Editor’s note: This story contains some graphic information related to this murder investigation.
LOUIS — Investigators with the Greater St. Louis Major Case Squad say they have …
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Editor’s note: This story contains some graphic information related to this murder investigation.
St. LOUIS — Investigators with the Greater St. Louis Major Case Squad say they have identified a suspect in the 2004 killing of a woman whose dismembered torso was dumped in Warren County.
Mike A. Clardy, 63, of Maryland Heights, was charged on Jan. 11 with murder and abandonment of a corpse. He’s accused of killing Deanna D. Howland of Alton, Illinois, whose remains were found at the westbound Interstate 70 rest stop in Wright City in June 2004.
According to reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, investigators were finally able to identify a suspect in the 18-year-old case after Clardy’s DNA was matched to DNA fragments found on Howland’s body and a knife that was dumped nearby. Police who interviewed Clardy this week allege that he admitted to killing Howland and dismembering her in order to hide parts of her body in several locations, according to the Post-Dispatch.
The Major Case Squad announced that more information will be released Thursday afternoon.
Deanna Howland’s partial remains were found at the Wright City rest stop on June 28, 2004, by a maintenance worker trimming brush at the edge of the property. Her head, hands and legs had been removed, leaving investigators with only two medical scars on her torso as clues to her identity. The rest of her remains were never found.
The torso went unidentified for nearly 12 years. In 2014, a Warren County sheriff’s deputy, Matt Schmutz, took over the case and began persistently reviewing regional missing person cases from around the time of the killing. Eventually, he made a connection with a case from Madison County, Illinois, and DNA samples given by Howland’s family members confirmed the identity of her remains in March 2016.
