MURDERED: Melanie Howell

Hi, crime junkies. You're host Ashley Flowers and I'm Britt and Britt in all my years of you 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. What do you mean he couldn't tell you the 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 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. Before 22-year-old Melanie Howell was found stabbed to death inside her apartment something weird. 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. 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 out ran 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. 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. 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 people and she said that she saw a man leaving Melanie's apartment carrying a black attesché 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 stabling us. Now even though this guy this this husband ever called police by the time they got to the scene it was too late and Melanie had died. And this all happened within like minutes it sounds like. 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. 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. And what's the briefcase about is that something that he brought with him or took from her place 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 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 the neighbor hears and then he leaves like maybe probably putting Melanie's guard down making her think everything seems fine and then he comes back and catches her off guard. 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. I don't know that though because I don't think she actually got a good look at the guy and 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 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 like a couple of days like at least overnight. 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 door knob of the front door that I assume he likely left when he was leaving. And did the neighbor get a good look at him at any point in time. 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. 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. 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 classmate friends X's 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. And the trauma of that stuck with Melanie's boyfriend he said he felt like the world was exploding around him and in some ways it did. I mean he tried to put on a brave face but he was so traumatized he almost filled 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. in 2014, almost 40 years after Melanie's murder, new fingerprint technology changed everything. Martin Mojaro, 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. So he just marked the case closed, told the family, and then told the former detective who worked the case, that's detective Shepherd who we started the story with. But for some reason, no one would tell Shepherd the guy's name who did it. Which is why we were so excited to be able to tell Shepherd 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. But she didn't have Melanie's case record handy anymore, and all detective Shepherd could remember about this other case was that it happened in Fresno, or maybe Sacramento, somewhere in Northern California. So our reporter, Malika Dollywall, scoured old newspapers for anything about a woman with the last name Wolfe, and she was able to find her. 27-year-old Elizabeth Wolfe was killed more than a year after Melanie, 400 miles away from LA 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. Because after just two days at her new apartment, she was murdered. Is that how he picked his victims? 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. Right, especially if you consider like Melanie was being stalked, like he's peering into a window, there's just boxes in empty rooms, like, say same telltale signs. And he could have realized that 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. But why, though? Like, now we know it wasn't someone that knew Melanie, or at least I'm assuming he didn't get it. No, correct. As far as we can tell, Melanie Howell did not know Paul Bussemontet, 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 record 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. 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, 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. I know. So like he did was so many, I can tell you why I thought that. He confessed to her murder, and they believed him. Exactly. So enough said that made him convincing in 1983, that was his MO. But as time went on, and as people started seeing Lucas for what he was, a liar doubt started creeping in. So in 1990, quietly, without much public attention, a Davis police detective looked back at the evidence and they found enough issues with Lucas' confession to actually rule him out. But that detective couldn't find anyone else at the time to rule in. So it wasn't until 2011 that her case got a fresh look. And that's when they sent the fingerprint cards that they had to the California DOJ. And boom, Paul Bustamante. And what were his prints in the system for? Because they were there when comparing for both Elizabeth and Melanie. And Melanie did it compare to 2014 or something like that. I don't know which thing that exactly got his prints put into the system, but he had a rap sheet going back to 1968. Armed robbery, disorderly conduct, obstructing or delaying a police officer or theft burglary, like it goes on and on. Like they probably had his prints for decades. But here's the thing. Earlier I was talking about Melanie's case, that 2010 marker. The DOJ database that they had for comparing this stuff was fairly new. So like old evidence cards that they would have with prints on them, like from crime scenes or from like when someone was arrested, like those had to be like put into the system, right? So while like before we had the system before the prints in Elizabeth's case were run, dude was just out there that whole time as a free man. Or at least he was up until 2006 because that is when he died, which is five years before they even ran prints in Elizabeth's case in eight years before the ones in Melanie's case got run. So he just got away with these murders and maybe more because after three years of his body being unclaimed, it ended up getting cremated. So by the time people realized that this is a guy they wish they could have a DNA sample to compare to cold cases were too late, it was too late. And we did get Detective Mojaro, the one who originally closed Melanie's case. We got him to answer a question for us. Do you think Paul Bustamante is a serial killer? And he told us, yes, he thinks the only reason investigators haven't connected him to other cases is because they don't have that DNA. Okay, but my question for him is why wouldn't he tell the other detective Paul's name? Like why hasn't it been reported before? So he told us that there was no big reason. Because I just don't go out of my way to publicize or share details about cases that get solved in general unless the chief asks me to. And he's any wanted to protect Melanie's family's privacy by not sharing the info with anyone including Detective Shepard. Which, again, it feels odd to me I've never heard of that. Well, and you also said it wasn't even in the case file, like the information wasn't there to get, right? Dude, I don't know. Okay. Again, more questions, but continue. Paul Bustamante isn't a suspect in any other LAPD cases. And listen, Mojaro couldn't do a deep dive into the sky or go looking for other old homicides that he might be connected to because his case got closed and every day in L.A. they were being thrown new homicides to work. I mean, like I get that, but that's where we come in. So Paul Bustamante was never a suspect during the investigations of either of these cases. Which means when our reporter Malika started trying to deep dive into the sky, there was nothing to go off of, like none of the stuff we normally have interview, statements, background on the sky. All we had was his name, two locations, and Detective Mojaro's memory that he might have had some kind of military tattoo. Good luck. Now luckily these days you can learn a lot from a name more than you would think. And here's what we found, Paul was born in L.A. in 1946. We don't know much about his early life, but from census records, it looks like that he may have been adopted and then raised by an aunt and uncle. And he went to high school in the L.A. area too. Now the men Paul likely knew as his dad and his brother both served in the military. And from military records, we learned that Paul did too. He joined the army in 1966, served overseas in Germany as a rifleman and a radio operator until he was discharged in 1968. And honestly this kind of clicked for Melanie's boyfriend because if Paul was also the stalker that he saw in the bushes, that would explain how he was able to outrun him because of his military training. Now marriage records show that in 1972 Paul got married to a woman who was a PhD student at UC Davis studying sociology. Now I don't know if he met her after he moved north or if he moved north because he met her whatever reason, but this is kind of an interesting side note. So while this woman was getting her PhDs, she taught classes to inmates at a women's prison and she authored a paper called The Nature of Female Criminality. So she's basically an expert on criminal behavior. I am dying to talk to this woman. This is a silly question. Did we reach out to her? Of course we reached out to her, but she didn't even respond to a request for an interview. But I am so interested in hearing what she has to say. Honestly about anything, but specifically about this. Truly. So if she or anyone who knows her is listening, we would love to have any kind of conversation. So did she go to UC Davis with Elizabeth? So they were there at the same time, but Elizabeth was an undergrad. And I mean, it is a big school. All I know is that whatever their relationship was, it didn't last long, because they divorced three years later in 1975. And then it's just a year later that Melanie is murdered in LA. So at some point, he had to have made his way back down to LA. But I don't know if that was to live and he moved if this was just a visit or what. And as far as I can tell, he wouldn't have had any ties to the school that Melanie was going to. So I doubt that they'd cross paths there. But Melanie did volunteer at a free clinic. And the detectives that we spoke to wondered if maybe that could have been a VA, which was and still is close to the apartment that she lived in. And because Paul was a vet, maybe he was one of her patients. Or maybe he at least saw her there, but that's literally just everyone taking a wild guess. So he murdered Melanie in 76. And Elizabeth in 77. What was he doing between 77 and 2006? That's the big question. I know in 77, he re-enlisted in the Army Reserves out of Sacramento, and then he kept committing petty crimes until he died. And the rest of his life, he bounced back and forth between Northern and Southern California. So I wonder if there are more cases out there. And listen, this has worked when we've done it before. So why not try it again? If any investigators are out there listening and you have a cold case that sounds similar to this, email us. Or if you know a local case from your hometown where a young woman maybe just made a move, like within a couple of days. And then she was stabbed inside her apartment. But there was no sexual assault. Contact me. The email is [email protected]. And I'm also looking for anyone out there who knew Paul Bustamonte, neighbors, co-workers, army buddies, acquaintances, anyone who may still be alive today. Again, email me [email protected]. When Elizabeth Wolfe died, her parents established the Elizabeth Mary Wolfe Environmental Learning Center out of UC Davis. And so in honor of her and Melanie, we've made a donation. And we're going to have a link to that and all of our source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. [Music] Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. I think chuck would approve.