It's gonna be pretty tough to chalk this up to simple carelessness:
A father has been charged with fatally shooting his adult son with Down syndrome at a home in East Texas after claiming he had mistaken him for an intruder and then later burning his body in what authorities on Thursday described as a 'bizarre crime.'
Michael C. Howard, 68, who is an attorney in Houston, told investigators he was at a home he owns in Sabine County on Sunday evening when he accidentally killed his 20-year-old son, Mark Randall Howard, with a shotgun, Sabine County Sheriff's Office Deputy J.P. MacDonough said at a news conference.
Howard was reportedly at home on Sunday when he shot his son, after which he "used a tractor backhoe to take his son's body" about two miles into his massive 2,500 acre property, where he cremated him on a wood pile.
Though Howard is an attorney in Houston, his Sabine County property is remote and expansive:
The father reportedly told investigators that he "cremated his son in accordance with what he felt his son would have wanted." The sheriff's office isn't so convinced of his altruistic motives, however:
'It is a bizarre crime anywhere you are just because of the nature of the event,' MacDonough said. 'Mr. Howard committed this act and in the furtherance of that, burned the body and cleaned the crime scene, which as an investigator, I would take as indicative of nefarious purposes or for nefarious purposes.'
The father remains jailed "on bonds totaling $20 million" after being charged with the murder of his son.
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