Pictured below is the East Coast drifter accused of committing the Connecticut strip mall serial murders in New Britain sometime during 2003.
William Howell, 45, is thankfully already serving time for manslaughter, so the $10-million bond he’s now being held on for multiple assault and murder charges is largely symbolic -- this convict isn’t getting out of prison anytime soon.
The self-described “sick ripper” recently confided in his cellmate that, at the time of his arrest a decade ago, he’d already killed seven women and was headed across country to extend the bloody crime spree in his “murder mobile.”
That handyman’s van is in fact where Howell said he kept the body of one of his “babies” for two weeks, when it was too cold to bury the woman in his heavily wooded “garden” adjacent to the Connecticut strip mall.
While waiting for the ground to thaw, however, he allegedly slept in the vehicle “next to Baby,” after first cutting off the victim’s fingertips and removing her jaw to reduce the chances she’d ever be identified.
Related coverage on Crime Magazine:
Why cops think William Howell is the strip mall serial killer
Seventh victim of strip mall serial killer identified
Four more bodies found at Connecticut strip mall
Howell’s body dump in New Britain was accidentally stumbled upon by a hunter in 2007. Since then it’s been repeatedly excavated by investigators who believe prime suspect, William Devin Howell, is the “most prolific” serial killer in state’s history.
Before now, that dubious distinction belonged to Michael Ross, who was convicted of serially slaying a half-dozen females in Connecticut, and executed there in 2005.
The state abolished its death penalty in 2012.
