John Jefferson
Inset: Neil Howard (MCSAO). Background: The house where Howard killed his mother with a bungee cord in 2023 (KSKD).
A 46-year-old man in Illinois is facing several decades behind bars for killing his own mother, strangling her with a bungee cord in her bed after she returned from a date because he’d “had enough of her sleeping around” and “not giving him money.”
A jury in Madison County on Monday deliberated for about three hours before finding Neil Howard guilty on one count of first-degree murder in the 2023 slaying of 60-year-old Norma J. Caraker, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office, officers with the Troy Police Department at about 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, 2023, responded to a call at Caraker’s home in the 600 block of Lower Marine Road, which is just over 20 miles northeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Prosecutors said the 911 call came from Howard, who told the emergency dispatcher that he was “worried about his mother because she was unresponsive.”
“Officers located Caraker in her bed with a bungee cord still secured around her neck,” the release states. “She was unresponsive and not breathing. Efforts to resuscitate her were not successful.”
According to a report from the Bellevue News-Democrat, a visibly drunk Howard told investigators that he saw an unknown man run out of a sliding-glass door in the home before finding his mother. However, police later determined that the door had been locked from the inside and Howard was soon arrested.
At trial, Assistant State’s Attorney Luke Yager told the jury that Howard was “unhappy about his mother’s dating,” which had been making him “angrier and angrier and angrier,” until he finally “got drunk enough that he couldn’t take it anymore.” That’s when he “wrapped that cord around her neck and he pulled, until she stopped breathing.”
“This defendant had had enough of his mother,” Yager reportedly said during his closing argument. “He’d had enough of her sleeping around. He’d had enough of her not giving him money.”
Howard will appear before Circuit Judge Amy Maher, who presided over the trial. for his sentencing hearing at a later date. He faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in a state correctional facility. He will remain in detention at the Madison County Jail while awaiting sentencing.
“The careful and meticulous work of the responding officers and investigators allowed our prosecution team to show the jury exactly what happened in the critical timeframe around Norma Caraker’s senseless death,” State’s Attorney Tom Haine said in a statement after the jury returned their verdict. “This was a challenging case that relied heavily on scientific and technological evidence. We continue to hold the family and loved ones of Norma in our prayers.”
However, the News-Democrat reported that Andrea Hall, one of Howard’s two sisters, as well as his fiancee, Dawn Hall, served as witnesses for the defense and supported Howard throughout the trial. Andrea Hall told the newspaper that she believed investigators had “jumped the gun” when they arrested Howard for their mother’s murder, adding that she “wasn’t expecting” a guilty verdict.
Howard’s defense attorneys, Jeremy Sackett and David Fahrenkamp, told the newspaper they took the case for free because they “believed in” Howard and the case. They too suggested that police were too quick to home in on Howard as a suspect, emphasizing that investigators did not bother getting a DNA sample from the man Caraker had been on a date with just before her death for more than a year.
A crime lab technician reportedly testified that DNA found on the bungee cord and beneath Caraker’s fingernails came back as a match for the man she had been on a date with, not Howard.
The defense attorneys said they plan to appeal the verdict.
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