily
Speaker 10: TV show website, they featured interviews with me and I
Speaker 10: worked with producers for the content of that show that
Speaker 10: aired about this new Brent serial killer back on January fifth,
Speaker 10: twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: So I think they could still find that Crime Watch.
Speaker 10: Daily Show easily at the on their website or online
Speaker 10: as well. Well.
Speaker 9: That's great. I want to thank you very much and
Speaker 9: Kay Howard for this. It's been polarly fascinating and it's
Speaker 9: sent out take news that people can get to hear
Speaker 9: even more information surrounding this and other serial killers in Connecticut.
Speaker 9: I want to thank you very much. You have a
Speaker 9: great evening, and thank.
Speaker 10: You to talk again. Okay, take care, great evening, go
Speaker 10: bye bye.