Speaker 1: In a deserted, swampy patch of woodland in New Britain, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, the scattered remains of several
Speaker 1: women were discovered.
Speaker 2: I have never had a case where ahead seven possible
Speaker 2: victims at one crime scene.
Speaker 1: For ten long years, detectives worked to discover who the
Speaker 1: victims were and who'd killed them.
Speaker 3: After the bones were found, I think it was clear
Speaker 3: that there was a serial killer.
Speaker 1: The investigations zoned in on a battered blue van belonging
Speaker 1: to local gardener William Devin Howell.
Speaker 4: And they just started to pick that vana part fiber
Speaker 4: by fiber, droplet by droplet.
Speaker 5: It is a positive gold mine, a treasure trove of DNA,
Speaker 5: of all manner of clues.
Speaker 1: When the true nature of Howell's crimes were revealed, they
Speaker 1: were breathtaking in their brutality.
Speaker 6: Physical violence, strangulation, probably some of the most violent behavior
Speaker 6: that I've ever handled as a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Fourteen years after the first innocent victim was snatched from
Speaker 1: the street, William Devin Howell was finally confirmed as one
Speaker 1: of the world's most evil killers in twenty seventeen, a
Speaker 1: case that had gripped and horrified a quiet corner of
Speaker 1: New England concluded with one of Connecticut's most prolific serial killers,
Speaker 1: forty seven year old William Devin Howell, being locked away
Speaker 1: for life. But when the story began fourteen years earlier,
Speaker 1: it had gone largely unnoticed.
Speaker 3: The media hadn't really covered it very much. No one
Speaker 3: had really put together that we had of his missing women.
Speaker 7: If she was a drug taker with addictions, if she
Speaker 7: was a sex worker, it's not unusual for them to
Speaker 7: go missing and not be reported for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: When stories of the missing women's fate were finally told,
Speaker 1: it exposed a dark underbelly many in this leafy part
Speaker 1: of Connecticut did not know existed.
Speaker 6: Central Connecticut was more of a manufacturing area back in
Speaker 6: the thirties, forties, fifties, and over time drugs has infiltrated
Speaker 6: those areas and with drugs as prostitution.
Speaker 1: But above all, the story showed the world that truly
Speaker 1: monstrous people are sometimes able to hide in plain sight.
Speaker 6: Bill Howe is one of those individuals that was convicted
Speaker 6: of committing horrific acts of violence, and yet he's a
Speaker 6: likable man that you think about and you say, how
Speaker 6: could he have done this?
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins on the eleventh of February nineteen seventy.
Speaker 6: He grew up in a New News, Virginia, which is
Speaker 6: a population of about two hundred thousand people.
Speaker 5: His mother was fourteen his father was forty five when
Speaker 5: Howe came along.
Speaker 1: William Devin Howell, known as Bill, was the youngest of
Speaker 1: four children. Despite a stable childhood, in his late teens,
Speaker 1: Howell began to take the wrong path.
Speaker 6: He went to school, he dropped out of school.
Speaker 5: Towards the end of his adolescence, Bill Howell drifted into
Speaker 5: drugs and he then got drawn into petty crime.
Speaker 6: He had some motor vehicle violations that ultimately caused his
Speaker 6: license to be suspended, and it became a vicious cycle.
Speaker 6: He continued driving, kept getting arrested, and it resulted in
Speaker 6: jail time.
Speaker 1: By his mid twenties, Howell had collected convictions for drink driving, forgery,
Speaker 1: reckless driving, and public drunkenness. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: age thirty one years old, he left Virginia.
Speaker 6: He met a woman and she was from Connecticut, and
Speaker 6: he ended up coming to Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Moving in with his girlfriend, Dorothy in New Britain, William
Speaker 1: Howell took on of a near respectability.
Speaker 7: Howell appeared to be quite settled. He had a relationship
Speaker 7: a girlfriend, He had a job.
Speaker 3: He had this landscaping business that he seemed to be
Speaker 3: doing okay with.
Speaker 6: He cut people's lawns. It was not the kind of
Speaker 6: lawnmowing service that you see landscapers and affluent communities, just
Speaker 6: a small twenty two inch one more And it was
Speaker 6: in the more urban areas of older people that stayed
Speaker 6: in those communities. They and they hired him, and they
Speaker 6: said he was very nice, reliable. He'd come on a
Speaker 6: weekly basis.
Speaker 5: He had a dark blue nineteen eighty five for Dy
Speaker 5: color Line van, pretty smashed up. It had plywood over
Speaker 5: some of the windows. He had on the side quality
Speaker 5: lownwork called Devin and his cell phone.
Speaker 1: But criminality was never far away. In two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Howell picked up more convictions for minor offenses. By this time,
Speaker 1: he was a frequent visitor to the Berlin Turnpike area,
Speaker 1: a ten minute drive from the home he shared with Dorothy.
Speaker 4: The Berlin Turnpike has met many commercial establishments, restaurants, hotels, hotels,
Speaker 4: different shopping centers, well.
Speaker 6: Le Brulin Turnpike was one of the main roads that
Speaker 6: used to go between New York and Boston, so there
Speaker 6: were a lot of little hotels, and over time those
Speaker 6: hotels stopped being used by conventional travelers and end up
Speaker 6: being used by hookers and john's and more nefarious type
Speaker 6: of activity.
Speaker 1: William Devin Howell was drawn to the area where drugs
Speaker 1: and prostitution went hand in hand.
Speaker 6: Many people who are females who are drug addicts, they
Speaker 6: end up prostituting themselves in order to get the money,
Speaker 6: and mister Howell was able to get some drugs and
Speaker 6: party with these women.
Speaker 1: In April two thousand and three, a young woman was
Speaker 1: reported missing from a town some twenty five miles from
Speaker 1: the Berlin Turnpike.
Speaker 4: Melanie Ruth Cameline issues from Seymour, Connecticut. She went missing
Speaker 4: from the city of Waterbury. She was the mother of
Speaker 4: two dearly loved by her family.
Speaker 1: When twenty nine year old Melanie's mother reported her missing
Speaker 1: to Waterbury police, she hadn't seen her daughter for several months.
Speaker 4: WATERBURYPD was taken point on and the missing person report
Speaker 4: terrific investigators.
Speaker 1: Despite an investigation, there were no leads into Melanie's disappearance.
Speaker 1: A month later, there was another missing person's report in
Speaker 1: the same town.
Speaker 5: Marilyn Gonzalez was twenty six. She too was a mother
Speaker 5: of two.
Speaker 1: Last scene on the fifteenth of May two than three,
Speaker 1: Marilyn was reported missing by her mother. A few days later.
Speaker 4: Her loved ones or just frantically trying to what happened
Speaker 4: to her.
Speaker 1: On the twenty fourth of June, another desperate mother went
Speaker 1: to the police, this time in New Britain.
Speaker 4: Janice Roberts is a transgender woman. She was in her
Speaker 4: forties at the time. Her family thought that she went
Speaker 4: to New York City and possibly ran into some trouble
Speaker 4: down there. They just didn't know.
Speaker 1: No one knew if the missing women had chosen to
Speaker 1: leave the area or if something more sinister had befallen them.
Speaker 7: Even when all of these women were reported missing, they
Speaker 7: weren't linked by the police. Things are made more complicated
Speaker 7: when people go missing from different police jurisdictions because they
Speaker 7: don't necessarily always share that information. They won't be looking
Speaker 7: at the missing personal lists from neighboring jurisdictions.
Speaker 1: By the summer of two thousand and three, three women
Speaker 1: were missing from towns in the Berlin Turnpike area. There
Speaker 1: was no uproar, no panic. Women weren't safe on the streets,
Speaker 1: but they had no idea. In July two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: thirty three year old William Devin Howell was living with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend in New Britain, Connecticut. On the thirty first
Speaker 1: of July, the mother and sister of thirty three year
Speaker 1: old Nilsa Arismendi walked into Weathersfield Police department nine miles
Speaker 1: away and reported that they hadn't seen Nilsa for almost
Speaker 1: a week.
Speaker 5: Nielsa Arasmendi had an on and off relationship with her
Speaker 5: childhood sweetheart, was always known as Ace, and they were
Speaker 5: living in a motel in New Britain.
Speaker 6: She was a drug user, might have engaged a some
Speaker 6: prostitution or so.
Speaker 7: She had quite a stable life actually, so her disappearance
Speaker 7: was flagged up as this is out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: Vanilsa, Nilsa's boyfriend, as a convicted drug dealer, was first
Speaker 1: on the list of people to question, insisting he had
Speaker 1: no idea what had happened to Nilsa. Ace passed a
Speaker 1: polygraph test. Worried sick about his girlfriend's disappearance, Ace was
Speaker 1: desperate to help.
Speaker 4: He gave the police all the information he had.
Speaker 1: Ace told detectives about the last time he'd seen Nilsa.
Speaker 1: It was late at night after the couple had been
Speaker 1: hanging out with a man they knew only as Devin.
Speaker 3: Nilsa, her boyfriend and this guy were doing drugs in
Speaker 3: a parking lot at a supermarket in Weathersfield. After that,
Speaker 3: and her boyfriend saw her get into this weird looking
Speaker 3: van that was partly blue, partly black and had wood
Speaker 3: boards where the side windows should have been.
Speaker 1: It was the first solid lead into working out what
Speaker 1: had happened to Nilson.
Speaker 6: The blue van became a target of the Weathersfield Police
Speaker 6: Department's investigation.
Speaker 1: The name Devin and the description of a van where
Speaker 1: all police had to go on in the search for Nilsa.
Speaker 1: But two months later, a sharp eyed patrol officer spotted
Speaker 1: the vehicle in Weathersfield.
Speaker 5: So they traced the van. The van is traced back
Speaker 5: The owner is Dorothy Holcombe.
Speaker 6: And that's when they went to as Holcombe's residents trying
Speaker 6: to interview her.
Speaker 1: Police records showed a man had been living at Dorothy's address,
Speaker 1: one with an outstanding warrant for an assault on his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: His name was William Devin Howell.
Speaker 5: When the police arrived to talk to Dorothy, she said, oh, well,
Speaker 5: Bill has the van and most of the time it's
Speaker 5: just registered my name.
Speaker 6: He tried to dodge the interviews and she kind of
Speaker 6: protected him from the police. You know, they'd come in
Speaker 6: the front door to go out the back door type
Speaker 6: of thing.
Speaker 1: Detectives were desperate to interview the man last scene with Milsa,
Speaker 1: but he kept evading them. Meanwhile, they turned their focus
Speaker 1: on the van Miltsa had climbed into the night she disappeared.
Speaker 6: They got a search warrant for the vehicle, but.
Speaker 1: When they returned in November to seize the battered blue van,
Speaker 1: neither Howell nor the vehicle were anywhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: In January two thousand and four, Weathersfield police finally caught
Speaker 1: up with William Devin Howell. The gardener denied any involvement
Speaker 1: in Nilsa Alice Mendi's disappearance, and his van, which they
Speaker 1: hoped might hold some clues, was still nowhere to be found.
Speaker 3: Parlor problem was they didn't have her body. They didn't
Speaker 3: know what happened to her. She could have taken off
Speaker 3: no one knew that she was dead. At that point.
Speaker 1: With no van, no evidence, and nothing to tie him
Speaker 1: to Nilsa beyond the word of her boyfriend, detectives had
Speaker 1: no choice but to let Howell go. Weeks later, another
Speaker 1: young woman was reported missing by her family.
Speaker 5: Joy Veleen, also known as Joy Martinez. She's twenty four.
Speaker 5: Joiveleen was a popular girl at school. She was a
Speaker 5: track star.
Speaker 1: Born into a large and loving family. Somewhere between her
Speaker 1: late teens and early twenties, Joyveleen had fallen into drugs.
Speaker 1: She'd last been seen in October two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: She doesn't appear for her birthday, which mother finds quite strange,
Speaker 5: and then she doesn't appear at Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: On the twenty ninth of March two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Joy's mother reported her missing to police in East Hartford.
Speaker 1: Two days later, in Weathersfield, the team who were searching
Speaker 1: for Nilsa Aris Mendy finally had some luck. Six hundred
Speaker 1: miles away from Connecticut.
Speaker 6: They've found the vehicle in North Carolina, the blue van.
Speaker 6: They then got a search warrant and then they have
Speaker 6: the van towed back.
Speaker 1: The van had been hidden on a property belonging to
Speaker 1: one of Howell's associates, eight months after Nilsa Aris Mendy vanished,
Speaker 1: would it hold any clues about what had happened to her?
Speaker 5: The crime scene investigation is are let loose. On the
Speaker 5: Fordy icon Line van.
Speaker 6: They noticed that the back seat the cushions had been replaced,
Speaker 6: and they ended up pulling those cushions back, and then
Speaker 6: they found what they believed was blood and then reddish
Speaker 6: brown stains on the carpeting.
Speaker 1: This disturbing find suggested that someone had lost a large
Speaker 1: amount of blood in the back of the battered work van.
Speaker 1: The question was who.
Speaker 2: The police department submitted a piece of the car seatback
Speaker 2: and a piece of the carpet from the van to
Speaker 2: the laboratory.
Speaker 1: Forensic science examiner Kristen Maydell was part of the team
Speaker 1: at the State Forensic Lab tasked with analyzing the stains
Speaker 1: on the upholstery. The first set of tests confirmed the
Speaker 1: stains were in fact human blood. The next step was
Speaker 1: to find out who the blood had belonged to. When
Speaker 1: the results came back, there was a shock.
Speaker 2: From the initial testing of those two samples. They were
Speaker 2: two different DNA profiles.
Speaker 1: It appeared that at least two people had come to
Speaker 1: harm in Howell's Van, as is common in missing persons
Speaker 1: cases in the US. Nilsa aris Mendi's mother had given
Speaker 1: the police a DNA sample when her daughter disappeared.
Speaker 2: DNA gets passed from parent to childs where you get
Speaker 2: half your nuclear DNA from your mother and half your
Speaker 2: nuclear DNA from your father.
Speaker 1: If human remains were found, the authorities would be able
Speaker 1: to say if the victim was likely to be a
Speaker 1: close relative of Nilsa's mother. For Nils's family, there was
Speaker 1: a match.
Speaker 2: The mother of the missing person did match the DNA
Speaker 2: profile from the van.
Speaker 1: It was an important breakthrough for the case, but a
Speaker 1: body blow for Nilsa's anxiously waiting family.
Speaker 4: The medical examiner said she couldn't have survived that much
Speaker 4: blood loss.
Speaker 1: It seems certain that Nilsa aris Mendi was dead. Police
Speaker 1: had no idea who the second DNA profile belonged to.
Speaker 1: With more questions and answers about what had happened in
Speaker 1: Howell's Van, investigators needed to tread carefully.
Speaker 5: It takes a long time for the prosecutors to be
Speaker 5: absolutely sure that they can charge how with Nielsa's killing.
Speaker 5: Blood in the van, opportunity, the fact that they had
Speaker 5: seen her getting into the van, but the difficulty this
Speaker 5: is nobody.
Speaker 1: On the fourteenth of May two thousand and five, William
Speaker 1: Devin Howell was arrested in connection with Nilsa Alice Mendi's death.
Speaker 1: Three days later, he was charged with her murder. But
Speaker 1: the police knew getting a conviction would be tough.
Speaker 3: The problem was they didn't know what happened to her.
Speaker 3: They knew something bad happened in the man, but there
Speaker 3: was no weapon, There was no trace of the body.
Speaker 1: Howell was reminded in custody until his trial. For now
Speaker 1: a suspected killer was off the streets, but would it
Speaker 1: be for good. Almost four years after Nilsa Alice men
Speaker 1: and his disappearance, thirty six year old William Devin Howell
Speaker 1: stood in the dock at New Britain Superior Court in Connecticut.
Speaker 5: On the twenty fourth of January two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5: William Devin Howell stands trial for the murder of Nielsa Arismendi.
Speaker 5: The DNA evidence is produced, witnesses, including Ace, are produced.
Speaker 1: Howell's defense was that it was her boyfriend Ace who'd
Speaker 1: detacked Milsa arguing the couple had fought in the back
Speaker 1: of the van. The prosecution highlighted the amount of blood
Speaker 1: spilled in the van and the fact that Nilsa hadn't
Speaker 1: been seen since that night. On the fifth day of
Speaker 1: the trial, Howell changed his plea.
Speaker 7: He did a plea bargain and he used something called
Speaker 7: the Alford plea.
Speaker 6: What the Alfred doctrine stands for is you'd say, I
Speaker 6: understand if I got a trial, there was a significant
Speaker 6: chance I'll be convicted and face harsher punishments. So in
Speaker 6: order to avoid that, I'm going to plead guilty, even
Speaker 6: though I'm not admitting my guilt.
Speaker 1: On the thirtieth of January, Howell pleaded guilty to first
Speaker 1: degree manslaughter, still refusing to give any information about what
Speaker 1: had happened to Nilsa alis Mendy, all where her remains
Speaker 1: could be found. Howell was jailed for fifteen years. Just
Speaker 1: months later, on the twentieth of August two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: local police got a phone call that had the potential
Speaker 1: to shed light on Niels's fate.
Speaker 4: The Umbritan Police Department got a call from a resident
Speaker 4: who was walking through some woods off of Hartford Road
Speaker 4: in New Britain, and he said he found what he
Speaker 4: thought were human remains. I was a lieutenant in the
Speaker 4: bureau at that point, so we responded, we canvass a scene.
Speaker 6: That area is very commercial. It was like a little
Speaker 6: strip mall, and in the back is a little parking area,
Speaker 6: and right below that is a steep drop off, and
Speaker 6: then there's a wooded area.
Speaker 4: It's really not a place you would easily walk through
Speaker 4: because of the brier, some of the wildlife that's there
Speaker 4: or completely swampy. It gets goes underwater quite a bit.
Speaker 4: It's not where someone would want to walk and go
Speaker 4: have a picnic.
Speaker 1: More offices were brought in to search the densely wooded area.
Speaker 4: Found a few more remains that evening and into the
Speaker 4: next day, and that when we discovered it wasn't remains
Speaker 4: of one person, but it was remains of two phoenix.
Speaker 1: Confirming that they had found the partial remains of two
Speaker 1: adult women, The state Medical Examiner gave an estimat as
Speaker 1: to how long the scattered bones had laid there.
Speaker 4: Give us a very wide range with the carryat is
Speaker 4: depends on whether depends on the animal activity. So we
Speaker 4: knew they were one hundred years old. We knew that
Speaker 4: they were a year old.
Speaker 1: A couple of days later, a third partial skeleton was recovered.
Speaker 1: There was nothing with the bodies to identify them, but
Speaker 1: one conclusion seemed inevitable. The women had all likely been murdered,
Speaker 1: and almost certainly by the same assail.
Speaker 4: We're certainly working on the strong possibility that we had
Speaker 4: a serial killer.
Speaker 1: With William Devin Howell's conviction fresh in the minds of
Speaker 1: local law enforcement, the question on everyone's lips was could
Speaker 1: any of the bodies be Nilsa Aris Mendes. The State
Speaker 1: forensic Lab was brought in once again.
Speaker 2: They submitted a sample from the three different possible bodies
Speaker 2: for us to do DNA testing on.
Speaker 1: DNA profiles were developed from the bones, but when they
Speaker 1: were run through the DNA database, there was more disappointment
Speaker 1: for Nilsa's family.
Speaker 4: We did try to make a connection with Nilsa, but
Speaker 4: there were no matches eric.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were no matches in the system for
Speaker 1: any of the women. Without knowing who they were investigating
Speaker 1: the women's deaths would prove difficult.
Speaker 7: If you don't know who the person is that has
Speaker 7: been killed, it's near on impossible to identify your suspects.
Speaker 7: There's always a motive for every murder. You're never going
Speaker 7: to find out what that motive is unless you identify
Speaker 7: the body.
Speaker 1: New Britain police threw themselves into working out who the women.
Speaker 4: Were, looking at unsolved missing persons reports and just try
Speaker 4: to chase them all down. The FBI down in quantico
Speaker 4: operator services to create an approximation of tour or victims.
Speaker 4: You would put it in the newspapers, gave it to
Speaker 4: the media.
Speaker 1: It was a slow and frustrating process, and as James
Speaker 1: Wardwell and his team worked to identify the victims, they
Speaker 1: couldn't shake the suspicion there might be more bodies lying
Speaker 1: in the woods.
Speaker 4: Never stopped believing there was more in there, still believed
Speaker 4: in our heart of hearts, Nilsa was in there, still
Speaker 4: believing that there might be more victims.
Speaker 1: Were police on the right track. Was William Devin Howell
Speaker 1: in fact a serial killer with Nilsa just one of
Speaker 1: his victims.
Speaker 4: We certainly were keeping all options open because we don't
Speaker 4: know yet, but that was definitely a working theory that
Speaker 4: there was a connection, and Nilsa was also connected to
Speaker 4: our say.
Speaker 1: In December twenty ten, New Britain PD got their first
Speaker 1: breakthrough when a woman called, introducing herself as the sister
Speaker 1: in law of New Britain residents Diane Cusack. She'd seen
Speaker 1: the photo in the papers of the facial reconstruction of
Speaker 1: one of the unidentified women.
Speaker 4: She said, by the face show looks like Diane. The
Speaker 4: hair's wrong, but the face looked white.
Speaker 3: Diane Cusack alone in New Britain. I don't think she
Speaker 3: really was in contact with her family. She wasn't reported
Speaker 3: missing right away.
Speaker 4: So we were ultimately able to make that connection through
Speaker 4: DANEL records and DNA and made our first positive idea.
Speaker 4: I remember going sitting down at their kitchen table ensuring
Speaker 4: that news with them. I know it brought them pain,
Speaker 4: but I could see it also brought them some relief.
Speaker 4: I remember it like yesterday, that part, because it's a
Speaker 4: company deserves what happened to her.
Speaker 1: The tragedy for Diane Cusack and her family was nonetheless
Speaker 1: an important step forward in the investigation.
Speaker 4: Really started opening everything because then we could start retracing
Speaker 4: her steps, placing her in places.
Speaker 1: Fifty three year old Diane hadn't been seen since July
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. She'd lived in the same neighborhood
Speaker 1: as William Devin Howell, and the police believed they may
Speaker 1: have crossed paths, but there was no proof or evidence
Speaker 1: to link Diane to Howl. The mistigation went cold until
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6: Connecticut State's Attorney's Office has a cold case unit, and
Speaker 6: they put a task force together.
Speaker 1: DNA from the remains in the woods was resubmitted to
Speaker 1: the state forensics lab, and in September twenty thirteen, there
Speaker 1: was another positive ID.
Speaker 4: Joy Veleen Martinez. She was actually the first remains that
Speaker 4: were found that first day in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: The breakthrough also provided crucial evidence that William Howell had
Speaker 1: killed more than once. The second person's blood found along
Speaker 1: with Nils's in the back of Howell's van, was proven
Speaker 1: to be twenty three year old Joy Vialene's. The case
Speaker 1: was building, but detectives suspected there was much they still
Speaker 1: did not know. In twenty fourteen, they tried something new.
Speaker 3: One of the things that State's Attorney's Cold case squad
Speaker 3: did was make playing cards or unsolved homicides that they
Speaker 3: distributed in all the prisons.
Speaker 4: The free for the inmates to use and be as asked.
Speaker 4: If anyone has information, please call to spark conversations.
Speaker 1: One inmate couldn't believe the hand he'd been dealt. William
Speaker 1: Devin Howell, who was a decade into his sentence for
Speaker 1: the manslaughter of Nilsa Aris Mendi, was about to blow
Speaker 1: the investigation wide open. At Connecticut's Cheshire Correctional Institution in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, forty five year old William Devin Howell opened
Speaker 1: up to his cellmate Jonathan Mills, revealing what had really
Speaker 1: happened to Nilsa Alice Mendy twelve years earlier. Around three
Speaker 1: am that night in July two thousand and three, Nilsa
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend, who sometimes took drugs with Howell, met
Speaker 1: him in a supermarket car park.
Speaker 5: Ace's Neilsa climb into Bill Howell's GARB blue Fordiconline van
Speaker 5: and drive off.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Nilsa entered Howell's van, he attacked her, punching
Speaker 1: her in the face, causing her nose to bleed heavily.
Speaker 1: He then grabbed her round the throat.
Speaker 5: She is strangled and she is dumped behind the shopping.
Speaker 1: Mount But Nilsa had not been his first victim.
Speaker 5: He tells Mills that I didn't just kill Nielsa, I
Speaker 5: killed six other people as well.
Speaker 1: Howell told Mills his first victim early in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three had been Melanie Ruth Camerini. Howell had raped
Speaker 1: and strangled her in the back of his van.
Speaker 3: It was too cold to bury her body, and so
Speaker 3: he literally drove around with her body in the van
Speaker 3: for several weeks.
Speaker 5: He used to sleep next to her, calling her his baby.
Speaker 3: And he cut off her fingertips and tore off the
Speaker 3: bottom of her jaw to take her bottom teeth out,
Speaker 3: and put him in a garbage bag and threw him
Speaker 3: in a dumpster. He told Mills that once he had
Speaker 3: killed the first woman, that was like a cross on
Speaker 3: the rubicon, and became easier after that, and he perfected
Speaker 3: his method, and I think Howie put it.
Speaker 1: Over the next ten months, William Devin Howell had targeted
Speaker 1: women on the fringes of society.
Speaker 3: Also, all these focused around drugs, whether Howell was providing
Speaker 3: them or people they were getting in his van, because
Speaker 3: they were into drugged women.
Speaker 1: Once in the back of the vehicle that Howell called
Speaker 1: his murder mobile, the women were brutally attacked.
Speaker 6: There was a lot of violence, physical violence, strangulation, hitting
Speaker 6: them with objects a hammer for instance.
Speaker 3: She controlled these women. He was a big guy.
Speaker 1: With his second victim, twenty six year old Marilyn Gonzales,
Speaker 1: restrained through the night in the back of his van,
Speaker 1: Howell drove around the local area.
Speaker 3: We actually went to drive through to buy her a
Speaker 3: last meal. She ate the meal and raped her and
Speaker 3: killed her.
Speaker 1: Referring to himself as a sick ripper. In his disturbing
Speaker 1: confession to his cellmate, Howell also shed light on the
Speaker 1: fate of a woman who'd been reported listening in June
Speaker 1: two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: Howell said victim who picked up on the eighteenth of
Speaker 5: June two thousand and three was Janice Roberts, but actually
Speaker 5: she was transgender.
Speaker 6: While a sexual act was being performed, as how realized
Speaker 6: it was a trans person doing it, which caused him
Speaker 6: become very angry.
Speaker 1: Howell strangled forty four year old Janice to death. After
Speaker 1: the orgy of violence, how dispose of his victims' bodies.
Speaker 3: Howell told them about what he called his garden, and
Speaker 3: Mills realized what he was talking about was where he
Speaker 3: buried victims.
Speaker 4: The victims were just discardens, like objects and not as
Speaker 4: people like yesterday's rubbish, just awful.
Speaker 1: Howell told Mills that after Melanie, Marilyn and Janice, he'd
Speaker 1: murdered Diane Cusack. The next victim was Nilsa Aris Mendi,
Speaker 1: followed by joy Veline Martinez. Then Howell confessed to a
Speaker 1: final victim from October two thousand and three, a forty
Speaker 1: year old woman from Waterbury who'd never been reported missing.
Speaker 5: Mary Jane Maynard, went out of my cigarettes and I
Speaker 5: suspect she just encountered how who was often driving around
Speaker 5: the area, possibly looking for victims. Mary Jane's daughter was
Speaker 5: serving overseas at the time, so nobody noticed that Mary
Speaker 5: Jane had gone missing.
Speaker 1: Mary's partial remains were amongst those found in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, and had finally been identified in September twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: One of the tragedies of Mary Jane Maynard is that
Speaker 5: although she'd had a substance abuse problem, she turned her
Speaker 5: life around, and she in fact become a counselor, making
Speaker 5: her death all the more tragic and all the more cruel.
Speaker 1: Having heard William Howell's horrifying story, Jonathan Mills hoped it
Speaker 1: might gain him some good will with the authorities.
Speaker 6: Mister Mills contacted his lawyer. Lawyer contacted the prosecutors.
Speaker 1: Howell had boasted of six murders in addition to Nils's deay.
Speaker 1: The problem for the police was that they only had
Speaker 1: three bodies, all of them had been identified, and none
Speaker 1: of them were Nilson. Incredibly, Jonathan Mills had the information
Speaker 1: the police needed.
Speaker 3: He showed him this map at what he believed where
Speaker 3: Howell's garden was. Howell had described like there were electrical
Speaker 3: wires and telephone paws and certain things in the air
Speaker 3: where he had buried there.
Speaker 5: Between April Maine twenty fifteen, twelve years after the killings,
Speaker 5: they returned to the.
Speaker 4: Swamp with the assistance of this amazing cadabrodog. Within days
Speaker 4: we had found the burial sites of Aliva victims.
Speaker 2: They found an additional four different human remains.
Speaker 1: Once again, the State Forensics Lab played a crucial role.
Speaker 2: So they submitted a sampling from each of the four
Speaker 2: different bodies in order to try and determine who they were.
Speaker 2: By doing DNA testing on those bones, DNA profiles were developed.
Speaker 6: They tracked down family members got their DNAs and then
Speaker 6: compared those DNAs to the bones that were recovered, and
Speaker 6: they were able to identify the individuals.
Speaker 1: By June twenty fifteen, the bodies had been identified as
Speaker 1: Janice Roberts, Melanie Ruth Camerini, Marilyn Gonzales, and the one victim,
Speaker 1: Howell had been convicted of killing, Nilsa alis Mendy. After
Speaker 1: more than a decade, the families of the women were
Speaker 1: learning of their fate.
Speaker 4: They we free answers, praying that these were not the
Speaker 4: answers they were going to get. You couldn't change what
Speaker 4: was done, but we couldn't change the way and their
Speaker 4: loved ones were treated from then on out, and that
Speaker 4: justices brought for them.
Speaker 1: But to get justice, detectives needed to build a case
Speaker 1: against William Devin Howell, the only suspect in the six murders.
Speaker 1: They believed the key to the case was Howell's battered
Speaker 1: blue work.
Speaker 4: Van, so we got search warrant, got the van that
Speaker 4: was held in storage by the Weathersfield Police Department, so
Speaker 4: it was still just sitting there like as in a
Speaker 4: time capsule. We brought in the state Police evidence technicians
Speaker 4: because their skill level is just tremendous, and they just
Speaker 4: started to pick that vana part fiber by fiber, drop
Speaker 4: by droppler.
Speaker 2: Police submitted a whole bunch more evidence from le van
Speaker 2: that consisted of cigarette butts, hairs, hairbrush.
Speaker 1: There was a rock that appeared to have blood on it,
Speaker 1: as well as six graphic homemade videotapes.
Speaker 2: There was over two hundred pieces of evidence obmitted from
Speaker 2: the van at this point.
Speaker 1: The results of the DNA analysis were damning. Blood, hair
Speaker 1: and other traces were found in the back of the
Speaker 1: van that matched with six of the seven victims.
Speaker 5: In September twenty fifteen, Howel is charged with the six murders.
Speaker 1: For the next two years, the police and prosecution prepared
Speaker 1: their case against Howell.
Speaker 4: We wanted convict, We wanted absolutely whoever was responsible for
Speaker 4: what happened to these ladies to be brought to justice.
Speaker 4: We wanted to make sure every tea was crossed, every
Speaker 4: eye was dotted, so it was meticulous work.
Speaker 1: William Petzols was appointed as Howell's defense attorney, faced with
Speaker 1: the mammoth task of defending Howell against the prosecution's claims.
Speaker 6: So they put the case together and it was a
Speaker 6: mountain of evidence. It was, in my opinion, an insurmountable
Speaker 6: mountain to overcome.
Speaker 1: Presented with the evidence against him, Howell and his attorney
Speaker 1: came to a decision.
Speaker 4: He ultimately pled guilty and was sentenced to three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty years. Families were emotional, certainly some belief that
Speaker 4: justice is being served, but anger to sadness. No matter what,
Speaker 4: none of what the court system was going to do
Speaker 4: was going to bring their loved ones back.
Speaker 1: Forty seven year old Howell's statement at the sentencing hearing
Speaker 1: at New Britain Superior Court was the first time any
Speaker 1: of the families had heard him speak.
Speaker 7: He started to cry and he said, I'm going to
Speaker 7: stay in prison. I'm not a well man. I'm going
Speaker 7: to die a slow, painful death. In no way was
Speaker 7: he actually trying to give any comfort to the victims' families.
Speaker 4: So he was thinking of himself. You know, we were
Speaker 4: sitting with the families. Maybe some thought should have him
Speaker 4: for them. That's not where he went.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of Howell's comments to his cellmate had
Speaker 1: betrayed his true feelings about the seven victims.
Speaker 7: Howell said that his victims should have known that they
Speaker 7: were going to die, you know, just because of the
Speaker 7: kind of lives that they led.
Speaker 4: He didn't think of these beautiful people as people. This
Speaker 4: is my take on it.
Speaker 1: In a ten month killing spree across two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Howell abducted, brutalized, and killed seven women in the van
Speaker 1: he callously called his murder mobile, before dumping their bodies
Speaker 1: where he hoped they'd never be found. His victims loved
Speaker 1: ones waited fourteen years for justice, but when it finally came,
Speaker 1: they were left with no doubt that William Devin Howell
Speaker 1: is one of the world's most evil killers.