Man unhappy with mom's dating strangled her with bungee cord
Inset: Neil Howard (MCSAO). Background: The house where Howard killed his mother with a bungee cord in 2023 (KSKD).

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.

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