Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - William Devin Howell

Transcript

Serial Killer Documentary - William Devin Howell · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:07
Speaker 1: In a deserted, swampy patch of woodland in New Britain,
0:11
Speaker 1: Connecticut in 2007, the scattered remains of several women were discovered.
0:20
Speaker 2: I have never had a case where I had seven
0:23
Speaker 2: possible victims at one crime scene.
0:27
Speaker 1: For ten long years, detectives worked to discover who the
0:31
Speaker 1: victims were and who'd killed them.
0:35
Speaker 3: After the bones were found, I think it was clear
0:38
Speaker 3: that there was a serial killer.
0:41
Speaker 1: The investigation zoned in on a battered blue van belonging
0:46
Speaker 1: to local gardener William Devin Howell.
0:52
Speaker 4: And they just started to pick that van apart, fibre
0:55
Speaker 4: by fibre, droplet by droplet.
1:01
Speaker 5: It is a positive goldmine, a treasure trove of DNA....
1:06
Speaker 4: All manner of clues.
1:10
Speaker 1: When the true nature of Howell's crimes were revealed, they
1:14
Speaker 1: were breathtaking in their brutality.
1:19
Speaker 6: Physical violence, strangulation, probably some of the most violent behavior
1:24
Speaker 6: that I've ever handled as a lawyer.
1:29
Speaker 1: 14 years after the first innocent victim was snatched from
1:33
Speaker 1: the street, William Devon Howell was finally confirmed as one
1:38
Speaker 1: of the world's most evil killers. In 2017, a case
2:08
Speaker 1: that had gripped and horrified a quiet corner of New
2:11
Speaker 1: England concluded with one of Connecticut's most prolific serial killers,
2:16
Speaker 1: 47-year-old William Devin Howell, being locked away for life. But
2:24
Speaker 1: when the story began 14 years earlier, it had gone
2:28
Speaker 1: largely unnoticed.
2:30
Speaker 3: The media hadn't really covered it very much. No one
2:33
Speaker 3: had really put together anything that we had all these
2:35
Speaker 3: missing women.
2:38
Speaker 7: If she was a drug taker with addictions, if she
2:42
Speaker 7: was a sex worker, it's not unusual for them to
2:48
Speaker 7: go missing and not be reported for quite a long time.
2:53
Speaker 1: When stories of the missing women's fate were finally told,
2:57
Speaker 1: it exposed a dark underbelly that many in this leafy
3:01
Speaker 1: part of Connecticut did not know existed.
3:05
Speaker 6: Central Connecticut was more of a manufacturing area back in
3:10
Speaker 6: the 30s, 40s, 50s. And over time, drugs has infiltrated
3:16
Speaker 6: those areas, and with drugs as prostitution.
3:20
Speaker 1: But above all, the story showed the world that truly
3:24
Speaker 1: monstrous people are sometimes able to hide in plain sight.
3:29
Speaker 6: Bill Howell is one of those individuals that was convicted
3:32
Speaker 6: of committing crimes horrific acts of violence. And yet, he's
3:37
Speaker 6: a likable man that you think about and you say,
3:43
Speaker 6: how could he have done this?
3:52
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins on the 11th of February, 1970.
3:56
Speaker 1: He grew up.
3:59
Speaker 8: In Newport News, Virginia.
4:02
Speaker 6: Which is a population of about 200,000 people.
4:08
Speaker 5: His mother was 40 and his father was 45 when
4:11
Speaker 5: Howell came along.
4:14
Speaker 1: William Devin Howell, known as Bill, was the youngest of
4:19
Speaker 1: four children. Despite a stable childhood, in his late teens,
4:27
Speaker 1: Howell began to take the wrong path.
4:30
Speaker 8: He went to school, he dropped out of school.
4:34
Speaker 5: Towards the end of his adolescence, Bill Howell drifted into
4:40
Speaker 5: drugs and he then got drawn into petty crime.
4:45
Speaker 6: He had some motor vehicle violations that ultimately caused his
4:50
Speaker 6: licence to be suspended and it became a vicious cycle.
4:55
Speaker 6: He continued driving, kept getting arrested and it resulted in
4:59
Speaker 6: jail time.
5:03
Speaker 1: By his mid-20s, Howell had collected convictions for drink driving, forgery,
5:09
Speaker 1: reckless driving, and public drunkenness. In 2001, aged 31 years old,
5:24
Speaker 1: he left Virginia.
5:26
Speaker 8: He met a woman, and she was from Connecticut, and
5:28
Speaker 8: he ended up coming to Connecticut.
5:31
Speaker 1: Moving in with his girlfriend, Dorothy, in New Britain, William
5:35
Speaker 1: Howell took on a veneer of respectability.
5:39
Speaker 7: Howell appeared to be quite settled. He had a relationship,
5:43
Speaker 7: a girlfriend. He had a job.
5:48
Speaker 3: He had this landscaping business that he seemed to be
5:50
Speaker 3: doing okay with.
5:55
Speaker 8: He cut people's lawns.
5:56
Speaker 6: It was not the kind of lawn mowing service that
5:59
Speaker 6: you see landscapers and affluent communities, just a small 22-inch lawnmower.
6:05
Speaker 6: And it was in the more urban areas of older
6:09
Speaker 6: people that stayed in those communities, and they hired him.
6:13
Speaker 6: And they said he was very nice, reliable. He'd come
6:16
Speaker 6: on a weekly basis.
6:20
Speaker 5: He had a dark blue 1985 Ford Econoline van. It
6:23
Speaker 5: was pretty smashed up. It had plywood over some of
6:25
Speaker 5: the windows. He had on the side quality lawn work,
6:28
Speaker 5: called Devin and his cell phone.
6:31
Speaker 1: But criminality was never far away. In 2002, Howell picked
6:37
Speaker 1: up more convictions for minor offenses. By this time, he
6:47
Speaker 1: was a frequent visitor to the Berlin Turnpike area, a
6:53
Speaker 1: 10-minute drive from the home he shared with Dorothy.
6:58
Speaker 4: The Berlin Turnpike has many, many commercial establishments, restaurants, hotels, motels,
7:05
Speaker 4: different shopping centres.
7:09
Speaker 6: The Bruin Turnpike was one of the main roads that
7:13
Speaker 6: used to go between New York and Boston, so there
7:16
Speaker 6: were a lot of little hotels, and over time, those
7:18
Speaker 6: hotels stopped being used by conventional travellers and ended up
7:23
Speaker 6: being used by hookers and johns and more nefarious type
7:28
Speaker 6: of activity.
7:31
Speaker 1: William Devon Howell was drawn to the area where drugs
7:35
Speaker 1: and prostitution went hand in hand.
7:40
Speaker 6: Many people who are females who are drug addicts, they
7:43
Speaker 6: ended up prostituting themselves in order to get the money,
7:46
Speaker 6: and Mr Howell was able to get some drugs and
7:49
Speaker 6: party with these women.
7:56
Speaker 1: In April 2003, a young woman was reported missing from
7:59
Speaker 1: a town some 25 miles from the Berlin Turnpike.
8:08
Speaker 4: Melanie Ruth Cannellini, she was from Seymour, Connecticut. She went
8:12
Speaker 4: missing from the city of Waterbury. She was the mother
8:15
Speaker 4: of two, dearly loved by her family.
8:19
Speaker 1: When 29-year-old Melanie's mother reported her missing to Waterbury police,
8:25
Speaker 1: she hadn't seen her daughter for several months.
8:29
Speaker 4: Waterbury PD was taking point on it in the missing
8:32
Speaker 4: person report. Terrific investigators.
8:36
Speaker 1: Despite an investigation, there were no leads into Melanie's disappearance.
8:43
Speaker 1: A month later, there was another missing persons report in
8:47
Speaker 1: the same town.
8:51
Speaker 5: Marilyn Gonzalez was 26. She, too, was a mother of two.
8:57
Speaker 1: Last seen on the 15th of May, 2003, Marilyn was
8:59
Speaker 1: reported missing by her mother a few days later.
9:07
Speaker 4: Her loved ones were just frantically trying to find out
9:10
Speaker 4: what happened to her.
9:19
Speaker 1: On the 24th of June, another desperate mother went to
9:23
Speaker 1: the police, this time in New Britain.
9:29
Speaker 4: Janice Roberts is a transgender woman. She was in her
9:33
Speaker 4: 40s at the time. Her family thought that she went
9:37
Speaker 4: to New York City and possibly ran into some trouble
9:40
Speaker 4: down there. They just didn't know.
9:44
Speaker 1: No one knew if the missing women had chosen to
9:47
Speaker 1: leave the area or if something more sinister had befallen them.
9:53
Speaker 7: Even when all of these women were reported missing, they
9:57
Speaker 7: weren't linked by the... police. Things are made more complicated
10:03
Speaker 7: when people go missing from different police jurisdictions because they
10:07
Speaker 7: don't necessarily always share that information. They won't be looking
10:12
Speaker 7: at the missing person lists from neighboring jurisdictions.
10:22
Speaker 1: By the summer of 2003, three women were missing from
10:26
Speaker 1: towns in the Berlin Turnpike area. There was no uproar,
10:31
Speaker 1: no panic. Women weren't safe on the streets, but they
10:36
Speaker 1: had no idea. In July 2003, 33-year-old William Devin Howell
10:55
Speaker 1: was living with his girlfriend in New Britain, Connecticut. On
11:02
Speaker 1: the 31st of July, the mother and sister of 33-year-old
11:07
Speaker 1: Nilsa Arizmendi walked into Wethersfield Police Department nine miles away
11:13
Speaker 1: and reported that they hadn't seen Nilsa for almost a week.
11:20
Speaker 5: Nilsa Arizmendi had an on-and-off relationship with her childhood sweetheart,
11:25
Speaker 5: who was always known as Ace, and they were living
11:27
Speaker 5: in a motel in New Britain.
11:31
Speaker 6: She was a drug user, might have engaged in some
11:33
Speaker 6: prostitution also.
11:37
Speaker 7: She had quite a stable life, actually, so her disappearance
11:42
Speaker 7: was flagged up as, this is out of the ordinary
11:45
Speaker 7: for Nilsa.
11:50
Speaker 1: Nilsa's boyfriend, Ace, a convicted drug dealer, was first on
11:54
Speaker 1: the list of people to question. Insisting he had no
12:00
Speaker 1: idea what had happened to Nilsa, Ace passed a polygraph test.
12:05
Speaker 1: Worried sick about his girlfriend's disappearance, Ace was desperate to help.
12:13
Speaker 4: He gave the police all the information he had.
12:18
Speaker 1: Ace told detectives about the last time he'd seen Nilsa.
12:22
Speaker 1: It was late at night, after the couple had been
12:25
Speaker 1: hanging out with a man they knew only as Devin.
12:30
Speaker 3: Nilsa, her boyfriend, and this guy were doing drugs in
12:33
Speaker 3: a parking lot at a supermarket in Wethersfield. After that,
12:37
Speaker 3: her boyfriend saw her get into this weird-looking van that
12:41
Speaker 3: was partly blue, partly black, and had wood boards where
12:46
Speaker 3: the side windows should.
12:48
Speaker 8: Have been.
12:50
Speaker 1: It was the first solid lead into working out what
12:54
Speaker 1: had happened to Nilsa.
12:57
Speaker 6: The blue van became a target of the Wethersfield Police
13:01
Speaker 6: Department's investigation.
13:05
Speaker 1: The name Devin and the description of a van were
13:08
Speaker 1: all police had to go on in the search for Nilsa.
13:13
Speaker 1: But two months later, a sharp-eyed patrol officer spotted the
13:18
Speaker 1: vehicle in Wethersfield. So they trace the van. The van
13:29
Speaker 1: is traced back.
13:30
Speaker 5: The owner is Dorothy Holcomb.
13:34
Speaker 6: And that's when they went to Miss Holcomb's residence trying
13:37
Speaker 6: to interview her.
13:40
Speaker 1: Police records showed a man had been living at Dorothy's address,
13:46
Speaker 1: one with an outstanding warrant for an assault on his girlfriend.
13:51
Speaker 1: His name was William Devin Howell.
13:56
Speaker 5: When the police arrived to talk to Dorothy, she said, oh, well,
13:59
Speaker 5: Bill has the van most of the time.
14:01
Speaker 4: It's just registered my name.
14:04
Speaker 6: He tried to dodge the interviews, and she kind of
14:07
Speaker 6: protected him from the police. You know, they'd come in
14:10
Speaker 6: the front door, he'd go out the back door type
14:12
Speaker 6: of thing.
14:13
Speaker 1: Detectives were desperate to interview the man last seen with Nilsa,
14:18
Speaker 1: but he kept evading them. Meanwhile, they turned their focus
14:22
Speaker 1: on the van Nilsa had climbed into the night she disappeared.
14:27
Speaker 8: They got a search warrant for the vehicle.
14:31
Speaker 1: But when they returned in November to seize the battered
14:35
Speaker 1: blue van, neither Howell nor the vehicle were anywhere to
14:40
Speaker 1: be seen. In January 2004, Weathersfield police finally caught up
14:47
Speaker 1: with William Devin Howell. The gardener denied any involvement in
14:53
Speaker 1: Nilsa Arismendi's disappearance. and his van, which they hoped might
14:58
Speaker 1: hold some clues, was still nowhere to be found.
15:04
Speaker 3: Part of the problem was they didn't have her body.
15:06
Speaker 3: They didn't know what happened to her. She could have
15:08
Speaker 3: taken off. No one knew that she was dead at
15:10
Speaker 3: that point.
15:13
Speaker 1: With no van, no evidence, and nothing to tie him
15:17
Speaker 1: to Nilsa beyond the word of her boyfriend, detectives had
15:22
Speaker 1: no choice but to let Howell go. Weeks later, another
15:33
Speaker 1: young woman was reported missing by her family.
15:37
Speaker 5: Joy Valene, also known as Joy Martinez, she's 24. Joy
15:42
Speaker 5: Valene was a popular girl at school.
15:45
Speaker 1: She was a track star. Born into a large and
15:48
Speaker 1: loving family, somewhere between her late teens and early 20s,
15:53
Speaker 1: Joy Valene had fallen into drugs. she'd last been seen
16:00
Speaker 1: in October 2003.
16:01
Speaker 5: She doesn't appear for her birthday, which her mother finds
16:06
Speaker 5: quite strange, and then she doesn't appear at Thanksgiving.
16:11
Speaker 1: On the 29th of March 2004, Joy's mother reported her
16:17
Speaker 1: missing to police in East Hertford. Two days later, in Wethersfield,
16:23
Speaker 1: the team who were searching for Nilsa Arismendi finally had
16:27
Speaker 1: some luck, 600 miles away from Connecticut.
16:37
Speaker 6: They found the vehicle in North Carolina, the blue van.
16:41
Speaker 6: They then got a search warrant, and then they have
16:43
Speaker 6: the van towed back.
16:46
Speaker 1: The van had been hidden on a property belonging to
16:49
Speaker 1: one of Howell's associates. Eight months after Nilsa Alice Mendy vanished,
16:54
Speaker 1: would it hold any clues about what had happened to her?
16:58
Speaker 5: The crime scene investigators are let loose on the Ford
17:03
Speaker 5: Econline van.
17:06
Speaker 6: They noticed that the back seat, the cushions had been
17:09
Speaker 6: replaced and they ended up pulling those cushions back and
17:14
Speaker 6: then they found what they believed was blood and then
17:17
Speaker 6: reddish brown stains on the carpeting.
17:20
Speaker 1: This disturbing find suggested that someone had lost a large
17:25
Speaker 1: amount of blood in the back of the battered work van.
17:28
Speaker 1: The question was, who?
17:31
Speaker 2: The police department submitted a piece of the car seat
17:34
Speaker 2: back and a piece of the carpet from the van
17:37
Speaker 2: to the laboratory.
17:40
Speaker 1: Forensic science examiner Kristen Maydell was part of the team
17:44
Speaker 1: at the state forensic lab tasked with analyzing the stains
17:49
Speaker 1: on the upholstery. The first set of tests confirmed the
17:55
Speaker 1: stains were, in fact, human blood. The next step was
18:00
Speaker 1: to find out who the blood had belonged to. When
18:04
Speaker 1: the results came back, there was a shock.
18:08
Speaker 2: From the initial testing of those two samples, they were
18:11
Speaker 2: two different DNA profiles.
18:18
Speaker 1: It appeared that at least two people had come to
18:21
Speaker 1: harm in Howell's van. As is common in missing persons
18:26
Speaker 1: cases in the US, Nilsa Arizmendi's mother had given the
18:30
Speaker 1: police a DNA sample when her daughter disappeared.
18:35
Speaker 2: DNA gets passed from parent to child, where you get
18:37
Speaker 2: half your nuclear DNA from your mother and half your
18:39
Speaker 2: nuclear DNA from your father.
18:43
Speaker 1: If human remains were found, the authorities would be able
18:47
Speaker 1: to say if the victim was likely to be a
18:50
Speaker 1: close relative of Nilsa's mother. Sadly for Nilsa's family, there
19:02
Speaker 1: was a match.
19:05
Speaker 2: The mother of the missing person did match the DNA
19:09
Speaker 2: profile from the van.
19:12
Speaker 1: It was an important breakthrough for the case, but a
19:16
Speaker 1: body blow for Nilsa's anxiously waiting family.
19:21
Speaker 4: The medical examiner said she couldn't have survived that much
19:25
Speaker 4: blood loss.
19:27
Speaker 1: It seems certain that Nilsa Arismendi was dead. Police had
19:33
Speaker 1: no idea who the second DNA profile belonged to. With
19:37
Speaker 1: more questions than answers about what had happened in Howell's van,
19:44
Speaker 1: investigators needed to tread carefully.
19:51
Speaker 5: It takes a long time for the prosecutors to be
19:53
Speaker 5: absolutely sure that they can charge Howell with Nilsa's killing.
19:59
Speaker 5: Blood in the van, opportunity, the fact that Ace had
20:03
Speaker 5: seen her getting.
20:03
Speaker 4: Into the van.
20:05
Speaker 8: But the difficulty.
20:06
Speaker 4: This is no body.
20:09
Speaker 1: On the 14th of May, 2005, William Devin Howell was
20:14
Speaker 1: arrested in connection with Nilsa Arismendi's death. Three days later,
20:20
Speaker 1: he was charged with her murder. But the police knew
20:24
Speaker 1: getting a conviction would be tough.
20:29
Speaker 8: The problem was they didn't know what happened to her.
20:32
Speaker 3: They knew something bad happened in the man, but there
20:34
Speaker 3: was no weapon, there was no trace of the body.
20:41
Speaker 1: Howell was remanded in custody until his trial. For now,
20:46
Speaker 1: a suspected killer was off the streets. But would it
20:50
Speaker 1: be for good? Almost four years after Nilsa Alice Mendes' disappearance,
21:01
Speaker 1: 36-year-old William Devon Howell stood in the dock at New
21:05
Speaker 1: Britain's Superior Court in Connecticut.
21:09
Speaker 5: On the 24th of January, 2007, William Devon Howell stands
21:14
Speaker 5: trial for the murder of Nilsa Arizmendi. The DNA evidence
21:20
Speaker 5: is produced. Witnesses, including Ace, are produced.
21:24
Speaker 1: Howell's defense was that it was her boyfriend, Ace, who'd
21:28
Speaker 1: attacked Nilsa. arguing the couple had fought in the back
21:33
Speaker 1: of the van. The prosecution highlighted the amount of blood
21:37
Speaker 1: spilled in the van and the fact that Nilsa hadn't
21:40
Speaker 1: been seen since that night. On the fifth day of
21:45
Speaker 1: the trial, Howell changed his plea.
21:49
Speaker 7: He did a plea bargain, and he used something called
21:52
Speaker 7: the Alford plea.
21:55
Speaker 6: What the Alford doctrine stands for is you'd say, I
21:58
Speaker 6: understand if I go to trial, there's a significant chance
22:02
Speaker 6: I'll be convicted and face harsher punishment. So in order
22:08
Speaker 6: to avoid that, I'm going to plead guilty, even though
22:11
Speaker 6: I'm not admitting my guilt.
22:19
Speaker 1: On the 30th of January, Howell pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter.
22:25
Speaker 1: still refusing to give any information about what had happened
22:28
Speaker 1: to Nilsa Arismendi or where her remains could be found,
22:33
Speaker 1: Howell was jailed for 15 years. Just months later, on
22:43
Speaker 1: the 20th of August, 2007, local police got a phone
22:48
Speaker 1: call that had the potential to shed light on Nilsa's fate.
22:54
Speaker 4: The New Britain Police Department got a call from a
22:57
Speaker 4: resident who was walking through some woods off of Hartford
23:01
Speaker 4: Road in New Britain. And he said he found what
23:04
Speaker 4: he thought were human remains. I was a lieutenant in
23:07
Speaker 4: the bureau at that point. So we responded. We canvassed
23:11
Speaker 4: the scene.
23:14
Speaker 6: That area is very commercial. It was like a little
23:17
Speaker 6: strip mall. And in the back is a little parking area.
23:22
Speaker 6: And right below that is a steep drop off. And
23:26
Speaker 6: then there's a wooded area.
23:32
Speaker 4: It's really not a place you would easily walk through
23:35
Speaker 4: because of the briar or some of the wildlife that's
23:38
Speaker 4: there or completely swampy. It goes underwater quite a bit.
23:44
Speaker 4: It's not where someone would want to walk and go
23:46
Speaker 4: have a picnic.
23:48
Speaker 1: More officers were brought in to search the densely wooded area.
23:59
Speaker 4: We found a few more remains that evening and into
24:03
Speaker 4: the next day. And that's when we discovered it wasn't
24:08
Speaker 4: the remains of one person, but it was the remains
24:10
Speaker 4: of two females.
24:12
Speaker 1: Confirming that they had found the partial remains of two
24:16
Speaker 1: adult women, the state medical examiner gave an estimate as
24:20
Speaker 1: to how long the scattered bones had laid there.
24:24
Speaker 4: He gave us a very wide range with the caveat
24:27
Speaker 4: is it depends on weather, it depends on animal activity.
24:31
Speaker 4: So we knew they weren't hundreds of years old. We
24:34
Speaker 4: knew that they weren't a year old.
24:39
Speaker 1: A couple of days later, a third partial skeleton was recovered.
24:46
Speaker 1: There was nothing with the bodies to identify them, but
24:50
Speaker 1: one conclusion seemed inevitable. The women had all likely been murdered,
24:56
Speaker 1: and almost certainly by the same assailant.
25:01
Speaker 4: We certainly were working on the strong possibility that we
25:05
Speaker 4: had a serial killer.
25:12
Speaker 1: With William Devin Howell's conviction fresh in the minds of
25:16
Speaker 1: local law enforcement, the question on everyone's lips was, could
25:22
Speaker 1: any of the bodies be Nilsa Aris Mendes? The state
25:27
Speaker 1: forensic lab was brought in once again.
25:32
Speaker 2: They submitted a sample from the three different possible bodies
25:35
Speaker 2: for us to do DNA testing on.
25:37
Speaker 1: DNA profiles were developed from the bones, but when they
25:42
Speaker 1: were run through the DNA database, there was more disappointment
25:47
Speaker 1: for Nilsa's family.
25:49
Speaker 4: We did try to make a connection with Nilsa, but
25:53
Speaker 4: there were no matches there.
25:56
Speaker 1: In fact, there were no matches in the system for
25:59
Speaker 1: any of the women. Without knowing who they were, investigating
26:05
Speaker 1: the women's deaths would prove difficult.
26:09
Speaker 7: If you don't know who the person is that has
26:13
Speaker 7: been killed, it's near on impossible to identify your suspects.
26:21
Speaker 1: There's always a.
26:22
Speaker 7: Motive for every murder. You're never gonna find out what
26:25
Speaker 7: that motive is unless you identify the body.
26:37
Speaker 1: New Britain police threw themselves into working out who the
26:41
Speaker 1: women were.
26:44
Speaker 4: Looking at unsolved missing persons reports and just try to
26:48
Speaker 4: chase them all down. The FBI down in Quantico offered
26:51
Speaker 4: their services to create an approximation of two of our victims.
26:56
Speaker 4: We put it in the newspapers, gave it to the media.
27:01
Speaker 1: It was a slow and frustrating process. And as James
27:06
Speaker 1: Wardwell and his team worked to identify the victims, they
27:10
Speaker 1: couldn't shake the suspicion there might be more bodies lying.
27:15
Speaker 8: In the woods.
27:17
Speaker 4: Never stopped believing there was more in there. Still believed
27:21
Speaker 4: in our hearts Nilsa was in there. Still believing that
27:24
Speaker 4: there might be more victims.
27:27
Speaker 1: Were police on the right track? Was William Devin Howell
27:32
Speaker 1: in fact a serial killer? with Nilsa just one of
27:36
Speaker 1: his victims?
27:37
Speaker 4: We certainly were keeping all options open because we don't
27:40
Speaker 4: know yet, but that was definitely a working theory that
27:45
Speaker 4: there was a connection, and Nilsa was also connected to
27:48
Speaker 4: our site.
28:02
Speaker 1: In December 2010, New Britain PD got their first breakthrough
28:08
Speaker 1: when a woman called, introducing herself as the sister-in-law of
28:12
Speaker 1: New Britain resident Diane Cusack. She'd seen the photo in
28:20
Speaker 1: the papers of the facial reconstruction of one of the
28:24
Speaker 1: unidentified women.
28:29
Speaker 4: She said, boy, the face sure looks like Diane. The
28:33
Speaker 4: hair's wrong, but the face looked right.
28:38
Speaker 3: Diane Cusack lived alone in New Britain. I don't think
28:42
Speaker 3: she really was in contact with her family. She wasn't
28:45
Speaker 3: reported missing right away.
28:48
Speaker 4: So we were ultimately able to make that connection through
28:51
Speaker 4: dental records and DNA and made our first positive ID.
29:00
Speaker 4: I remember going sitting down at their kitchen table and
29:02
Speaker 4: sharing that news with them. I know it brought them pain,
29:06
Speaker 4: but I could see it also brought them some relief.
29:09
Speaker 4: I remember it like yesterday, that part, because nobody deserves
29:14
Speaker 4: what happened to her.
29:20
Speaker 1: The tragedy for Diane Cusack and her family was nonetheless
29:24
Speaker 1: an important step forward in the investigation.
29:31
Speaker 4: Really started opening everything because then we could start retracing
29:34
Speaker 4: her steps, placing her in places.
29:36
Speaker 1: 53-year-old Diane hadn't been seen since July 2003. She'd lived
29:45
Speaker 1: in the same neighborhood as William Devin Howell, and the
29:49
Speaker 1: police believed they may have crossed paths. But there was
29:54
Speaker 1: no proof or evidence to link Diane to Howell. The
29:59
Speaker 1: investigation went cold until 2013.
30:11
Speaker 6: Connecticut State's Attorney's Office has a cold case unit and
30:15
Speaker 6: they put a task force together.
30:18
Speaker 1: DNA from the remains in the woods was resubmitted to
30:22
Speaker 1: the state forensics lab. And in September 2013, there was
30:28
Speaker 1: another positive ID.
30:31
Speaker 4: Joy Valim Martinez, she was actually the first remains that
30:35
Speaker 4: were found that first day in 2007.
30:39
Speaker 1: The breakthrough also provided crucial evidence that William Howell had
30:45
Speaker 1: killed more than once. The second person's blood, found along
30:50
Speaker 1: with Nilsa's in the back of Howell's van, was proven
30:53
Speaker 1: to be 23-year-old Joy Valines. The case was building, but
30:58
Speaker 1: detectives suspected there was much they still did not know.
31:03
Speaker 1: In 2014, they tried something new.
31:08
Speaker 3: One of the things that the two states' attorney's cold
31:09
Speaker 3: case squad did was make playing cards of unsolved homicides.
31:15
Speaker 3: that they distributed in all of the prisons.
31:21
Speaker 4: They're free for the inmates to use and just ask
31:24
Speaker 4: if anyone has information, please call to spark conversations.
31:30
Speaker 1: One inmate couldn't believe the hand he'd been dealt. William
31:37
Speaker 1: Devin Howell, who was a decade into his sentence for
31:40
Speaker 1: the manslaughter of Nilsa Arizmendi, was about to blow the
31:44
Speaker 1: investigation wide open. At Connecticut's Cheshire Correctional Institution in 2015,
31:59
Speaker 1: 45-year-old William Devin Howell opened up to his cellmate, Jonathan Mills,
32:06
Speaker 1: revealing what had really happened to Nilsa Arismendi 12 years earlier.
32:14
Speaker 1: Around 3am that night in July 2003, Nilsa and her boyfriend,
32:21
Speaker 1: who sometimes took drugs with Howell, met him in a
32:24
Speaker 1: supermarket car park.
32:27
Speaker 5: He sees Nilsa climb into Bill Howell's dark blue Ford
32:32
Speaker 5: Econoline van and drive off.
32:35
Speaker 1: Shortly after Nilsa entered Howell's van, he attacked her, punching
32:40
Speaker 1: her in the face, causing her nose to bleed heavily.
32:44
Speaker 1: He then grabbed her round the throat.
32:47
Speaker 5: She is strangled and she is dumped behind the shopping mall.
32:57
Speaker 1: But Nilsa had not been his first victim.
33:03
Speaker 4: He tells Mills.
33:05
Speaker 5: that I didn't just kill Nilsa, I killed six other
33:08
Speaker 5: people as well.
33:10
Speaker 1: Howell told Mills his first victim early in 2003 had
33:16
Speaker 1: been Melanie Ruth Camillini. Howell had raped and strangled her
33:23
Speaker 1: in the back of his van.
33:25
Speaker 3: It was too cold to bury her body, and so
33:29
Speaker 3: he literally drove around with her body in the van
33:32
Speaker 3: for several weeks.
33:35
Speaker 5: He used to sleep next to her, calling her his baby.
33:41
Speaker 3: And he cut off her fingertips and tore off the
33:45
Speaker 3: bottom of her jaw to take her bottom teeth out
33:49
Speaker 3: and put them in a garbage bag and.
33:51
Speaker 8: Threw them in a dumpster.
33:53
Speaker 3: He told Mills that once he had killed the first woman,
33:56
Speaker 3: that was like crossing the Rubicon, and it became easier
34:01
Speaker 3: after that, and he perfected his method, I think how
34:04
Speaker 3: he put it.
34:09
Speaker 1: Over the next 10 months, William Devin Howell had targeted
34:13
Speaker 1: women on the fringes of society.
34:18
Speaker 3: Most of all, he's focused around drugs, whether Howell was
34:22
Speaker 3: providing them or people, they were getting in his van
34:25
Speaker 3: because they were gonna do drugs with him.
34:27
Speaker 1: Once in the back of the vehicle that Howell called
34:30
Speaker 1: his murder mobile, the women were brutally attacked.
34:36
Speaker 6: There was a lot of violence, physical violence, strangulation, hitting
34:40
Speaker 6: them with objects, a hammer, for instance.
34:46
Speaker 8: He controlled these women. He was a big guy.
34:49
Speaker 1: With his second victim, 26-year-old Marilyn Gonzalez, restrained through the
34:54
Speaker 1: night in the back of his van, Howell drove around
34:58
Speaker 1: the local area.
35:00
Speaker 3: He actually went through a drive-thru to buy her her
35:02
Speaker 3: last meal. She ate the meal and he raped her
35:04
Speaker 3: and killed her.
35:10
Speaker 1: Referring to himself as a sick ripper in his disturbing
35:14
Speaker 1: confession to his cellmate, Howell also shed light on the
35:19
Speaker 1: fate of a woman who'd been reported missing in June 2003.
35:23
Speaker 1: Howell's third victim, who he picked up on the 18th
35:27
Speaker 1: of June 2003, was Janice Roberts.
35:31
Speaker 5: But actually, she was transgender.
35:36
Speaker 6: While a sexual act was being performed, Mr Howell realized
35:39
Speaker 6: it was a trans person doing it, which caused him
35:43
Speaker 6: to become very angry.
35:44
Speaker 1: Howell strangled 44-year-old Janice to death. After the orgy of violence,
35:59
Speaker 1: Howell would dispose of his victims' bodies.
36:03
Speaker 8: Howell told them about what he called his garden.
36:06
Speaker 3: And Mills realized what he was talking about was where
36:10
Speaker 3: he buried victims.
36:15
Speaker 4: The victims were just discarded like objects and not as people,
36:20
Speaker 4: like yesterday's rubbish, just awful.
36:25
Speaker 1: Howell told Mills that after Melanie, Marilyn, and Janice, he'd
36:30
Speaker 1: murdered Diane Cusack. The next victim was Nilsa Arizmendi, followed
36:38
Speaker 1: by Joyveline Martinez. Then Howell confessed to a final victim
36:43
Speaker 1: from October 2003, a 40-year-old woman from Waterbury who'd never
36:49
Speaker 1: been reported missing.
36:52
Speaker 5: Mary Jane Maynard went out to buy cigarettes, and I
36:55
Speaker 5: suspect she just encountered Howell, who was often driving around
36:59
Speaker 5: the area, possibly looking for victims. Mary Jane's daughter was
37:06
Speaker 5: serving overseas at the time, so nobody noticed that Mary
37:11
Speaker 5: Jane had gone missing.
37:13
Speaker 1: Mary's partial remains were amongst those found in 2007 and
37:19
Speaker 1: had finally been identified in September 2014.
37:23
Speaker 5: One of the tragedies of Mary Jane Maynard is that
37:29
Speaker 5: although she'd had a substance abuse problem, she'd turned her
37:32
Speaker 5: life around and she'd in fact become a counsellor making
37:34
Speaker 5: her death all the more tragic and all the more cruel.
37:40
Speaker 1: Having heard William Howell's horrifying story, Jonathan Mills hoped it
37:45
Speaker 1: might gain him some goodwill with the authorities.
37:49
Speaker 4: Mr.
37:49
Speaker 6: Mills contacted his lawyer. The lawyer contacted the prosecutors.
37:55
Speaker 1: Howell had boasted of six murders in addition to Nilsa's death.
38:01
Speaker 1: The problem for the police was that they only had
38:05
Speaker 1: three bodies. All of them had been identified, and none
38:09
Speaker 1: of them were Nilsa. Incredibly, Jonathan Mills had the information
38:17
Speaker 1: the police needed.
38:18
Speaker 3: He showed them this map of what he believed, Howell's
38:31
Speaker 3: garden was, Howell had described like there were electrical wires
38:35
Speaker 3: and telephone poles and certain.
38:37
Speaker 8: Things in the air where he had buried them.
38:42
Speaker 5: Between April and May 2015, 12 years after the killings,
38:47
Speaker 5: they returned to the swamp.
38:51
Speaker 4: With the assistance of this amazing cadaver dog, within days
38:55
Speaker 4: we had found the burial sites of all of our victims.
39:01
Speaker 2: They found an additional four different human remains.
39:06
Speaker 1: Once again, the state forensics lab played a crucial role.
39:11
Speaker 2: So they submitted a sampling from each of the four
39:13
Speaker 2: different bodies in order to try and determine who they
39:15
Speaker 2: were by doing DNA testing on those bones.
39:18
Speaker 7: DNA profiles were developed.
39:21
Speaker 6: They tracked down family members, got their DNAs, and then
39:25
Speaker 6: compared those DNAs to the bones that were recovered and
39:29
Speaker 6: then were able to identify the individuals.
39:33
Speaker 1: By June 2015, the bodies had been identified as Janice Roberts,
39:40
Speaker 1: Melanie Ruth Camolini, Marilyn Gonzalez, and the one victim Howell
39:47
Speaker 1: had been convicted of killing, Nilsa Arismendi. After more than
39:53
Speaker 1: a decade, the families of the women were learning of
39:57
Speaker 1: their fate.
39:59
Speaker 4: They were waiting for answers, praying that these were not
40:02
Speaker 4: the answers they were going to get. We couldn't change
40:05
Speaker 4: what was done, but we could change the way their
40:08
Speaker 4: loved ones were treated from then on out and that
40:11
Speaker 4: justice is brought for them.
40:14
Speaker 1: But to get justice, detectives needed to build a case
40:19
Speaker 1: against William Devin Howell, the only suspect in the six murders.
40:32
Speaker 1: They believed the key to the case was Howell's battered
40:36
Speaker 1: blue work van.
40:39
Speaker 4: So we got a search warrant. got the van that
40:42
Speaker 4: was held in storage by the Wethersfield Police Department. So
40:45
Speaker 4: it was still just sitting there like as if in
40:47
Speaker 4: a time capsule. We brought in the state police evidence
40:51
Speaker 4: technicians because their skill level is just tremendous. And they
40:56
Speaker 4: just started to pick that van apart fiber by fiber,
40:59
Speaker 4: droplet by droplet.
41:02
Speaker 2: They submitted a whole bunch more evidence from the van
41:05
Speaker 2: that consisted of cigarette butts, hairs, hairbrush, There.
41:12
Speaker 1: Was a rock that appeared to have blood on it,
41:17
Speaker 1: as well as six graphic homemade videotapes.
41:23
Speaker 2: There was over 200 pieces of evidence submitted from the
41:26
Speaker 2: van at this point.
41:28
Speaker 1: The results of the DNA analysis were damning. Blood, hair,
41:33
Speaker 1: and other traces were found in the back of the
41:36
Speaker 1: van that matched with six of the seven victims.
41:43
Speaker 5: In September 2015, Howell is charged with the six murders.
41:49
Speaker 1: For the next two years, the police and prosecution prepared
41:54
Speaker 1: their case against Howell.
41:59
Speaker 4: We wanted to convict. We wanted absolutely whoever was responsible
42:04
Speaker 4: for what happened to these ladies to be brought to justice.
42:08
Speaker 4: We wanted to make sure every T was crossed, every
42:11
Speaker 4: I was dotted, so it was meticulous work.
42:14
Speaker 1: William Petzold was appointed as Howell's defense attorney, faced with
42:19
Speaker 1: the mammoth task of defending Howell against the prosecution's claims.
42:27
Speaker 6: So they put the case together, and it was a
42:30
Speaker 6: mountain of evidence. It was, in my opinion, an insurmountable
42:34
Speaker 6: mountain to overcome.
42:36
Speaker 1: Presented with the evidence against him, Howell and his attorney
42:41
Speaker 1: came to a decision.
42:43
Speaker 4: He ultimately pled guilty and was sentenced to 360 years.
42:57
Speaker 4: Families were emotional. Certainly some belief that justice is being served,
43:02
Speaker 4: but anger too, sadness. No matter what, none of what
43:07
Speaker 4: the court system was gonna do was gonna bring their
43:10
Speaker 4: loved ones back.
43:14
Speaker 1: 47-year-old Howell's statement at the sentencing hearing at New Britain's
43:22
Speaker 1: Superior Court was the first time any of the families
43:26
Speaker 1: had heard him speak.
43:30
Speaker 7: He started to cry. And he said, I'm going to
43:33
Speaker 7: stay in prison. I'm not a well man. I'm going
43:37
Speaker 7: to die a slow, painful death. In no way was
43:41
Speaker 7: he actually trying to give any comfort to the victims' families.
43:49
Speaker 4: He was thinking of himself. You know, we were sitting
43:51
Speaker 4: with the families. Maybe some thoughts should have been for them.
43:58
Speaker 4: That's not where he went.
44:01
Speaker 1: In fact, one of Howell's comments to his cellmate had
44:05
Speaker 1: betrayed his true feelings about the seven victims.
44:11
Speaker 7: Howell said that his victims should have known that they
44:15
Speaker 7: were going to die, you know, just because of the
44:18
Speaker 7: kind of lives that they led.
44:22
Speaker 4: He didn't think of these beautiful people as people. This
44:27
Speaker 4: is my take on it.
44:32
Speaker 1: In a 10-month killing spree across 2003, Howell abducted, brutalized,
44:40
Speaker 1: and killed seven women in the van he callously called
44:44
Speaker 1: his murder mobile, before dumping their bodies where he hoped
44:49
Speaker 1: they'd never be found. His victims' loved ones waited 14
44:55
Speaker 1: years for justice, but when it finally came, they were
44:59
Speaker 1: left with no doubt that William Devon Howell is one
45:03
Speaker 1: of the world's most evil killers.