A man has been charged with murder and jailed in a case that baffled police for nearly two decades: the death of a woman whose headless torso was found at a Missouri rest stop along Interstate 70.
Mike A. Clardy, 63, of Maryland Heights, Missouri, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder and abandonment of a dead body in the murder of Deanna Denise Howland. Bail for him was set at $1 million.
Police say DNA evidence connected Clardy to the crime, and they say he confessed after his arrest, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Remains found on June 26, 2004, at the bottom of a hill near a picnic area at a Warren County rest stop, were unidentified for 12 years. In 2016, DNA samples determined the victim to be Howland, of Alton, Illinois.
TEXAS POLICE REOPEN 1983 COLD CASE MURDER INVESTIGATION INVOLVING SUSPECTED ILLEGAL ALIEN
A man was charged in an open murder case in Missouri in 2004. He was arrested Wednesday and charged with abandonment of a corpse and second-degree murder.
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DNA evidence also helped find the suspect. Police matched Clardy’s DNA to DNA fragments left on Howland’s body and a knife found in a sewer near the rest stop, according to charging documents.
Officers who interviewed Clardy Tuesday say he admitted to killing Howland at her home before dismembering her and dumping parts of her body in St. Louis and Warren counties. Clardy has no criminal record in Missouri, according to online court records.
Howland was a 35-year-old mother of four struggling with drug addiction, her daughter, Ashley Kinnear, told the Post-Dispatch in 2016.
