MURDERED: Melanie Howell

0:00Ashley Flowers:This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. For some of us, summer means more juggling, which can lead to overwhelm and worry. BetterHelp makes it easy to get the support you need. Having served over 6 million people globally, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. They'll match you with a quality licensed therapist so you can focus on your therapy goals. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash crimejunkie. That's betterhelp.com slash crimejunkie. Hi, Crime Junkies. It's Britt. And I have big news.

0:32Ashley Flowers:One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season. And it is wild. Host Delia D 'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:59Brit Prawat:Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And Britt, in all my years of not just making true crime stories, but consuming them as well, I have never heard a story that starts like this. One of our reporters reached out to an LAPD cold case guy to ask him about an unsolved case from the 70s. And he's like, oh, that case? That case is actually solved. But he couldn't tell us who did it. But what do you mean he couldn't tell you? Same reaction. So we pressed him. Like, how can it be solved if you don't know who committed the crime? And he said, well, the detective who worked the case when it was solved wouldn't tell him the killer's name, which made no sense to me.

1:44Brit Prawat:Police departments normally want to shout it from the rooftops if they solve a cold case. I mean, it's usually even a matter of public record, but not here. Here, it's not even an internal record. So we set out to answer the one question that this detective couldn't. And if you stick with me, I am proud to tell you that at the end of this episode, you'll be one of the first to know who killed Melanie Howell.

2:42Brit Prawat:Before 22-year-old Melanie Howell was found stabbed to death inside her apartment, something weird had been going on. Her boyfriend at the time, who I'm going to call Dale, told us that Melanie had been really scared in the days leading up to her death. Just two nights before she was killed, Dale says that she called him late at night from her apartment where she lived alone and she was terrified because there was a man that she caught watching her through her window. He told her to call the police and when he rushed over from his place, which wasn't far, he actually saw a man coming out of the bushes across the street.

3:20Brit Prawat:And without a second thought, this dude just takes off after him, like her boyfriend. Now, Melanie's med school boyfriend was also a runner, by the way. But somehow he says that this man still outran him. And because it was so dark out, he never got a good look at this guy. And he couldn't really describe him to police when they arrived shortly after. Now, Melanie was already planning on moving out of that apartment. She only had two more days left there before she was set to move into a new place with some people that she was going to nursing school with. So she and Dale decided that it would probably be best if she just stayed with him until then.

3:58Brit Prawat:But in those last two days, Melanie still had to finish packing up for her move. So on Friday, April 23rd, 1976, she left Dale's place in the morning and went back to hers. And Dale told us that neither of them were concerned about her being there during the day. I mean, the apartment was right by the UCLA campus, which if you don't know that area, it's pretty nice, pretty safe. So back then, there are no cameras or anything digital that could tell us when she got to the apartment. But they do end up locating a neighbor who says that around 10 a.m., she heard Melanie talking with a man at her front door.

4:34Brit Prawat:Now, the conversation sounded calm. She could tell that the man left. But then minutes later, the neighbor heard this man come back. And that is when she heard a struggle and then screams and glass breaking. And when the noises got louder, the neighbor looked through like the little peephole. And she said that she saw a man leaving Melanie's apartment carrying a black attache case, like a briefcase. Now, she sent her husband to go check on Melanie. The front door had been fully kicked in. And what he found inside was gruesome. There was blood throughout the apartment. But Melanie was in her bedroom, fully clothed, wrists bound, barely alive, bleeding badly from multiple stab wounds.

5:20Brit Prawat:Now, even though this guy, this husband or whatever, called police, by the time they got to the scene, it was too late. And Melanie had died.

5:27Ashley Flowers:And this all happened within, like, minutes, it sounds like.

5:30Brit Prawat:Oh, this dude did not spend much time in her apartment. Now, is that because his only goal was to come in and kill her and then get out as fast as possible? or did his real plan go awry because like she put up too much of a fight or something? I mean, even though he's gotten her wrist bound at one point, I know she has defensive wounds to her left hand and there was broken glass scattered in the apartment from a smashed window, likely from her trying to escape or fight back. Now, the guy ended up still stabbing her 47 times.

6:01Ashley Flowers:Oh my God.

6:02Brit Prawat:So even though she hadn't been sexually assaulted, maybe that was the plan and he just underestimated Melanie. Like once glass is breaking and she's screaming, he might know that they're drawing attention. This is the middle of the day and so he like takes off.

6:19Ashley Flowers:And what's the briefcase about? Is that something that he brought with him or took from her place?

6:24Brit Prawat:They assume it's his because there wasn't anything missing from Melanie's place. And that might have been what he brought the weapon that he used in because they never found a knife at the crime scene. So I think the briefcase potentially served two purposes. One, I think maybe, like I said, he had all this stuff that he planned to use. It was a kit. Yeah, handcuffs, knife, like whatever. Two, I think that it might have made him look like a door-to-door salesman. Like it makes me wonder if he pretended to be a salesman or something, someone harmless. And they have this interaction, right, that the neighbor hears.

6:57Brit Prawat:And then he leaves, like probably putting Melanie's guard down, making her think everything seems fine. and then he comes back and catches her off guard.

7:06Ashley Flowers:But if that's the case, I would guess this isn't the same guy that Melanie saw watching her like a couple nights before or she wouldn't have opened the door, right?

7:13Brit Prawat:I don't know that though because I don't think she actually got a good look at the guy. I mean, remember, it was dark when that happened and her boyfriend told us when we talked to him that she never described the guy to him, which I think she would have done if she could have. So honestly, to me, the idea that it's not the same guy feels like it would be a wild coincidence.

7:32Ashley Flowers:Well, and if that's the case, then it makes me wonder how long he had been watching her, like stalking her out, waiting for her to come back because she hadn't been there for a couple of days, at least overnight.

7:41Brit Prawat:That's the thing. Like this dude, if it was the same guy, had to have been like lying in wait. Middle of the day is not the best time to attack, but he might have been waiting for, who knows, hours, days for her to come back. And he felt like it was now or never. And to me, that doesn't feel like a guy who's like, this is his first time doing something like this. Now, because this guy spent such little time in her place, there wasn't much physical evidence that he left behind, except a single bloody fingerprint on the inside doorknob of the front door that I assume he likely left when he was leaving.

8:21Ashley Flowers:And did the neighbor get a good look at him at any point in time?

8:24Brit Prawat:So the only thing the neighbor could say was she kind of looked at him. She said that he looked like he was in his 20s. He was either white or Latino, like six feet tall with dark hair. And I mean, they get enough of a description that police do make a composite sketch, which we have. But like, to me, it's pretty basic. Like there aren't too many details. It just looks like a dark haired guy. And it doesn't seem to match anyone that Melanie knew, including her boyfriend Dale, who was a redhead. And speaking of Dale, at the time Melanie was killed, he was at school, sitting in the UCLA cafeteria with witnesses all around him.

9:01Brit Prawat:He told us that he found out that she was dead when a classmate called and told him that police were looking for him. And he had no problem going to speak with them, and he was easy to rule out. I mean, beyond his airtight alibi, his prints didn't match the one that they had in Melanie's blood. But even though they had asked him a lot of questions about himself and about Melanie, about the days leading up to her death, they weren't willing to answer any of his questions in return, which made him think that they still kind of suspected him. He even told us that a friend of his who, like, kept up with Melanie's case said that a detective warned that person to stop asking questions or he would become a suspect too.

9:42Brit Prawat:And honestly, it seems like everyone was a little suspect until they could rule them out. probably with that print. But one by one, neighbors, classmates, friends, exes, even people they had to go out of state to chase down, none of them are their mystery man. So despite tons of work, the case stalled and went cold. And like, listen, there wasn't even much hope being held out for this one. At one point, a detective told a friend of Dale's that the case wasn't solvable, which you don't hear that very often. in. And the trauma of that stuck with Melanie's boyfriend. He said he felt like the world was exploding around him.

10:24Brit Prawat:And in some ways it did. I mean, he tried to put on a brave face, but he was so traumatized he almost failed out of med school. And his grief was so intense that decades later, he still describes the feeling as like nothing he had ever experienced, even after a long career as a trauma surgeon. And one thought that he kept grappling with all those years was this. Was this just a random attack? And if so, could there be other victims? Well, little did he know, the answer to that was yes and yes. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases.

11:15Brit Prawat:And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

11:33Brit Prawat:In 2014, almost 40 years after Melanie's murder, new fingerprint technology changed everything. Martin Moharo, the cold case detective working Melanie's murder at that time, looked back through cases where fingerprints had been run before 2010. Before that was when LAPD's labs weren't as sophisticated. And he came across that bloody fingerprint from the doorknob. And it was the exact kind of thing that could be rerun all these years later and provide new results. And wouldn't you know it? He got a hit. So in his mind, case closed. Now, couldn't prosecute the guy because by 2014, that guy was already dead.

12:16Brit Prawat:So he just marked the case closed, told the family, and then told the former detective who worked the case. That's Detective Shepard, who we started the story with. But for some reason, no one would tell Shepard the guy's name who did it, which is why we were so excited to be able to tell Shepard over 10 years later. The killer's name was Paul Bustamante. We first learned it from Melanie's sister, but then she told us something even more shocking. Paul Bustamante had killed a second woman, a teacher named Miss Wolfe. Now, she didn't have Melanie's case records handy anymore. And all Detective Shepard could remember about this other case was that it happened in Fresno or maybe Sacramento, somewhere in Northern California.

13:04Brit Prawat:So our reporter, Malika Dollywell, scoured old newspapers for anything about a woman with the last name Wolf. And she was able to find her. 27-year-old Elizabeth Wolfe was killed more than a year after Melanie, 400 miles away from L.A. in Davis, California, which interestingly is the location of another UC campus, UC Davis. And just like Melanie, Elizabeth was in the throes of relocation. She had just moved back to Davis, where she had graduated from college a few years earlier, because she got a job teaching at a local school for deaf children. But she never even made it to her first day of school.

13:45Brit Prawat:Because after just two days at her new apartment, she was murdered.

13:50Ashley Flowers:Is that how he picked his victims?

13:53Brit Prawat:Dude, I have no idea. I mean, Melanie was moving out. Elizabeth was just moving in. But to me, it seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

14:01Ashley Flowers:Right, especially if you consider, like, Melanie was being stalked. Like, he's peering into a window. There's just boxes in empty rooms. Yeah, it's like that feels the same.

14:09Brit Prawat:Yeah, same telltale signs. and he could have realized that like someone in the middle of a move might be more distracted. Like doors are open a lot as you're coming and going more frequently.

14:20Ashley Flowers:But why though? Like now we know it wasn't someone that knew Melanie or at least I'm assuming he didn't.

14:26Brit Prawat:No, correct. As far as we can tell, Melanie Howell did not know Paul Bustamante and neither did Elizabeth Wolfe. It seems like he just targeted these women out of the blue. But I don't have a great answer for why. because our reporter got Elizabeth's records from Davis PD and she was attacked almost the same way. It seems like she answered the door to someone and pretty quickly after that, the guy stabbed her 14 times. No sexual assault. Then the guy runs, leaving fingerprints both on the inside and outside of Elizabeth's front door. Now, in Elizabeth's case, it seems like he did take her purse.

15:05Brit Prawat:But I don't know if we can say that this was the motive for the attack because it seems like he could have gotten her purse without what he did to her. And now that we know he did the same thing as before.

15:14Ashley Flowers:Yeah, I doubt that was his motivation. But how did they end up linking Paul?

15:19Brit Prawat:Well, it took a long time. And actually, for years, a lot of people considered Elizabeth's case closed because they believed that serial killer Henry Lee Lucas was responsible.

15:29Ashley Flowers:I know. So like he did with so many. I can tell you why they thought that. He confessed to her murder and they believed him.