Man Charged in 2004 Cold Case Murder of Deanna Howland
She was dismembered and her headless torso dumped by a highway, but now her family finally looks to have justice.
Police in Missouri have announced that a man has been charged with a murder dating back to 2004 after DNA linked him to the crime.
Mike A Clardy, 63, was charged with second-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse in the case of Deanna Denise Howland, a 35-year-old mother-of-five from Illinois.
Deanna was leading a troubled life when she went missing in 2004. She had been battling drug addiction for some time and was known to be a transient on occasion.
However, her daughter Ashley Kinnear said she knew something was wrong when her mother failed to show up to watch her in a school play she had promised to be there for in May 2004. There was no further contact and Ashley told St Louis Today this was completely out of character.
“I really knew something was wrong when she didn’t call me on my birthday. She never missed my birthday. So every year I would wonder where she was. I knew she wouldn’t just leave us,” she said.
Meanwhile, unbeknown to Deanna’s loved ones, maintenance workers in Warren County had made a gruesome discovery when they…
