About 60 men and women gather for prayers late Monday afternoon at the trail in Tenino where Vanda S. Boone, 60, was slain Aug. 8.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
TENINO – Fifty-seven-year-old Bernard K. Howell Jr. finally got to see his grown son on Sunday.
The father who lives in a single-level duplex in Tenino didn’t mind on Monday sharing about his visit to the Thurston County Jail, or sharing his numerous ponderings since his 26-year-old son was arrested a week ago for murder.
“I think he needs mental health help more than life in prison,” Howell Jr. said. “He’s not a killer.”
Bernard K. Howell III, 26, was charged Wednesday in Thurston County Superior Court with first-degree murder. He has no criminal background, according to authorities.
Bernard K. Howell III
The victim is a 60-year-old massage therapist who worked in Olympia and lived in Yelm. Detectives think she was attacked and her throat cut by someone she didn’t know as she took a walk on the Yelm to Tenino trail a week ago Sunday. Vanda Skau Boone’s body was found in the younger Howell’s pickup truck wrapped in a sleeping bag when he was pulled over that night in Tenino.
The self-employed door-to-door meat salesman told deputies he had no part in her death. He said he found her body on the bicycle trail and was going to bury her in a swamp. He also said he engaged in sex with her after he found her dead, according to a declaration supporting probable cause filed in court.
Vanda Skau Boone, from her MySpace
Thurston County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Chris Mealy says deputies also have a lot of pondering to do about Howell, but much of it will wait until later.
“The thing we’re working on now, our primary concern, is this homicide,” Mealy said last Friday. “All of our attention is making sure this is as air tight and iron-clad as can be.”
Obviously later, detectives will look at other things, Mealy said.
Already, the sheriff’s office has been contacted by other law enforcement agencies in the state, Mealy said, noting phone calls from Pierce, Snohomish and Grays Harbor counties.
“They’re just asking if he’s given us any information about anything else he’s been involved in,” Mealy said.
Of real interest to the sheriff’s office is the case of Nancy Moyer, a 36-year-old woman who vanished from her Tenino home last year, Mealy said.
“He lived close to her,” Mealy said. “Ichiro could hit a baseball from his house to her house, it’s less than a mile.”
The sheriff’s office found Boone’s red Toyota RAVE4 in Tenino on state Route 507. Its keys and Boone’s wallet were found in Howell’s silver Nissan pickup truck, according to the declaration filed in Thurston County Superior Court.
They learned Boone had an appointment in the Tenino area at 12 o’clock noon that Sunday, according to Mealy.
Howell Jr., the father, said his son was full of rage that day, discouraged about his new business not making much money. His son, who goes by his middle name Keith, ran off to the park, Howell Jr. said.
Howell Jr. wonders if some “of those kids” gave him methamphetamine. Some of the young people in Tenino use it, he said. “Some, they’re just flat out meth-heads,” he said.
“It’s the only way I can see him being stupid enough,” Howell Jr. said. “He’s not stupid.”
Instead, the father says, Howell III is a young man who got good grades, was a wrestler all through school and who the girls find handsome. He started having problems about age 17, his father said. Both parents tried to get him help, he said.
“He wouldn’t go see anyone,” Howell Jr. said. “By that time he was pretty much his own man. He was really aggressive and angry sometimes.”
Howell III grew up with an older half-sister and an older step-sister all over, his father said. He went to school in Oak Harbor, Port Townsend, Lakewood and finished high school Lacey.
“I was a membership manager at private RV resorts, the kids were all raised in beautiful places,” Howell Jr. said.
He sent his son to vocational school and at least one quarter of college, but he blew those off, Howell Jr. said. Howell III was employed as a security guard working in places from Lakewood to Auburn. He also worked a couple of years for others selling gourmet meat, until his father helped him set up the Tenino Meat Co.
Howell Jr. said his son has lived with him off and on, most recently for the past two or three months in Tenino. Before that he lived in Lakewood.
Howell Jr. said he is stressed and doesn’t know what to think.
“Something like this can happen to the boy you think is great,” he said. “And boom, it happens.”
Howell Jr. and his estranged wife Cathy Howell visited their son for about 20 minutes on Sunday at the jail.
The pair spent their time trying to console him and encouraging him about the help he could get when he goes to Western State Hospital, Howell Jr. said.
They’re told he’s in an cell by himself on suicide watch and that worries him, the father said.
“He was not at all a happy camper,” he said. “He was upset, distraught and scared.”
Meanwhile, from Western Washington to New York City and beyond, people who knew the victim are grieving and want answers.
Madalena Sousa who lives in New York said she last spoke with Boone about two weeks ago. Boone planned to visit New York later this month and stay at Sousa’s Queens apartment while she goes to Australia, Sousa said.
The 50-year-old describes Boone as a friend of a friend who lived in the same city, who she cooked a farewell dinner for before Boone moved to a small town out west in March. They are both Brazilian, originally from Sao Paulo and both left there more than two decades ago.
She said she’s been getting emails every day from people all over the world who knew the massage therapist and want to know how something so terrible could happen. Boone was a gracious woman who helped others in their lives, she said.
“We all had the same feelings for Vanda, she loves nature and peacefulness,” she said.
She and others are left with so many questions, she said.
“It’s sad. We don’t know why,” she said. “To leave New York City and be murdered. It’s unfortunate there’s crazy people out there.”
Yesterday evening, in Tenino at the bicycle and walking trail where it crosses Churchill Road Southeast, Boone was described as an explorer, a conquistador and a brave heart.
“On your birthday you finally made it Mount Rainier, and to Mount Adams,” said one woman who described herself as a friend and an interfaith minister.
“You made it all the way across the country,” she said.
The speaker was one of several men and women who shared, some fellow students at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment in Yelm, some from Boone’s Olympia workplace, some who said they lived near the trail and didn’t know the victim.
The 5 p.m. gathering was led by the Rev. Carol McKinley. The community minister, affiliated with Olympia’s Unitarian Universalist Church, has made it her ministry to conduct blessings at places where homicides have occurred to reclaim them as spaces of life and peace.
Another woman touched on the violence that occurred that day. “It’s so sad somebody had to be so disconnected from their own humanity to do something like this,” she said.
McKinley offered a closing prayer. A ribbon commemorating Boone was added to a memorial pole, with the names of other homicide victims.
“We return this space to our community,” McKinley said. “As a place with life and hope.”
The Rev. Carol McKinley, left, and Barbara Gibson, members of Interfaith Works, following the moment of blessing with the memorial pole covered in ribbons commemorating homicide victims.
After most of the more than 50 individuals left, a handful carried a spray of white lilies and light blue hydrangeas about a half mile down the paved path.
Judy Scott, a manager at Radiance Herbs and Massage in Olympia, said Boone’s co-workers were still trying to make sense of the death of their beloved friend, and the short ceremony was helpful in easing some fears.
“We all live in places like this,” Scott said as she strolled down the shaded trail. “Because we love the green and the beauty.”
Steve Klein, representing the Ramtha school, said its founder JZ Knight has offered to assist with the funeral expenses, after learning one of its students had no living family.
A Thurston County judge has ordered Howell III be evaluated by mental health professionals at Western State Hospital as to whether he’s competent.
He won’t be arraigned until he’s deemed able to understand the nature of the proceedings against him and assist in his own defense, according to Thurston County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jim Powers.
•••
To read previous stories, see below.
• “Tenino slaying update: Prosecutors initially charged first-degree aggravated murder and rape, but amended the charges downward this afternoon” click here
• “Tenino body update: Yelm, New York woman’s throat cut, coroner says” click here
• “Man found with dead body in truck in Tenino has history of mental health problems, attorney says” click here
• “News brief: Man pulled over in Tenino with dead woman inside his truck” click here
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