Dennis Melvin Howe: Canada's Most Wanted

[Richard]

In 1983, Dennis Melvin Howe kidnapped, raped, and murdered a little girl named Sharin Morningstar. He then stuffed her in a refrigerator and left town. This drifter is believed to have committed numerous other crimes, but he remains at large. Check out the link to the Toronto Police website...

Link
http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/most%20wanted/howe/howe.htm

[emma l]

Bumping this very scary story. He could be anywhere!!!

[CyberLaw]

I remember this story very well.

The problem with trying to find this person, is that he is an underground person. Transient lifestyle.

Unfotunately if he died, he would be buried in a "potter's field type of scene" as an unkown person, if the cause was natural or not.

They even dug up a grave a few years ago in Canada on the off chance that it was him. To no avail.

If he was in the USA, he would be a John Doe.

The USA does not link to a Canadian Database for wanted criminals.

His fingerprints would not have turned up, I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

This case still haunts me to this day.

[sporto531]

Yes, this case continues to rip at me as well. I met up with someone from the www.doenetwork.com (http://www.doenetwork.com) and we both shared the same passion regarding this case. We are conducting our own investigation into this case. if anyone has any information regarding this terrible tragedy, please contact me at olivertrio@shaw.ca. You don't have to leave your name, I just want the info. Thank you, todd

[Richard]

Dennis Melvyn Howe has not been seen or apprehended for over 22 years now. Check out the link in my first post to see computer enhanced images of Howe, as he may have looked in the 80's, 90's, and today.

Sharin Morningstar Keenan is actually Howe's only KNOWN victim. She disappeared on 23 January 1983 after a witness had seen her talking with an adult male who seemed to be coaxing her to go with him.

Nine days later, tenants in a rooming house on Brunswick Ave, Toronto told police that "Michael Burns" had not been seen since 24 January. When police investigated his premises, they found Sharin's body in the refrigerator, wrapped in a green plastic garbage bag. She had been raped and strangled.

After a month of investigation, it was learned that Burns was really Dennis Melvyn Howe, son of a convicted sex offender. Howe's criminal career started as a teenager with convictions for break-ins, robberies, rape, and abduction. He had spent half of his adult years in prison. After being parollede, he disappeared in his birth place of Saskatchewan.

Howe was 5 feet, nine inches tall and weighed about 165 pounds. He had a tanned, leathery complexion and brown eyes. His thinning brown hair has probably turned grey by now. He has a wrinkled forehead, a small gap between his front teeth, a partial upper denture, a hairy chest and arms, squarred shoulders, and a cleft chin with a scar on it. He is left-handed, known to wear a mustache, and has crooked little fingers.

Howe drank Molson's beer and chain-smoked Players plain cigarettes. He was a loud mouth who called everyone and everything a "turkey". At other times he transformed himself into a withdrawn loner. He is known as a supreme con-man and quick-change artist. He is good at conconcting stories and covering his tracks.

Howe would be about 64 years old now. When not in prison, he worked as a stock clerk, cook, roofer, janitor, millwright, electrician, carpenter, and metal worker.

[Richard]

BY LARRY COLLINS. © 1983 BY THE READER’S DIGEST ASSOCIATION (CANADA) LTD.

At 3 p.m. on Sunday, January 23, 1983, Lynda Keenan left her nine-year-old daughter, Sharin’ Morningstar, to play in Jean Sibelius Square, a small park near their home in Toronto’s polyglot Bathurst-Dupont section.

"Be home by five," she said. It was the last time she saw her daughter alive.

Ten days later, the child’s body was found stuffed in a refrigerator in a nearby rooming house. Sharin’ had been sexually assaulted and murdered.

Six weeks later, a first-degree murder warrant was issued for Dennis Melvyn Howe, 42, alias Michael Burns, alias Wayne King, alias Ralph Ferguson, alias Jim Myers. Metropolitan Toronto Police, assisted by other police forces, have followed hundred of leads without success.

To cast a wider net for Dennis Melvyn Howe, they asked Reader’s Digest to tell the story of Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan.

She was a pretty child with long, dark hair, brown eyes and a dimple in her right cheek when she smiled. A Grade 4 student at Jesse Ketchum Public School, she loved art and drama, wrote plays and with friends put on puppet shows in the street. She once drew a poster of a girl with long, dark hair in a field of flowers, and wrote on it: "I love everything."

About 4 p.m. that day, her father, Brendan Caron, walked to Jean Sibelius Square to pick up his daughter. There was no sign of her and Caron became alarmed. He hurried back home to 493 Dupont Street, and when he found Sharin’ wasn’t there, he looked around the neighbourhood. At 6:15 p.m. Lynda called the police. Soon a description of Sharin’ went out on the police radio.

Caron, an unemployed printer who sold food dehydrators from his house, and Lynda Keenan, both 35, were products of the 1960s era with its emphasis on love of man and nature – and on sharing. To them the morning star symbolized love, and they named their eldest daughter Sharin’ Morningstar. Their second daughter, now seven, is name Celeste, and their son, five, Summer Sky.

Police quickly searched the area around Jean Sibelius Square. By 10 p.m., a missing-person broadcast was going out over police radio every half hour. Sound trucks began spreading the message through the neighbourhood.

At noon on Monday, two homicide detectives, S. Sgt. David Boothby, 39 and Sgt. Wayne Oldham, 37, were assigned to the case. Two constables were stationed at the Dupont Street house and a recording device was installed in case a kidnapper tried to phone the parents.

On the mantel, Lynda Keenan burned a small white candle. "I think the light will help Sharin’ and me get through this," she said....
More...

LINK:

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/most%20wanted/howe/howe.htm#Suspect

[CrimeSolver]

Thanks for posting this Richard. I have fervently wanted to see this piece of garbage caught for almost 25 years now. I was about the same age as the little girl at the time. My feeling is Howe is dead, as I don't see how a loser like him could successfully evade authorities for this long. He was (is) John Walsh's #1 most wanted, and has been profiled on AMW multiple times, but I don't think there has ever been so much as a confirmed sighting of him. To my recollection, a few years ago there were suspicions he was somebody who had died and was buried in an unmarked grave, but that person was exhumed and excluded.

[KarlK]

The USA does not link to a Canadian Database for wanted criminals.

Are you sure? I was once pulled over for speeding near Montreal and after running my NY driver's license the officer knew of the two speeding tickets I had been slapped with in my state of residence (then NY state). Not only that but the demerit point he gave me (a great NY invention that has apparently been exported to Quebec as well) was immediately "credited" to my New York driver's record. I was also informed that I could pay the Quebec ticket to NY authorities "for my convenience" and that failing to do so would earn me a date in court in NY.

So I figured if any cop in Canada can look up my US driving record at will and impose penalties that could be carried out by a US state then the opposite must be true, so I checked and it is indeed. This is pretty thorough integration. This leads me to believe that since states and provinces release this benign driving record info to one another at the touch of a button then surely someone wanted for murder must be in the system on both sides of the border? Seems to me that catching murder suspects is at least as important in the eyes of the law than monitoring casual traffic violators...