William Devin Howell was sentenced on November 17, 2017, to six consecutive life terms, 360 years in prison, for murders committed in central Connecticut in 2003. He had already been convicted of manslaughter in a seventh death, that of Nilsa Arizmendi of Wethersfield, whose blood had been found in the van he lived and worked out of. The Associated Press described him as the most prolific serial killer in Connecticut history, not counting mass shootings; his seven victims exceeded the number killed by Michael Ross, who was executed in the state in 2005.
The case took 14 years to close. The seven people disappeared within months of one another in 2003. Howell, then mowing lawns and doing odd jobs, was arrested in Virginia in 2005 and convicted in the Arizmendi case two years later, but her body had not been found. Partial remains of three women were discovered in New Britain in 2007, and remains of four more people were found at the same site in April 2015, after a multi-agency task force brought in an FBI search dog. In September 2015 he was charged in the six other deaths. Two years later he pleaded guilty.
Howell grew up in Hampton, Virginia, according to the Associated Press, and had two children there. He was in and out of jail for drug-related crimes, and his record included convictions for larceny and burglary in Virginia and arrests in Georgia and New Jersey. In 2015 the AP described him as five feet nine inches tall and 220 pounds, with a tattoo on one biceps. VICE reported in 2016 that he had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution in Florida in the early 1990s.
A nephew in Virginia, who spoke to the AP without giving his name, said Howell moved in with the family in the early 1990s, but the nephew's mother asked him to leave after a few weeks because he kept getting into trouble. Howell had strained his relationships with relatives before he moved north, the nephew said, though he kept writing to them from prison and at least one relative visited him. A childhood friend and former roommate in Hampton told the AP in 2015 that he had never seen Howell mistreat a woman and did not believe he was responsible for the killings.
By 2003 Howell was in central Connecticut, working as a handyman and doing yard work for homes and businesses in Wethersfield, Hartford, New Britain and West Hartford, according to FOX61. He drove a 1985 Ford Econoline van marked as a lawn service, with his phone number on it, the AP reported, and he lived out of it. Investigators later said that in prison he had called it his "murder mobile."
All seven victims vanished in 2003. The Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice and the AP give their names and towns as follows. Little has been reported about some of them beyond their ages and the dates they were last seen.
Melanie Ruth Camilini, of Seymour, was born on May 11, 1973, according to New Britain police. She was a mother of two. She was 29 when she was last seen in Waterbury in January 2003. Her remains were identified in May 2015 and announced on what would have been her 42nd birthday. "It's appropriate we remember Melanie today and begin the process of bringing her home to her family," the New Britain police chief, James Wardwell, said that day, as reported by FOX61.
Marilyn Gonzalez, of Waterbury, was born on October 16, 1976, according to the Division of Criminal Justice. She was 26 and the mother of two children, aged 11 and 7 at the time, when she was last seen near her home in Waterbury in May 2003. The Division of Criminal Justice gives the date as May 16; FOX61 gives May 15. VICE gives her name as Marilyn Mendez Gonzalez. She was the last of the seven to be identified, in 2015.
Danny Lee Whistnant, of New Britain, was born on October 5, 1958, according to the Division of Criminal Justice, and was reported missing on June 24, 2003. Whistnant was 44. The AP and the Division of Criminal Justice describe the victims as six women and a man.
Nilsa Arizmendi, 33, of Wethersfield, was the mother of four, the AP reported. She was last seen on July 25, 2003, in Wethersfield, and her sister reported her missing on July 31, 2003, according to FOX61.
Diane Cusack, 53, of New Britain, had been out of touch with her family for years and was never reported missing, police said in 2015. She was the first of the seven to be identified, in December 2010, according to FOX61.
Joyvaline Martinez, of East Hartford, was a former high school runner, VICE reported. She was unemployed and lived with her mother, and she was last seen on October 10, 2003. VICE reported that she would have turned 24 on October 26, 2003; relatives grew worried when she missed her own birthday party, police said, and her sister was the first to notice she was gone. Her remains were identified in early 2013; VICE attributed the delay to a backlog at the state laboratory. Her mother told VICE in 2015 that her daughter had appeared to her in a dream the night before Howell's arrest.
Mary Jane Menard, 40, of New Britain, was a substance abuse counselor, police said. She disappeared in October 2003, while her daughter was serving overseas in the military. The Division of Criminal Justice gives her date of birth as May 7, 1963. Her remains were identified in September 2013.
Police said in 2015 that Cusack, Martinez and Menard had spent time in the same downtown New Britain neighborhood and were all last seen in late summer or early fall of 2003. VICE reported that police believed the six people other than Arizmendi had disappeared in and around New Britain over a period of about six months.
The first case to reach Howell was Nilsa Arizmendi's. According to the arrest warrant affidavit described by the AP, she and her boyfriend had spent time with Howell, and she went to meet him on the night she disappeared. She was last seen with him in July 2003, the AP reported, and prosecutors later said she was last seen getting into his van.
Wethersfield police went to the home of Howell's girlfriend in November 2003 to question him, but they had no warrant, the AP reported, and soon afterward he left for the South. By 2004 he was wanted in Connecticut on a charge of assaulting his girlfriend and was a suspect in Arizmendi's disappearance.
The van was recovered in North Carolina in 2004. Tests matched blood in it to Arizmendi, and investigators also found blood from a second, unidentified person, according to the AP and FOX61. Authorities later asked the public for help in identifying the second person. In 2016 the New Britain police chief, James Wardwell, told VICE that blood and DNA matching the missing had been found in the van.
Howell was arrested in Hampton, Virginia, in May 2005 in connection with Arizmendi's death, according to the Division of Criminal Justice and the AP. FOX61 reported that he was arrested there on May 13, 2005, and first charged as a fugitive from justice. He was returned to Connecticut to face the charge.
Arizmendi's body had not been found. While Howell was awaiting trial, according to court records cited by the AP, he told a fellow inmate that the case against him was circumstantial and that the state did not have a body, which he hoped would never turn up. He also told the inmate that he hated prostitutes, the records said. When the inmate passed this on to investigators, Howell threatened to kill him, and he was later convicted of intimidating a witness.
He was tried in New Britain Superior Court. In the middle of the trial he entered an Alford plea to manslaughter in the first degree, a plea in which a defendant does not admit guilt but accepts that the prosecution has enough evidence to convict, the AP reported. FOX61 described it as a plea deal accepted in 2007, after he had first been charged with murder.
He was sentenced in August 2007 to 15 years in prison, according to VICE. At the sentencing he denied killing Arizmendi, said he had been forced into the plea and tried without success to withdraw it at the last minute. A childhood friend told the AP in 2015 that Howell had said he took the deal because he had no confidence in his lawyer.
James Cetran, the Wethersfield police chief, said in 2015 that the conviction had protected people whose number could not be known. "I can't even imagine how many people didn't get hurt because Mr. Howell was convicted of manslaughter in 2005," he said, as quoted by the AP. The AP and later reports date the conviction to 2007.
On August 20, 2007, a man reported finding human remains in New Britain, according to FOX61. A ground search turned up the remains of three people. Over the following years they were identified as Diane Cusack, in December 2010; Joyvaline Martinez, in early 2013; and Mary Jane Menard, in September 2013, according to FOX61.
Police concluded that the three women had been killed by the same person at different times. Wardwell, who was then running the detective bureau, kept sending investigators back to search the site, VICE reported. They returned every year after 2007, police said, but for a long time cadaver dogs were used on only one small marked area. The state offered a reward of $150,000, $50,000 for each of the three cold cases, for information leading to a conviction. VICE reported that it was the largest reward in Connecticut history for a criminal investigation.
In early 2014 police formed what the Division of Criminal Justice calls the Greater New Britain Serial Murder Task Force. According to FOX61, it brought together police from New Britain, Hartford, East Hartford, Waterbury and Wethersfield, the Connecticut State Police, the FBI, several state's attorney's offices, and forensic and medical examiner staff. The Division of Criminal Justice lists the Office of the Chief State's Attorney and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner among the agencies involved, along with forensic laboratories in other states.
The FBI offered the task force a dog with advanced search abilities, but it worked best in early spring or late fall. The task force returned to the site on April 21, 2015, the first suitable time. Two dogs marked new spots, and over the next three days investigators mapped the area and used ground-penetrating radar, FOX61 reported. Crews then excavated for about a week, finishing on May 7. VICE reported that they dug up about three-quarters of an acre.
On May 11, 2015, Wardwell announced that testing of remains found on April 28 showed they came from four more people, bringing the total to seven. "The total number of bodies recovered at this time is at least seven," he said, as reported by FOX61. The medical examiner estimated that the remains had been there for at least 10 years. Kevin Kane, the chief state's attorney, said investigators believed one person was responsible, that the public was not at risk, and that no suspect would be named while the investigation continued.
The next day the AP, citing a government official briefed on the investigation, reported that Howell was the suspect. Howell was then serving his sentence at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, according to FOX61. Melanie Ruth Camilini was the first of the four to be identified, and Nilsa Arizmendi was named at a police news conference that same week, the AP reported. Danny Lee Whistnant was also identified, and Marilyn Gonzalez was the last of the seven, FOX61 reported.
Much of the case for the six further killings rested on what Howell had said in prison. According to the arrest warrant, as reported by the AP and FOX61, he told several jailhouse informants that he had killed seven people in Connecticut in 2003 and buried them in New Britain, at a place he called "his garden." FOX61 reported that he drew a map for one inmate. To a cellmate he called himself a "sick ripper," the warrant said. According to court records cited by VICE, an inmate said Howell told him he dreamed about his victims while serving his first sentence.
The warrant also said that Howell had told the cellmate the victims should have known they would die because of the way they lived, the AP reported. The Division of Criminal Justice withheld the identities of three of the women in its releases, citing the state law that protects victims of sexual assault.
DNA from hair, blood and other material in the van linked five of the six murder victims to it, FOX61 reported from the warrant. In May 2016 the AP reported that a former cellmate of Howell's, serving a life sentence for murdering four people, was expected to be the key witness against him at a probable cause hearing.
Howell was charged by warrant on September 18, 2015, and arraigned the same day in New Britain Superior Court. The charges included capital felony murder and felony murder, the AP reported; capital felony once carried the death penalty in Connecticut, but the state no longer had it. Bail was set at $10 million on nine murder charges, according to the AP, and the case was continued to October 28. Dozens of relatives of the victims came to the arraignment, FOX61 reported.
"We always knew this day would come," Wardwell said, according to FOX61. "Each victim was loved and cherished." He told the AP that the victims were loved and had not deserved the violence that ended their lives. At an earlier police briefing in 2015, Joyvaline Martinez's family offered condolences to Marilyn Gonzalez's family, and her sister said Howell would pay for what he had done to her sister and the others, FOX61 reported.
Howell's lawyer said at the time that he was innocent until proven guilty. He pleaded not guilty to the six new killings.
The case moved slowly. In February 2016 his defense lawyer, William Paetzold, told VICE that the state had to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that his client was presumed innocent. The prosecutor, Brian Preleski, the state's attorney for the New Britain judicial district, said the evidence handed over to the defense was the largest volume he had ever dealt with, and VICE reported that a trial was not expected until around 2018.
At Howell's request, Judge Joan Alexander set a probable cause hearing for May 11, 2016, FOX61 reported. Under Connecticut law, anyone charged with murder may demand such a hearing, at which prosecutors must show there is enough evidence to go to trial. In May 2016, the AP reported that Howell was expected to waive the hearing by videoconference. His lawyer maintained that the charges were unproven allegations.
On September 8, 2017, Howell pleaded guilty in New Britain Superior Court to six counts of murder, the AP reported. He was 47. The plea covered every killing in the case except Arizmendi's, for which he had already been convicted. The Division of Criminal Justice said the expected sentence was six consecutive life terms, a total of 360 years, of which 150 years were mandatory under state law. It named Judge Joan K. Alexander as the judge in the case.
His lawyers, Jeffrey Kestenband and William Paetzold, said in a statement that he pleaded guilty "to spare the victims' families further emotional pain" from a trial that could have lasted weeks or months, and that the plea saved taxpayers nearly $1 million, according to the AP. Preleski praised the local, state and federal task force and offered "our deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of these innocent victims."
He was sentenced on November 17, 2017, at a hearing where relatives of the victims described how the killings had changed their lives, the AP reported. A state judge imposed six consecutive life sentences.
Mary Jane Menard's daughter told the court that Howell had taken the youth from her and her brother and left them orphans. "He stripped away the youth from us," she said, as quoted by the AP. She said she had twice tried to take her own life after her mother disappeared.
Howell cried and apologized. He said he deserved the death penalty, which the Connecticut Supreme Court had abolished in 2015, and called what he had done "monstrous, cowardly and selfish." He spoke about his diabetes and the possibility of amputations and organ failure, and said he expected a slow, painful death in prison. "I hope that provides some comfort to each of the families," he said.
With the sentence of November 2017, Howell was serving 15 years for manslaughter and six consecutive life terms for murder. He was held at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown in 2015, FOX61 reported.
Proven by final judgment: the death of Nilsa Arizmendi, as manslaughter in the first degree, by an Alford plea in which Howell did not admit guilt; and the murders of Diane Cusack, Joyvaline Martinez, Mary Jane Menard, Melanie Ruth Camilini, Marilyn Gonzalez and Danny Lee Whistnant, by his guilty pleas in 2017. At his 2007 sentencing he denied killing Arizmendi, and VICE reported in 2016 that he still denied responsibility for her death.
Alleged in the 2015 warrant and never tried: the sexual assaults of three of the women. His 2017 pleas were to murder only.
Not established: how police concluded, in 2015, that one person had killed all seven. In May 2015 the AP reported that police had not said how the seven died or how they had reached that conclusion. The account of the killings comes largely from what Howell told other inmates, as set out in the warrant.
Investigated and never charged: VICE reported in 2016 that authorities in Florida had looked at Howell as a suspect in the 1991 death of a 21-year-old woman near Orlando. No charge in that case has been reported.
Details that vary between sources: the date of his 2005 arrest (May 2005 in most reports; May 13, 2005, in FOX61) and its place (Hampton, Virginia, in the Division of Criminal Justice release and AP reports from 2017; one 2015 AP report, as carried by CBS News, said he was arrested in North Carolina, where the van was found); the year of the manslaughter conviction (2007 in VICE and FOX61; 2005 in one 2015 AP report and in the Wethersfield police chief's quoted remark); Joyvaline Martinez's age (23 in police statements of 2015; 24 in AP reports from September 2015 on); and the date Marilyn Gonzalez was last seen (May 16, 2003, in the Division of Criminal Justice release; May 15 in FOX61).
Childhood: Howell grows up in Hampton, Virginia.
Early 1990s: lives briefly with relatives in Virginia; pleads guilty to soliciting prostitution in Florida (VICE).
January 2003: Melanie Ruth Camilini, 29, of Seymour, is last seen in Waterbury.
May 2003: Marilyn Gonzalez, 26, is last seen near her home in Waterbury.
June 24, 2003: Danny Lee Whistnant, 44, of New Britain, is reported missing.
July 25, 2003: Nilsa Arizmendi, 33, is last seen in Wethersfield; her sister reports her missing on July 31.
Late summer or early fall 2003: Diane Cusack, 53, is last seen in New Britain.
October 10, 2003: Joyvaline Martinez is last seen.
October 2003: Mary Jane Menard, 40, disappears.
November 2003: Wethersfield police seek to question Howell; he leaves for the South.
2004: his van is recovered in North Carolina; blood in it is matched to Arizmendi.
May 2005: arrested in Hampton, Virginia, and returned to Connecticut.
2007: enters an Alford plea to manslaughter in the first degree during his trial; sentenced in August to 15 years.
August 20, 2007: a man reports human remains in New Britain; the remains of three women are recovered.
December 2010: Diane Cusack is identified.
Early 2013: Joyvaline Martinez is identified.
September 2013: Mary Jane Menard is identified.
Early 2014: the serial murder task force is formed.
April 21 to May 7, 2015: the task force searches the New Britain site with FBI dogs; remains found on April 28 prove to be those of four more people.
May 11, 2015: police announce seven victims and identify Melanie Ruth Camilini.
May 12, 2015: the AP reports that Howell, in prison, is the suspect.
September 18, 2015: charged in six deaths and arraigned; bail set at $10 million.
May 2016: expected to waive a probable cause hearing.
September 8, 2017: pleads guilty to six counts of murder.
November 17, 2017: sentenced to six consecutive life terms, 360 years.