46-year-old Neil Howard is facing several decades behind bars for killing his own mother, strangling her with a bungee cord in her bed after she returned from a date because he’d “had enough of her sleeping around” and “not giving him money.”
A jury deliberated for 3 hours before finding Howard guilty on one count of first-degree murder in the 2023 slaying of 60-year-old Norma J. Caraker.
On Sept. 13, 2023, officers with the Troy Police Department responded to a call at Caraker’s home. Prosecutors said the 911 call came from Howard, who told the emergency dispatcher that he was “worried about his mother because she was unresponsive.”
“Officers located Caraker in her bed with a bungee cord still secured around her neck,” the release states. “She was unresponsive and not breathing. Efforts to resuscitate her were not successful.”
According to a report from the Bellevue News-Democrat, a visibly drunk Howard told investigators that he saw an unknown man run out of a sliding-glass door in the home before finding his mother. However, police later determined that the door had been locked from the inside and Howard was soon arrested.
Continue readingAt trial, Assistant State’s Attorney Luke Yager told the jury that Howard was “unhappy about his mother’s dating,” which had been making him “angrier and angrier and angrier,” until he finally “got drunk enough that he couldn’t take it anymore.” That’s when he “wrapped that cord around her neck and he pulled, until she stopped breathing.”
Man strangled his mom with bungee cord because he 'had enough of her sleeping around'
Neil Howard was found guilty of murdering his mother, strangling her to death with a bungee cord because he was 'unhappy' about her dating.
