Trying to identify the remains of seven people has been filled with challenges and twists and turns, including police eventually determining they were all murdered by a serial killer.
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The warrant was released Friday after 45-year-old William Devin Howell was arraigned on multiple murder counts in New Britain Superior Court.
The bodies of six women and one man who disappeared in 2003 were found behind the mall in New Britain, 12 miles southwest of Hartford.
New Britain Police Chief James Wardwell said authorities had obtained arrest warrants for Howell for six additional killings, and that three of the victims were sexually assaulted.
Howell pleaded guilty in 2005 to killing Nilsa Arizmendi, 33, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, although her body had not been found at the time.
The capital felony charges used to carry the possibility of the death penalty, but the state no longer has capital punishment. The three women’s names weren’t disclosed in the warrant, which provides the first details of the killings that have been released to the public.
Remains from more victims were found in May – including mothers-of-two Melanie Ruth Camilini and Marilyn Gonzalez, and Danny Lee Whistnant – after an FBI dog located them in an area police referred to as a “burial site”. Howell allegedly told his cellmate he “cut off the tips of (the woman’s) fingers and dismantled her bottom jaw”, then “disposed of the body parts in Virginia”.
Howell’s van was seized in North Carolina in 2004 and forensic tests found blood from Arizmendi inside.
The search warrant also said detectives were looking for any human remains, carpeting, tools and a bench seat from a van.
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Authorities have said drug use was a main connection among most of the victims. Howell had been living in Connecticut in 2003.
