Sure, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, killer told police
He is shrewd and has native cunning, said one who came face to face during one of many investigations during a four-decade career as sexual predator and murderer.
The 61-year-old Co Laois native has plenty of experience of police interviews.
At his trial for the murder of Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson, a videotape of one was played to the jury.
“Sure I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” the Laois man was heard to say in his softly-spoken Midlands accent.
The jury in that trial believed him and he was acquitted of the 1994 murder of the 15-year-old Strabane schoolgirl, whose body has never been found.
What they did not know, and could not because of longstanding laws on revealing prior convictions, was that he was already serving life for murder at the time. They did not know he has been convicted of a series of sexual offences, including rape, dating back to 1964.
Always on the move, between here, the North and Britain, gardaí believe he may have committed many other crimes in Ireland. He is suspected of a serious sexual assault in Waterford and a number of burglaries in Monaghan.
Howard also lived at addresses in Dublin, Wexford and Donegal, where he lived rough for a time in the mid-1990s. The fear is, because of his sexually predatory nature, that there are other victims, particularly young girls.
His whereabouts at various times are being investigated and files dusted off to check whether they tally with reported assaults.
There is also the reported link to the murder of some of the six woman who disappeared during the ’90s.
The six murders were investigated by the Operation Trace team.
Howard’s involvement in three, in Wexford, Louth and Offaly, was ruled out immediately, as the suspects are believed to have been known to the victims.
However, Howard’s movements were checked in relation to the others, Annie McCarrick, who disappeared in Co Wicklow, Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob, both last seen in Co Kildare.
“We did a very in-depth study of his movements at the time of those disappearances,” said one source close to the investigation team.
“We had contact with the British.”
There is no concrete evidence tying him to any of the three. When pushed, the source said: “As far as we know from the investigation, no.”
Howard was convicted of the attempted rape of a six-year-old and a young woman in England in the ’60s and the rape a 58-year-old woman in Cork in 1974.
He was released in 1981 after serving seven years of a 10-year sentence for the rape.
He married in 1983 but the relationship ended after three years.
In 1988, he served a 15-month sentence for larceny in Dublin.
On his release, Howard moved to Monaghan where he lived on and off for a couple of years. One garda who knew of him at the time said he was suspected with others of being involved in the burglaries of a garage and a warehouse.
“We had no evidence at the time and then he moved away,” the garda said, adding that he was not suspected of committing any sexual crimes during his time in the county.
Moving North, he spent time in Newry, including a period in a treatment centre for alcoholics, before moving to Derry and then on to Castlederg in Co Tyrone.
In 1993, Howard allegedly lured a 16-year-old girl to his flat in the town. She claimed that over two days, Howard drugged, stripped and repeatedly raped her, while a noose was tied around her neck.
She said that each time she refused, he tightened the rope and threatened to kill her. She escaped by breaking through a bathroom window.
He claimed she consented and he was convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge, much to the dismay of the police and the young girl’s family.
In February 1995, Howard was given a three-year suspended sentence.
In August 1994, while on bail on the rape charges, he met Arlene Arkinson. He drove the teenager to the seaside town of Bundoran, Donegal, where they met his girlfriend’s daughter and her boyfriend.
On their return to Castlederg, Howard dropped the couple off at the boyfriend’s house.
Arlene was never seen again and her body was never found.
Howard was questioned but not charged in connection with the disappearance.
Moving on to Cookstown in Tyrone, he was placed under 24-hour surveillance by detectives and a wiretap was authorised for his phone.
During this period he is believed to have travelled south on numerous occasions.
Howard moved on, this time to Scotland, where he was given a council house after convincing officials he was under a paramilitary threat.
A newspaper exposed his past and he was hounded out.
Drifting between Ireland and Britain, he eventually moved to London, where he met and moved in with a woman in Northfleet, Kent.
She unwittingly introduced him to Hannah Williams, the 14-year-old troubled girl who had a reputation for running away from home.
Howard began grooming her.
In April 2001, she went missing. Her body was found by chance in March 2002 at a disused cement works and Howard was charged with her murder two months later.
At the same time, detectives back in Tyrone decided to charge him with the murder of Arlene Arkinson.
Last June, he was found not guilty by a jury but was already serving a life sentence for Hannah’s killing.
Howard is a serial sexual predator of women and young girls.
He’s also a murderer.
He is also the father of one child.
The child was born some time in the mid-1990s, to a young woman he had held captive for several weeks and repeatedly raped.
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