He mistook his son with Down syndrome for an intruder, fatally shot him with a shotgunmoved his body to a remote part of the plot and set it on fire there. This is what Michael C. Howard, a lawyer from Houston (Texas), confesses to having done after arriving at a farm he owns in a crime defined as “strange” by the Police.
The events occurred last Sunday night, but this 68-year-old man did not notify the Police until Monday afternoon, about 17 hours later, according to local media. According to what he told agents, Howard used a backhoe to transport the lifeless body of his son about three kilometers from where the shot occurred, but always within the property.
Once there, Howard He placed the body in a pile of wooden trash and then ‘cremated’ it.as reported by agent JP MacDonough of the Sabine County Sheriff’s Office in a press conference reported by ‘The New York Post’. Deputies later found body parts and bones of Howard’s son in the wreckage of the fire and sent them to the medical examiner’s office in Jefferson County.
Howard and his son – with Down syndrome, but with a high level of functionality – arrived at the farm, located about 275 kilometers northeast of Houston, on Thursday or Friday. On Sunday, what the detainee describes as “horrible accident” and then ‘cremated’ the young man “according to what he felt his son would have wanted.”
«It’s a strange crimesimply due to the nature of the act (…) Mr. Howard committed this act and, to carry it out, he burned the body and cleaned the crime scene, which, as an investigator, I would consider as an indication of nefarious purposes,” MacDonough assessed.
Howard, who reported the theft of a lawn mower and trailer two days before his son’s death, remains jailed in Sabine County accused of murder and tampering with evidence and with a bail of 20 million.
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