In the spring of 2003, a 26-year-old Hispanic woman named Marilyn Gonzalez vanished from her home in Waterbury, Connecticut. A mother of two young daughters, ages seven and eleven, her disappearance on May 15, 2003, left a void in the lives of her family who loved and missed her dearly. For years, her fate remained a painful mystery, one of several disappearances that year that cast a shadow over central Connecticut.
The search for answers would stretch on for more than a decade, long after any hope of finding her alive had faded.
The grim resolution to Marilyn's story began to unfold in 2007 when a hunter stumbled upon the skeletal remains of three women in a wooded area behind a strip mall in New Britain. This macabre discovery triggered an intensive investigation that led authorities back to the same dumping ground in April 2015, where the remains of four more individuals, including Marilyn Gonzalez, were unearthed. The area, described by the killer as his "garden," had become the final resting place for seven souls who all went missing in 2003. The identification of Marilyn's remains was announced in June 2015, finally giving her family a tragic certainty they had long been denied.
The investigation into these serial killings ultimately focused on one man: William Devin Howell, a drifter from Virginia who had been doing odd jobs in the area in 2003. Howell was already incarcerated, serving a 15-year sentence for the manslaughter of another one of the seven victims, Nilsa Arizmendi. DNA evidence found in Howell's van linked him to several of the victims. In September 2015, he was charged with the murders of Marilyn Gonzalez and five other victims.
Howell eventually pleaded guilty to six counts of murder. He confessed to a cellmate that he was a "sick ripper" with a "monster inside of him," and referred to his van as the "murder mobile." In November 2017, William Devin Howell was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences, ensuring he would spend the rest of his life in prison for the string of brutal killings that included the murder of Marilyn Gonzalez.
