In the autumn of 2003, a young Hispanic woman named Joyvaline Martinez, 23 years old, vanished from East Hartford, Connecticut. She was last seen on October 10, 2003. Her family grew deeply concerned when she failed to appear for her own birthday party, an absence that was entirely out of character for the young woman who was living with her mother at the time.
As days turned into weeks and then years, her whereabouts remained a painful mystery for her loved ones.
The first break in the case, though grim, came in September 2007. A hunter walking through a wooded area behind a strip mall off Hartford Road in New Britain stumbled upon skeletal remains. This discovery would soon reveal a far more sinister story than a single missing person's case. Over time, the remains of three women were unearthed from this secluded spot. The advanced state of decomposition made immediate identification impossible, plunging the families of numerous missing women into an agonizing wait for answers. Joyvaline's mother provided a DNA sample in the hopes of finally learning her daughter's fate.
It wasn't until September 2013, a full decade after she was last seen, that a mitochondrial DNA hit at the state's forensic lab confirmed that one of the sets of remains belonged to Joyvaline Martinez. The devastating news brought a close to the long period of uncertainty for her family, but opened a new chapter focused on finding justice. Investigators revealed that Joyvaline, along with the other victims found, Diane Cusack and Mary Jane Menard, had all been known to frequent the same downtown New Britain neighborhood and had struggled with drug dependency. The deaths of all three women were classified as homicides.
Further investigation and subsequent searches of the area in the following years led to the discovery of the remains of four other individuals, bringing the total number of victims to seven. This grim burial ground pointed to the work of a serial killer. In 2015, law enforcement officials publicly identified their suspect: William Devin Howell, an East Coast drifter who had been incarcerated since 2005 for the manslaughter of another woman who also disappeared in 2003. Already serving a 15-year sentence, Howell was subsequently charged with the murders of Joyvaline Martinez and five other victims whose remains were found at the New Britain site. Authorities stated that the murders were committed by the same offender at different times, finally linking a name and face to the perpetrator of these heinous crimes.
