Making a Serial Killer - Season 1, Episode 8 - William Devin Howell, the Sick Ripper - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[TENSE MUSIC PLAYS] BILL PAETZOLD: I still try to look at him and say, "Could he really have done this?"
JIM WARDWELL: It's my belief if he wasn't arrested, he would have continued and that we would have more victims.
He's probably the most infamous serial killer that we identified in Connecticut.
JESSICA CAMILINI: He's a monster. Sick. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYS] The victims in this case, there were seven.
One is bad enough, but seven is just so sad, so horrific. They were all loved, each and every one of them.
Their families never stopped hoping or waiting for them to return home safely to them.
Each one was a special person. She played piano. She was amazing. Yeah, she was amazing.
There was a song she did for a competition, "How great thou are." Whew. I remember one time in high school, she played it for--
we had a practice competition before we actually went to the competition and she played it.
And she played it perfectly, not one mistake. I remember sitting in the back row with my goosebumps,
hair standing on end. Opioids have been a plague within the country and the world.
For a very long time, I was with the police department for over 25 years, and we dealt with it
during my entire career. New Britain, like anywhere else in the country, was dealing with it.
She had a really strong addiction. There would be so many times to where I would walk in
and she would just be passed out. Not passed out on the couch, but you knew what she was struggling with
and I wouldn't talk to her. I'd be so mad at her. But I can't understand it, because I
didn't have that addiction. But, I mean, can't blame-- can't blame her. I mean, I couldn't imagine having something so strong
taking control of you, to where I know she wanted to be a good mom. BRIAN HARRIS: Howell even though he was the lawnmower
guy, as he drove around these neighborhoods he was preoccupied. He was preoccupied with sex, he was preoccupied with women.
But not just any women, he was preoccupied with those women who were most vulnerable.
ANN HOWARD: Melanie Camilini, a young mother of two children, she was working the streets in Waterbury, Connecticut.
And unfortunately for her, when she stepped in to that 1985 Ford Econoline van, she was stepping into a death chamber.
He knew that she was stepping into a death chamber. Of course, she didn't. He did, at first, attempt to kill her after raping her,
with a hammer. He said that it didn't even knock her out, didn't even seem to faze her.
But it terrified her and she plead for her life. At that point, he decided to strangle her.
He thought it would be the quickest and most efficient way to bring about her death.
He claims that he took no pleasure from the actual strangulation of his victims.
It was completely a utilitarian act on his part to conceal the evidence, and so that he could
go on and commit future rapes. Now keep in mind, if a woman uses drugs, to Howell, that's one of the two things
that makes them a worthless object. He claimed that the only victim that troubled him
was Melanie Camilini. And what bothered him the most was when she begged for her life, and said please don't kill me,
I have children. He said, "That really troubled me when she said that, and I almost couldn't do it."
Nonetheless, he knew that he had just repeatedly raped her over a 12-hour period, and that he, in his way of thinking,
had no choice. LISA BACKUS: I believe he cut off her fingertips and, like, dislocated her jaw and hid those in Virginia.
I know at one point in all this, they were digging up his former front lawn in Virginia.
But I don't think they found anything. He actually kept the tarnished ring with a stone
in it belonging to Melanie Camilini. That was the only item belonging to any of his seven victims.
I asked him why he kept that. Was it a souvenir, a kind of trophy that serial killers are known to keep
to symbolize their achievement? He said, "No, actually I kept that tarnished ring belonging
to Melanie Camilini to remind me of the night that I stopped being a man and I became a monster."
He didn't value them. He didn't value them as human beings, he didn't value most people as human beings.
He thought of them as disposable. William Devin Howell was born in Hampton, Virginia,
back in 1970. He was the last of four children. However, two of his brothers were
quite a bit older than Howell. One of his brothers was serving in Vietnam at the time of Howell's birth.
I talked to Bill quite a bit about his background, his childhood. And he described his upbringing as very happy.
His mother and father were-- it wasn't a broken marriage, they were together. He describes a happy childhood.
By the age of 12, William Devin Howell's mother got sick with breast cancer. She was, at the time, in her early 50s.
And this really did affect Howell quite a bit. She was sort of a source of stability in his life,
she gave him protection and routine, she was a strong disciplinarian. I still, every now and then, talk
to his brother on Facebook. But his brother was a corrections officer and he was horrified.
He wasn't raised this way. I believe as a teen, he was in trouble a bit. He told me that by the time he was in high school,
there really wasn't a day when he wasn't drinking alcohol, sometimes in the morning before he went to school.
He only kept his driver's license for about a year and a half before he got into a drunk driving accident.
Howell had repeated incarcerations as a habitual offender that sometimes went for three to five years at a time, simply
for not holding a valid driver's license. All of us make our own decisions. And regardless of background, he chose to do what he did
to these seven innocent people. Howell began to solicit prostitutes at a very young age.
He was only 14 years old. He stole his father's car in the middle of the night, and drove silently off, and picked up his first prostitute.
It became his secret addiction, soliciting prostitutes in the middle of the night.
He has been with well over 1,000 prostitutes over the years. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYS]
I think he always had this binary view of women. There were the good girls and the bad girls.
The good girls would be someone like the mother of his children. He says to me that she is a good girl.
She does not drink, she does not smoke, she does not do drugs. She was a good mother to the children,
she was faithful to him. And then there are the bad girls, and these would be the women that he
would pick up on the streets. He's driving that blue van, and he's cutting yards
and blending in with society. And so what may look as somebody that should stand out
is somebody that was seen every day in the neighborhood. Howell, after killing Melanie Camilini, took a break
and went down to Virginia for a few months and returned in April of 2003. In May of 2003, he was driving through the streets
of Waterbury and he came upon Marilyn Gonzalez. She was also a young mother who had a drug addiction
and was turning tricks on the street. As with Camilini and most of his other victims,
Howell knew that that night the woman that he paid was going to end up dead. He knew that he would rape Marilyn Gonzalez,
and as with all of his other victims, that took place over a 12-hour period, on again, off again.
In between rapes, he would bind his captives to the back bench of his van, duct tape their mouths,
and drive them to different locations. Mr. Howell completely misunderstood the people that he victimized, these innocent victims.
He thought of them to be without value, without purpose in this world. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Howell picked up Daniel Whistnant outside of this bar restaurant called the Cadillac
Ranch in Southern Connecticut. It was Howell's habit to go to places like the Cadillac Ranch
when he had a night off, and to sit at the bar for hours and hope to get lucky finding a woman at the bar.
If he didn't have any luck at the bar, by the time the bar closed, he would go to the streets
and solicit a prostitute instead. Now, the bar closed at 2:00 AM, and Howell went outside and saw Daniel Whistnant
walking along the street. This was a transgender man who was dressed as a woman.
He had long, silky black hair, Howell states, and a short miniskirt and high heels.
And so thinking Daniel Whistnant is a female prostitute, he invites Mr Whistnant into his van.
During the transaction that took place, Howell puts his hand on the head of Whistnant,
and pulls off a wig. He becomes enraged that this man has deceived him into this vulnerable position.
He throws Daniel Whistnant against the wall of the van and tells me that he punched him out twice,
and then quickly strangled him. We're at the back of the strip mall in New Britain
where William Devin Howell would leave the remains of his seven victims. First off, he would stop his van over there behind the strip
mall, and dump the parcel, or the body of his victim, wrapped in garbage bags deep into the ravine.
And then what he would do is he get back into his van and go over to the McDonald's parking lot, park his car,
and come back to this location where we're at right now. There's a trail, as you can see.
It goes into sort of a metal-- like, littered area. And William Devin Howell would walk this trail
and make a sharp right that led into the ravine where the parcel that he had left was left in the ravine.
He would retrieve a spade, a shovel, that he had stored behind the guardrail. And then he would drag that body along with his shovel
about a few hundred yards into the woods to the location that he was known to call his garden, which is where he
buried, in very shallow graves, the seven bodies of the people that he killed. In the case of Nilsa Arizmendi, he states that he didn't
plan to rape and kill her. Now it's interesting that up until then, any time he planned
to rape a prostitute, it was based solely, he says, on his lawn care schedule the following day.
If he didn't have lawns that he had to mow the next morning, then that night he knew he was free to solicit a prostitute
and keep her captive in his van for the entire night and throughout the next day.
Now with Nilsa Arizmendi, when she stepped into his van and asked him to drive her to a location to pick up drugs,
he said he would do so in exchange for a sexual transaction. What happened was when she refused
to finish that transaction, he grew very angry. He decided in that split second, "I am going
to rape and kill this woman." The next day, he had the lawn care schedule. So he had to keep Nilsa's body wrapped in tarp
in the back of his van for the duration of his lawn care jobs that next day before taking her out to the back of the mall
and burying her. And I remember going to the crime scene, and I walked down the embankment in my dress shoes,
and it was kind of muddy and slippery. And when I was down there, I felt like I was in an amphitheater, kind of looking up
at the parking lot area, which you couldn't really see the parking lot with the trees that were there.
And I thought, this is actually a pretty interesting place to have buried bodies.
You think, well, people might be driving by and look down, but it wasn't a place that you would suspect.
So it probably was the perfect place. In a 10-week time period, in August, September,
and the first two weeks of October, his last three victims died. The first of those three victims, in August of 2003,
was Mary Jane Menard. He picked up Mary Jane Menard on the streets of Waterbury,
Connecticut, and went through his typical routine of holding her captive in his van for 12 hours, raping her off and on,
and eventually strangling her. In this case, he strangled her in the back parking lot
of the McDonald's which was located right next to the strip mall, where his burial ground was located.
The sixth victim was Diane Cusack. She had been addicted to drugs for many years
and lived a very hard life on the streets. And in her 40s, Howell picked her up in New Britain, Connecticut, and went
through his similar routine of raping and strangulation. In this McDonald's parking lot, three of William
Devin Howell's victims died. He parked his car right over there, and raped and strangled three of his victims.
Now as you can see, there is a very busy drive-thru to my left. This is a popular McDonald's, and it's not
outside of the realm of possibility that quite a lot of people, even as Howell was killing
his victims, or going up the trail to bury his victims, would have seen his van, and seeing
him at least walking up the trail and made no question of it. Ironically, Howell would also go through this very
drive-through with some of his victims held captive in the back of his van, tied-up and duct-taped.
And he said to me that he would turn the music up high so no one would hear the victims if they were
screaming or cried for help. And during that time, he would actually order food through the drive-thru
and ask his victims if they also wanted something to eat. Joyvaline Martinez was Howell's last victim.
She was a very beautiful, young girl. She was only 23 years old at the time of her death.
William Devin Howell picked her up on Hillside Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut. And as with his other victims, he
went through the routine of holding her captive in the back of his van for a 12-hour period, during which time
he raped her off and on, and ultimately strangled her to death. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYS]
Law enforcement didn't seem to be doing that much about the disappearance of the first three victims,
until the Nilsa Arizmendi disappearance. When Nilsa Arizmendi disappeared on July 25, 2003,
her family went almost immediately to authorities. She was known to frequently call her mother and her four
children, and visit with them. So her not being around was a noticeable concern to the family members.
He admits Nilsa Arizmendi was his downfall. Up until then, he believed he could continue
to get away with these crimes, so long as he chose strangers, and that there were no witnesses who saw him driving
off with these strangers. Ace Sanchez, who was her boyfriend, was a witness who saw Nilsa get into Howell's car
and drive away. And so now, Howell not only had killed someone he knew, but there was a witness who saw him as the last person
to be seen with the victim. The police are able to use their research skills, they are able to track down the van.
Any time anyone registers a car, you can track the history of where did that car end up.
Well, those police officers, they do that, they find the van. And there's one small piece of evidence that's still left.
Despite the efforts to clean that van, there's one small piece of evidence and that is blood.
And so what you would have now is a very good circumstantial case. You can't necessarily prove absolute murder off
of one drop of blood in a van, but a reasonable person could come to that conclusion.
So with a very circumstantial case, you have William Howell that pleads guilty. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYS]
So I became involved in the investigation from the very first day. It was in 2007.
We got called to a scene out on Hartford Road, behind one of our shopping plazas.
A gentleman walking through the woods came across what he believed to be human remains.
And he came across a skull. And he didn't care for his own, you know. Like, if he got in trouble, he knew he had to call the police.
And he admitted he had been back there, you know, hoping to hunt and he had found a skull.
That's a super busy street. One of the state's largest malls is literally a hundred yards up the road.
But it's a little strip mall with a couple of restaurants. They proceeded with a whole search of the area.
We got the state anthropologist and the state medical examiner involved. And they pointed out to us that although we only
had a small amount of remains, we definitely had the remains of at least two human beings.
But we found what ended up being the remains of three people. They were all identified at that time as unknown victims.
They were referred to as Jane Does, which just broke my heart. They needed their identity, we needed to know who they were,
reunite them with their families. The reason they figured out that it was three separate women was because there were three
either right or left hip bones. So obviously, that indicates three different people.
We relied heavily on reports of missing persons. We searched databases in the tri-state area
to try to match with whatever we could, with whatever the science at the time was allowing us to do.
LISA BACKUS: The New Britain Police Department did everything, everything they could possibly do,
to identify these women. They had offered us, at that time-- this is the FBI through Quantico--
to create approximations of the victims that we had. We had two skulls among the human remains.
So about 2009, two New Britain detectives drove two skulls-- and at that point, they were known
as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2-- to a specialized unit within the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
And what that unit does is it creates busts, basically, of what they thought the person would look like.
And by 2010, the police announced, you know, we've got these busts come take a look.
Huge press conference, and they unveiled the busts in the hopes that somebody would recognize these women.
We published photos of it in the local media. And it was the same night, or the next night
after it was ran, I received a phone call. It did lead to the discovery that Jane
Doe 1 was Diane Cusack. Apparently, she and her family had been estranged for a good number of years.
But the bust kind of looked like her a bit, and that prompted-- I think it was her brother and his wife--
to come forward and say, you know what, hey, this may be Diane. And they did the DNA, and it turned out to be Diane.
OK, so now they have one identified. He was a suspect back in 2007. Only because we were aware of his arrest
in a neighboring town of Wethersfield, and that the person whose death he was convicted of
and he was in prison for, her body was never located. So I had a vague awareness about him,
and that he had taken a woman and that there was more blood in the van they had never identified.
And so every now and then, I would say to the chief, "Are you sure it's not him?
Are you sure this isn't him?" And he would say, "Yeah, we're looking at it, we don't think so."
They had identified Joyvaline through her DNA. So I walk into the training room at the police station,
and there is this really big poster of this gorgeous, young girl with jet black hair,
you know, just done beautifully, red lipstick. And I'm just like, looking at that going, my god.
You know, my god, someone has got to find justice for these people. Someone-- someone has got to find justice.
Our instinct was that there was probably at least one more person in there, one more victim,
because Nilsa was never located, and we knew the remains we found in 2007 were not Nilsa.
The playing cards is a technique that the police and the prosecution have used to try to solve cold cases--
cold cases, or cases where-- they haven't been solved yet for so many years. And these playing cards, inmates,
a lot of times they pass their time playing cards with each other. And they put these cards into the Department
of Corrections systems and allow the inmates to play cards. And on the back side of the cards are faces of missing,
of deceased individuals, whose cases are unsolved. New Britain had submitted, you know,
the remains of three women and when they were found. And he saw the card, he saw the cold case card because those
are the only cards that they can play cards with in prison, because it is designed to spark conversation and confessions.
The cards were being passed around, and he certainly recognized some of the faces as being in there,
in the deck of cards. Howell pulls the card of a young woman name Joyvaline Martinez.
He shows that picture to Jonathan Mills, and tells Mills, "I'm the one that murdered this young woman."
And he told one of them, "See that? That's my work. I did that." I believe that person was the one who talked to a New
Britain police detective. They have their phone number hotline to call, and a lot of inmates take advantage of that.
Either because they know, or they don't know but they're going to try to pretend that they know
information to try to get their sentences commuted or shortened, or something of that sort,
some kind of benefit. "Not only did I murder Joyvaline Martinez, I murdered seven people and I put all of their bodies
behind a strip mall in New Britain, Connecticut." He even went as far as drawing a map for Jonathan Mills,
and showing him the placement of those graves in his burial ground. Now, Howell did that with the intention
of confessing the crime so that he could go on to commit suicide. He was aware that they were investigating.
JIM WARDWELL: He didn't cooperate in any substantial way with the police upon questioning.
According to Jonathan Mills, Bill thought the net was tightening in around him and that's why he decided to take his life.
Mills supposedly gave them some pills that he had accumulated, and Bill took those pills, thinking
it was going to kill him. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS] At that point in 2014, we did identify the burial
sites of the remaining victims. Within days, they made the announcement they had found
four more bodies, and it took a few weeks or so to positively identify each one.
Mom kind of kept me informed with what was going on. She had called me and said they want to meet with me.
So I kind of knew. I knew something was going on. But she said that she would know--
ironically enough, it was on Mel's birthday. Mom said, "I'll call you tomorrow after I meet with them."
And I remember her calling and all she said was, "It's her." When it did get to the point where they
announced that one of the remains was Nilsa's, then that was it. You know, everybody knew they had him,
and it would only be a matter of time before they arrested him. We understood what had happened,
and now it was proven. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYS] We built our case one step at a time.
It was brick by brick. It was a long investigation, making sure we identified every victim, and making sure we'd left
no one behind, really, as well. We wanted to bring peace to these families. It was September 18, 2015.
They arrested him and charged him with six counts of capital felony murder. I did a preliminary review of the arrest warrant.
And, you know, it paints a picture of a person who would consider doing this type of crime.
And so I kind of formulated an image of him, and then I met him. And the person that I met did not correspond with the image
that I had created in my mind. He was an affable southern gentleman, had a good sense of humor, and was very easygoing
and laid back. Every time they brought him in in the orange jumpsuit, he just looked like this ordinary guy.
It was like an ordinary guy, he looked like anybody else who would have been at that courthouse,
or you know, just an ordinary guy. I guess ultimately, he decided to plead guilty,
and he knew it was going to be a life sentence. They actually gave him six life sentences,
and he agreed to that because he wanted to spare the families of going through the trial.
Bill Howell, who knows he's going to die in prison-- and probably people aren't sympathetic towards that,
but as a criminal defense lawyer, I always think about the client also. And in Connecticut, when you're charged with this type
of-- convicted of this type of offense, you're in an 8 by 10 foot cell approximately, 22 hour a day lockdown,
and you're isolated with your thoughts. And it's a pretty traumatic place to be.
In court, I was, initially, somewhat hopeful for him and his soul, actually. His first words were, "I'm sorry."
But then he went on to speak pretty much at length about how life is so difficult for him in prison.
So it really very quickly turned into, he was sorry for the predicament he's in.
Yet to my knowledge, he has not expressed any remorse. INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about him?
Is there a word? There's no manual, there's no word. I don't know. You're talking about drugs being demonic,
there's got to be something like that related with him. There's no way. He's a monster.
He's a monster. Sick. INTERVIEWER: Do you think he deserves the death penalty? Yes.
Mr. Howell's crimes destroyed seven families, seven communities around those families, friends.
So much sorrow, so many tears. So many years of, first, waiting to find out what happened,
and then what he put them through at his own sentencing, where he talked about his personal challenges in prison.
It didn't help heal the wounds. I believe they were vulnerable because of addiction.
But, you know, I don't know necessarily if I want to call them on the fringes of society.
Do you know what I mean? I would prefer to say they were vulnerable because of addiction.
Each of these seven victims were loved by their families. They had terrific relationships with their friends and others.
Through some addictions to substances, they did encounter troubles. It never changed who they, were still the wonderful people
that were born to this Earth. She was strong, very strong person. She was a good mom.
She wanted to be better, and she fought to be better. Her ending isn't her full story.
[SOFT PIANO MUSIC PLAYS]

When seven women disappear in 2003, investigators fear they have a serial killer within their vicinity.

A true crime series that focuses on what makes killers do what they do, taking insights from scientific experts, detectives and survivors.

Brief Summary

William Devin Howell, a serial killer, murdered seven women in Connecticut, impacting their families and communities deeply.

Key points

The Infamous Serial Killer. William Devin Howell is identified as Connecticut's most notorious serial killer.
A Mother's Plea. Melanie Camilini begs for her life, revealing the tragic reality of her situation.
A Monster's Reflection. Howell reflects on his transformation into a monster after committing his crimes.
Seeking Justice. A police officer's determination to find justice for the victims is palpable.
Confession of a Killer. Howell confesses to multiple murders, revealing the locations of the bodies.
The Arrest. Howell is arrested and charged with six counts of capital felony murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He's probably the most infamous serial killer that we identified in Connecticut.

Bill Paetzold discusses the notoriety of the killer.

0:36WatchJul 29, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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