A lawyer from Houston is in trouble for allegedly shooting and killing his 20-year-old son. He then burned his son’s body and tried to hide the evidence, claiming it was an accidental tragedy, as he informed the authorities.
Michael C. Howard is currently in custody at the Sabine County jail with bonds totaling $20 million. Last week, he contacted the police to report that he mistakenly shot his son, who had Down syndrome, thinking he was an intruder, stated Sabine County Sheriff’s Office Deputy J.P. MacDonough at a press conference.
Howard confessed that he fatally shot Mark Howard on Sunday evening. He then placed his son’s body in the bucket of a backhoe and transported it to a secluded area on his property. There, he disposed of the body on a pile of trash and, as per MacDonough, “cremated his son as he believed his son would have wished.”
“Howard also pointed out the shotgun that he claimed to have used in the incident which was located inside one of the buildings on the property,” the deputy said. “Deputies searched the structures and the area around for the son but did not locate him. Howard then indicated the area which he had taken his son to for what he called ‘cremation.’”
Howard called a deputy on his work cell phone Monday afternoon, about 17 hours after the killing.
The burn pile was about two miles from the scene of the shooting, MacDonough said. Deputies and Texas Rangers executed a search warrant and found body parts and bones in the burn pile
“All bones appeared to have been burned based on charring and the area they were found in, was heavy with soot and ash,” MacDonough said, adding that other evidence was also recovered. “There were also evidence that the scene of the shooting had actually been washed or cleaned using a water hose.”
The remains were taken to the Jefferson County Medical examiner’s office, he said. Howard was arrested on charges of murder and tampering with physical evidence/human corpse.
“Mr. Howard committed this act and then in the furtherance of that, burned the body and then cleaned the crime scene, which as an investigator I would take as indicative of nefarious purposes,” MacDonough said.
District Attorney Paul Robbins said that his office intends to take the case to a grand jury and will be seeking additional charges, including tampering with the crime scene.
MacDonough said Howard’s wife and two other children — a son older than Mark Howard and a daughter younger — were not at the property at the time of the shooting. The family apparently did not live at the property, and MacDonough said Howard had owned property in Sabine County “for a while.” He said Howard and his son arrived at the property several days before the shooting.
