Bio

Michael Wayne Howell was born on October 6, 1959. By 1987, he was in a relationship with Mona Lisa Watson, and the two lived in the Memphis, Tennessee area.

Murder Story

On October 31, 1987, Howell and Mona Lisa Watson went to the home of Cheri Goff, the girlfriend of Howell’s brother. Goff testified that Howell showed her keys connected to Lynn Whitsett Corporation and said he was going to get a truck. She also testified that Howell said he was “going down hard this time” and was going to take people with him.

Later that night, Howell and Watson were left near the Lynn Whitsett property in Memphis. By early November 1, they were seen driving a white company pickup truck. Witnesses also described Howell carrying or displaying a silver handgun with a bone-colored handle.

On the night of November 1 into early November 2, 1987, Alvin Kennedy was working at Loeb’s 7-Eleven Market on Whitten Road in Shelby County, Tennessee. At about 12:45 a.m., a customer entered the store and found Kennedy’s body behind the counter. The cash register drawer was open, and the paper money was missing. Investigators found that Kennedy had been shot once at close range in the upper right forehead, and $111.16 was missing from the store.

A clerk at a store across the street testified that Howell and Watson came into her store around the same time and were driving the stolen Whitsett truck. The Tennessee Supreme Court also noted testimony that Howell later made statements about killing the clerk because the safe would not be opened and because he did not want to leave a witness.

After the Tennessee killing, Howell and Watson drove west to Oklahoma. On November 2, 1987, at about 9:00 p.m., Charlene Calhoun was shot in the parking lot of her apartment complex in Del City, Oklahoma. Her 1987 Toyota Tercel was stolen, and the stolen Whitsett truck was found about 125 feet from the shooting scene with its interior burning. Howell’s left palm prints were found on the truck’s fenders.

According to Watson’s preliminary-hearing testimony, she and Howell drove from Memphis to Oklahoma in the stolen truck, stopped at an apartment complex, and then Howell shot Calhoun. Watson said they took Calhoun’s car, set fire to the truck with lighter fluid, and then drove back to Memphis before later traveling to Florida.

Oklahoma court records state that Calhoun, a U.S. Air Force sergeant, was fatally shot beneath her right eye. Howell and Watson loaded her body into her car, drove to a deserted area, and dumped the body. Her body was found on November 17, 1987.

On November 29, 1987, Howell and Watson were arrested in Panama City, Florida, after a shootout and high-speed chase with police. They were driving Calhoun’s stolen Toyota, using Tennessee plates from another vehicle. Police found a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 revolver with a bone handle on the passenger-side floorboard where Howell had been seated. Ballistics evidence showed that the same gun fired the bullets that killed both Alvin Kennedy and Charlene Calhoun.

Howell and Watson were first tried together in Oklahoma for Calhoun’s murder. The guilt phase began on November 28, 1988, and the jury returned guilty verdicts on December 6, 1988. Howell received a death sentence, while Watson received life imprisonment.

In Tennessee, Howell was later convicted of grand larceny and first-degree felony murder for Alvin Kennedy’s death. The Tennessee Supreme Court stated that he was found guilty of felony murder but not guilty of premeditated first-degree murder. The jury sentenced him to death, and the trial court ordered the Tennessee death sentence to run consecutively with the Oklahoma death sentence and a Florida attempted-murder sentence.

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Howell’s conviction and death sentence on November 10, 1993. The court reviewed the felony-murder aggravating circumstance issue under State v. Middlebrooks but concluded that the error was harmless and affirmed the death sentence.

In Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Howell’s murder conviction in 1994 but vacated the original death sentence because of improper contacts between sheriff’s deputies and a juror during the penalty phase. After a new penalty proceeding in 1996, a second jury again recommended death, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that sentence in 1998. 

Howell continued challenging his convictions and death sentences for years. His later claims included intellectual-disability arguments after Atkins v. Virginia. Oklahoma held a jury trial on that issue in May 2005, and the jury found that he was not intellectually disabled. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief in 2006.

On September 5, 2013, the Tenth Circuit rejected Howell’s Oklahoma federal habeas claims and found no basis to disturb his conviction or death sentence. The court noted that the earlier Oklahoma penalty-phase juror-contact problem had been corrected by the resentencing proceeding.

Michael Wayne Howell died of natural causes on December 18, 2013, at the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville. Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed that he had been sentenced to death for Alvin Kennedy’s murder and had also been convicted and sentenced to death in Oklahoma for Charlene Calhoun’s murder.