Erwin Howard: September 2008 Archives

Sometimes, we reporters wonder if, after we file our stories, anyone besides our editors are looking at the fruits of our labor. Sometimes, it's easier to pretend nobody is. But it is nice to know that the care and work you put into an article is appreciated. Leave it to Deede Keller's kind family to take a moment to let me know:

Denise,

When I called Deede, she would answer and I would always proclaim: "Deedleeeee, Dave......Deedleeee, Dave.......!!!" Just another small thing now among the countless voids her loss has meant to myself and all her family and friends. Following that whirlwind of drama and tension, Pat, Kevin and I are certainly relieved for the outcome, yet still somewhat emotionally flat, possibly with the finality of it all.

We family members want to commend you and your newspaper for respecting Deede with an accurate recounting of the proceedings, while intimating how special Deede was to so many. We stayed Monday night near El Segundo, drove by Deede's house, then visited her bench in Library Park.

I believe Deedleeee would approve of the overall outcome and urge us all to move along with our lives, with her memory within short reach. Thanks again.

Respectfully,

Dave Buchanan

Pat Sparks

Kevin Buchanan

Joe Buchanan

Everyone here at the Daily Breeze wishes the best for the family, and hopes that moving on isn't as hard as it seems.

Previously entries here.

The turning, twisting plot that was the Erwin Howard murder trial over the last few days was exciting and dramatic. As a long-time court reporter, I've never seen a case take so many stunning turns in such a short period of time. It was a first.

Also a first - for the Daily Breeze, anyway - was the use of a videocamera in court to capture every moment. I was in the courtroom, but have to say that watching Howard and Julia "Deede" Keller's family on video this morning still moved me. While I'm in court reporting, I often don't get to look around because I'm busy writing in my notebook. Watching the video, I was able to sit back and just watch and listen without worrying about getting a complete quote and accurate detail. The quality of the video itself is impressive.

Check out the confession here and the plea and sentencing here.

Click here to see all our previous blog entries on the case.

Not that it would have taken someone like Columbo to figure out, but let's face it: EVERYBODY knew Erwin Howard killed his former wife Deede Keller from the day she disappeared from her El Segundo home.

I reported first in the Daily Breeze that Howard had left the country at the same time Keller went missing.

Yes, it's ALWAYS the husband.

So I Ieft a note on Howard's door to try to talk to him. He first called me back and left a message long after I'd gone home from work. 

It was July 19, 2004, a few days after Keller's body was found in the trunk of her car in San Diego. He had just returned from Bolivia. We spoke a few days later when he called me again. I published a story with his denial that he had anything to do with the crime.

Meanwhile, I saved the voice mail message all these years. Now that Howard's finally fessed up and is headed to prison (I watched the amazing video and have never seen anything like it in all my years of crime reporting), I figured you might as well hear the voice that I couldn't erase. He doesn't say anything incriminating, or anything even interesting, but I think you'll get why I saved it.

Here it is: erwin howard.wav

The courtroom was quiet and tense this morning. The day could've gone a number of ways. Defense attorney Andrew Flier was in the court's lock-up with Erwin Howard. The jury, expecting day three of Howard's trial, were waiting in the hallway. In court, nothing is ever a done deal until it's on the record - and Howard had had a whole weekend to mull the plea deal he seemed ready to accept last week.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told the courtroom crowded with Keller's friends and family. "It's like when the refs spend a lot of time in the replay booth."

Nearby rested a never-used poster board. On two sides, Flier wrote all the ways he planned to tell the jury Howard was innocent of Keller's slaying: no DNA, no physical evidence, no injuries to Howard.... The opening statement that went with the board was never delivered. Instead, in an 11th hour decision, Howard decided to admit he had killed Keller, but his attorney was going to try to convince the six men and six women on the Los Angeles Superior Court jury the killing was in the heat of passion and amounted to voluntary manslaughter.

Just moments before the jurors took their seats, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin came into the audience where many of Julia "Deede" Keller's friends and family were sitting. Hurriedly, he told them Erwin Howard's attorney just said he was changing the defense to killing in the heat of passion - meaning Howard now admits he killed Keller, but did not have the intent to murder her.

With only seconds to react, some of Keller's loved ones cried and embraced. The jury came in, and decorum was once again forced. It was a stunning admission for family and prosecutors who seemed to always know Howard's involvement in the death of his 54-year-old former wife. With the mountain of evidence against him laid out yesterday by Lewin, it seemed like a smart move for the defense to go to what Lewin semi-jokingly referred to as their "Plan B."

If the jury believes Howard, who is expected to testify, it could mean the difference between a half dozen or so years in prison and the rest of his life.

To summarize, here is how Flier laid out Keller's death to the jury: Howard went over late on the night of July 8, 2004, to discuss their troubled relationship. He knocked, she let him in. The conversation turned "heated," she slapped him and he freaked.

Howard grabbed her in a bear hug, squeezed hard and she passed out. He panicked, believing her dead and thinking no one would believe him, so he wrapped her up in the blankets and the tape.

After court yesterday, Flier made an ominous statement to me about the prosecution being wrong about what happened that night because nobody really knows beside the deceased. Now, we all do.

Michael Keller, the victim's son, is on the stand. He is testifying about Keller and Howard's relationship, as well as their normal habits and practices in daily life to help establish the prosecution's theory that Howard followed Keller in the days before her death. Flier said that wasn't true.

 

 

Earlier today, Denise text messaged me from her seat at the Erwin Howard murder trial that his attorney admitted in the courtroom today that his client was involved in the slaying of his former wife, Julia "Deede" Keller, in El Segundo in 2004.

Apparently Howard's trying to dodge a murder conviction that will send him away for good, and argue "heat of passion" or something else to get convicted of voluntary manslaughter. That will mean less time in prison.

We'll have more later when Denise can file her reports.

Howard's admission is quite different from what Howard told me in a telephone call on July 22, 2004, about a week after his former wife was found dead in the trunk of her car.

Here's what I wrote:

Two days after detectives searched his home and demanded a DNA sample, the former husband of a South Bay real estate agent found dead in San Diego denied any involvement in her killing, calling it "a horrible nightmare."

In a brief telephone interview Thursday, Erwin Howard, 50, answered with an emphatic "no" when asked if he had anything to do with the death of Julia "Deede" Keller. But, he said, he understood that his sudden trip to Bolivia to aid his sick mother raised suspicions.

"If I had anything to do with it, I would have fled the country and got lost there," said Howard, Keller's second husband. "I came back. I chose to come back."

Here's another quote from the story:

"Every day it's a nightmare, and I'm going to wake up and everything is going to be like it was," he said. "This is nothing but a horrible nightmare."

Howard also told me he was grieving his wife's death and planned to attend her funeral. He denied that he had not accepted the couple's breakup and divorce.

More from the story:

"I'm in a state of shock," Howard said. "This is devastating not only for me but for the whole community and especially their family."

Howard said he traveled to Bolivia to help his 86-year-old mother, who fell July 7 at her home in Santa Cruz and refused to go to the hospital.

Unable to reach her by telephone, he said he decided on short notice to fly to Bolivia. There, he found his mother in pain with a hematoma on her arm. He said he took her to a clinic for treatment.

Deputy District John Lewin pretty much only does long, complex cases - many of them having gone cold for years, if not decades. They include the murder cases against a former TRW engineer who killed his wife in Torrance over child support payments, a man who killed a prostitute in his Redondo Beach apartment and whose body was never found and a former fast food restaurant worker convicted last year for the decades-old murder of a colleague at the KFC where they worked in Torrance.

Here's a report from Denise, who has spent the morning in the courtroom:

The long-anticipated murder trial of Erwin Howard got underway in Los Angeles with Deputy District Attorney John Lewin presenting about half of his opening statement over the first nearly two hours. Howard is accused of killing his former wife, El Segundo resident Julia "Deede" Keller in July 2004.

Dozens of Keller's friends and family members are in the courtroom. Before the jurors entered, many of them were wearing buttons with the South Bay Realtor's photograph on them. This raised the ire of defense attorney Andrew Flier. Flier and Lewin could be heard outside the courtroom in a heated discussion. Flier accused Lewin of orchestrating a ploy for sympathy.

Lewin came back into the courtroom and talked with the group and lightly suggested that tactically the buttons were not a good idea. People wearing them removed them.

During the opening statement, Lewin detailed in a chronological fashion all of the physical and circumstantial evidence he believes shows Howard killed Keller. Most of the evidence comes from those in the close-knit El Segundo community, who noticed Howard's comings and goings around Keller's residence in the weeks preceding her death, as well as computerized records from Howard's job at the American Airlines maintenance hangar at LAX.

In addition, it appears a lot of evidence will be by way of the former couple's friends and family who will relate to the six-man, six-woman jury conversations they had with Howard and Keller about their relationship before her disappearance and death.

Keller was missing for several days before her body was found in the trunk of her car in San Diego.

It's been more than four years since Julia "Deede" Keller's body was discovered in the trunk of her car in San Diego. Today, her former husband will go on trial for allegedly killing the popular El Segundo resident and Manhattan Beach real estate agent. Prosecutors believe the motive is simple: "If I can't have her, no one else can."

But the largely circumstantial evidence case against Howard, 54, will be anything but simple. Deputy District Attorney John Lewin will take weeks to try and show how a calendar notation here, some wicked words there and some apparently sneaky activity around the days of 55-year-old Keller's death point the finger of blame dirctly at the former American Airlines baggage handler.

Opening statements are scheduled for 10 a.m. in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.