MURDERED: Melanie Howell

In 1976, a 22-year-old nursing student was murdered in her Los Angeles apartment, leaving behind just one clue: a bloody fingerprint. Decades later, that print was matched—and the case was quietly marked solved. But no one ever publicly announced who did it. So we set out to find the answer… and to uncover what else he may have done.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

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• 2:17Ashley Flowers?

  Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And Britt, in all my years of not just making true crime stories, but consuming them as well, I have never heard a story that starts like this. "One of our reporters reached out to an LAPD cold case guy to ask him about an unsolved case from the 70s. And he's like, 'Oh, that case? That case is actually solved.' But he couldn't tell us who did it." What do you mean, he couldn't tell you? Same reaction. So, we pressed him. Like, how can it be solved if you don't know who committed the crime? And he said, "Well, the detective who worked the case when it was solved wouldn't tell him the killer's name," which made no sense to me.

• 3:02Ashley Flowers?

  Police departments normally want to shout it from the rooftops if they solve a cold case. I mean, it's usually even a matter of public record. But not here. Here, it's not even an internal record. So, we set out to answer the one question that this detective couldn't. And if you stick with me, I am proud to tell you that at the end of this episode, you'll be one of the first to know who killed Melanie Howell.

• 4:00Ashley Flowers?

  Before 22-year-old Melanie Howell was found stabbed to death inside her apartment, something weird had been going on. Her boyfriend at the time, who I'm gonna call Dale, told us that Melanie had been really scared in the days leading up to her death. Just two nights before she was killed, Dale says that she called him late at night from her apartment where she lived alone, and she was terrified because there was a man that she caught watching her through her window. He told her to call the police, and when he rushed over from his place, which wasn't far, he actually saw a man coming out of the bushes across the street. And without a second thought, this dude just takes off after him, like her boyfriend.

• 4:43Ashley Flowers?

  Now, Melanie's med school boyfriend was also a runner, by the way, but somehow he says that this man still outran him. And because it was so dark out, he never got a good look at this guy, and he couldn't really describe him to police when they arrived shortly after. Now Melanie was already planning on moving out of that apartment. She only had two more days left there before she was set to move into a new place with some people that she was going to nursing school with. So she and Dale decided that it would probably be best if she just stayed with him until then. But in those last two days, Melanie still had to finish packing up for her move.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:20Ashley Flowers?

  So on Friday, April 23rd, 1976, she left Dale's place in the morning and went back to hers. And Dale told us that neither of them were concerned about her being there during the day. I mean, the apartment was right by the UCLA campus, which if you don't know that area, it's pretty nice, pretty safe. So back then, there are no cameras or anything digital that could tell us when she got to the apartment. But they do end up locating a neighbor who says that around 10 a.m. she heard Melanie talking with a man at her front door. Now, the conversation sounded calm. She could tell that the man left, but then minutes later, the neighbor heard this man come back.

• 6:00Ashley Flowers?

  And that is when she heard a struggle and then screams and glass breaking. And when the noises got louder, the neighbor looked through like the little peephole. And she said that she saw a man leaving Melanie's apartment carrying a black attache case, like a briefcase. Now she sent her husband to go check on Melanie. The front door had been fully kicked in and what he found inside was gruesome. There was blood throughout the apartment, but Melanie was in her bedroom, fully clothed, wrists bound, barely alive, bleeding badly from multiple stab wounds. Now, even though this guy, this husband, ever called police, by the time they got to the scene, it was too late and Melanie had died.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And this all happened within like minutes, it sounds like.

• 6:47Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, this dude did not spend much time in her apartment. Now, is that because his only goal was to come in and kill her and then get out as fast as possible? Or did his real plan go awry because like she put up too much of a fight or something? I mean, even though he's gotten her wrist bound at one point, I know she has defensive wounds to her left hand and there was broken glass scattered in the apartment from a smashed window, likely from her trying to escape or fight back. Now, the guy ended up still stabbing her forty-seven times.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 7:19Ashley Flowers?

  So even though she hadn't been sexually assaulted, maybe that was the plan and he just underestimated Melanie. Like, once glass is breaking and she's screaming, he might know that they're drawing attention. This is the middle of the day and so he like takes off.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And what's the briefcase about? Is that something that he brought with him or took from her place?

• 7:41Ashley Flowers?

  They assume it's his because there wasn't anything missing from Melanie's place. And that might have been what he brought the weapon that he used in because they never found a knife at the crime scene. So I think the briefcase potentially served two purposes. One, I think maybe, like I said, he had all this stuff that he planned to use.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  There's a kit.

• 7:59Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, handcuffs, knife, like whatever. Two, I think that it might have made him look like a door-to-door salesman. Like, it makes me wonder if he pretended to be a salesman or something, someone harmless. And they have this interaction, right, that the neighbor hears and then he leaves, like maybe probably putting Melanie's guard down.

• 8:19Ashley Flowers?

  Making her think everything seems fine and then he comes back and catches her off guard.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  But if that's the case, I would guess this isn't the same guy that Melanie saw watching her like a couple nights before, or she wouldn't have opened the door, right?

• 8:31Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know that though, because I don't think she actually got a good look at the guy. I mean, remember, it was dark when that happened and her boyfriend told us when we talked to him that she never described the guy to him, which I think she would have done if she could have. So honestly, to me, the idea that it's not the same guy feels like it would be a wild coincidence.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, and if that's the case, then it makes me wonder how long he had been watching her, like stalking her out, waiting for her to come back, because she hadn't been there for like a couple of days, like at least overnight.

• 8:59Ashley Flowers?

  That's the thing, like this dude, if it was the same guy, had to have been like lying in wait. Middle of the day is not the best time to attack, but he might have been waiting for, who knows, hours, days for her to come back and he felt like it was now or never. And to me, that doesn't feel like a guy who's like, this is his first time doing something like this. Now, because this guy spent such little time in her place, there wasn't much physical evidence that he left behind, except a single bloody fingerprint on the inside doorknob of the front door that I assume he likely left when he was leaving.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And did the neighbor get a good look at him at any point in time?

• 9:41Ashley Flowers?

  So the only thing the neighbor could say was, she kind of looked at him. She said that he looked like he was in his twenties, he was either white or Latino, like six feet tall with dark hair. And I mean, they get enough of a description that police do make a composite sketch, which we have, but like, to me, it's pretty basic. Like, there aren't too many details, it just looks like a dark haired guy. And it doesn't seem to match anyone that Melanie knew, including her boyfriend Dale, who was a redhead. And speaking of Dale, at the time Melanie was killed, he was at school, sitting in the UCLA cafeteria with witnesses all around him. He told us that he found out that she was dead when a classmate called and told him that police were looking for him.

• 10:24Ashley Flowers?

  And he had no problem going to speak with them, and he was easy to rule out. I mean, beyond his airtight alibi, his prints didn't match the one that they had in Melanie's blood. But even though they had asked him a lot of questions about himself and about Melanie, about the days leading up to her death, they weren't willing to answer any of his questions in return, which made him think that they still kinda suspected him. He even told us that a friend of his who like kept up with Melanie's case said that a detective warned that person to stop asking questions or he would become a suspect too. And honestly, it seems like everyone was a little suspect until they could rule them out, probably with that print.

• 11:07Ashley Flowers?

  But one by one, neighbors, classmates, friends, exes, even people they had to go out of state to chase down, none of them are their mystery man. So despite tons of work, the case stalled and went cold. And like, listen, there wasn't even much hope being held out for this one. At one point, a detective told a friend of Dale's that the case wasn't solvable, which you don't hear that very often. And the trauma of that stuck with Melanie's boyfriend. He said he felt like the world was exploding around him. And in some ways, it did. I mean, he tried to put on a brave face, but he was so traumatized, he almost failed out of med school.

• 11:48Ashley Flowers?

  And his grief was so intense that decades later, he still describes the feeling as like nothing he had ever experienced, even after a long career as a trauma surgeon. And one thought that he kept grappling with all those years was this: Was this just a random attack? And if so, could there be other victims? Well, little did he know, the answer to that was yes and yes.

• 12:19Speaker 01

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• 13:24Ashley Flowers?

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• 14:42Ashley Flowers?

  In 2014, almost 40 years after Melanie's murder, new fingerprint technology changed everything. Martin Moharow, the cold case detective working Melanie's murder at that time, looked back through cases where fingerprints had been run before 2010. Before that was when LAPD's labs weren't as sophisticated. And he came across that bloody fingerprint from the doorknob. And it was the exact kind of thing that could be rerun all these years later and provide new results. And wouldn't you know it? He got a hit. So in his mind, case closed. Now, couldn't prosecute the guy because by 2014, that guy was already dead.

• 15:24Ashley Flowers?

  So he just marked the case closed, told the family, and then told the former detective who worked the case, that's Detective Shepherd, who we started the story with. But for some reason, no one would tell Shepherd the guy's name who did it. Which is why we were so excited to be able to tell Shepherd over 10 years later. The killer's name was Paul Bustamante. We first learned it from Melanie's sister. But then she told us something even more shocking. Paul Bustamante had killed a second woman, a teacher named Miss Wolf. Now, she didn't have Melanie's case records handy anymore. And all Detective Shepherd could remember about this other case

• 16:06Ashley Flowers?

  was that it happened in Fresno, or maybe Sacramento, somewhere in Northern California. So our reporter, Malika Dollywell, scoured old newspapers for anything about a woman with the last name Wolf. And she was able to find her. 27-year-old Elizabeth Wolf was killed more than a year after Melanie, 400 miles away from LA in Davis, California. Which, interestingly, is the location of another UC campus, UC Davis. And just like Melanie, Elizabeth was in the throes of relocation. She had just moved back to Davis, where she had graduated from college a few years earlier because she got a job teaching at a local school for deaf children.

• 16:50Ashley Flowers?

  But she never even made it to her first day of school. Because after just two days at her new apartment, she was murdered.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Is that how he picked his victims?

• 17:01Ashley Flowers?

  Dude, I have no idea. I mean, Melanie was moving out. Elizabeth was just moving in, but to me, it seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Right, especially if you consider like Melanie was being stalked. Like he's peering into a window, there's just boxes in empty rooms.

• 17:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  It's like that feels the same.

• 17:17Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, same telltale signs. And he could have realized that like someone in the middle of a move might be more distracted. Like doors are open a lot as you're coming and going more frequently.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  But why though? Like now we know it wasn't someone that knew Melanie, or at least I'm assuming he didn't.

• 17:34Ashley Flowers?

  No, correct. As far as we can tell, Melanie Howell did not know Paul Bustamante and neither did Elizabeth Wolfe. It seems like he just targeted these women out of the blue. But I don't have a great answer for why. Because our reporter got Elizabeth's records from Davis PD and she was attacked almost the same way. It seems like she answered the door to someone and pretty quickly after that, the guy stabbed her 14 times. No sexual assault. Then the guy runs, leaving fingerprints both on the inside and outside of Elizabeth's front door. Now, in Elizabeth's case, it seems like he did take her purse.

• 18:14Ashley Flowers?

  But I don't know if we can say that this was the motive for the attack because it seems like he could have gotten her purse without what he did to her. And now that we know he did the same thing as before.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I doubt that was his motivation, but how did they end up linking Paul?

• 18:27Ashley Flowers?

  Well, it took a long time and actually for years, a lot of people considered Elizabeth's case closed because they believed that serial killer Henry Lee Lucas was responsible.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:38Ashley Flowers?

  I know. So like he did with so many.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I can tell you why they thought that. He confessed to her murder and they believed him.

• 18:45Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. And apparently there was enough said that made him convincing in 1983.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:49Ashley Flowers?

  That was his MO. But as time went on and as people started seeing Lucas for what he was.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  A liar.

• 18:56Ashley Flowers?

  Doubts started creeping in. So in 1990.

• 19:00Ashley Flowers?

  Quietly, without much public attention, a Davis police detective looked back at the evidence and they found enough issues with Lucas's confession to actually rule him out. But that detective couldn't find anyone else at the time to rule in. So it wasn't until 2011 that her case got a fresh look. And that's when they sent the fingerprint cards that they had to the California DOJ. And boom, Paul Bustamante.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  And what were his prints in the system for? Because they were there when comparing for both Elizabeth and Melanie.

• 19:35Ashley Flowers?

  And Melanie didn't get compared to like 2014 or something like that. I don't know which thing that exactly got his prints put into the system, but he had a rap sheet going back to like 1968. I mean, armed robbery, disorderly conduct, obstructing or delaying a police officer, theft, burglary, like it goes on and on. Like, they probably had his prints for decades. But here's the thing, earlier I was talking about Melanie's case, that 2010 marker, the DOJ database that they had for comparing this stuff was fairly new. So like old evidence cards that they would have with prints on them, like from crime scenes or from like when someone was arrested, like those had to be like put into the system.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:18Ashley Flowers?

  So while, like before we had the system, before the prints in Elizabeth's case were run, dude was just out there that whole time as a free man. Or at least he was up until 2006. Because that is when he died, which is five years before they even ran prints in Elizabeth's case, in eight years before the ones in Melanie's case got run.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  So he just got away with these murders?

• 20:44Ashley Flowers?

  And maybe more. Because after three years of his body being unclaimed, it ended up getting cremated. So by the time people realized that this is a guy they wish they could have a DNA sample to compare to cold cases for.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  It was too late.

• 21:01Ashley Flowers?

  It was too late. And we did get Detective Moharo, the one who originally closed Melanie's case. We got him to answer a question for us. Do you think Paul Bustamante is a serial killer? And he told us, yes. He thinks the only reason investigators haven't connected him to other cases is because they don't have that DNA.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Okay, but my question for him is, why wouldn't he tell the other Detective Paul's name? Like, why hasn't this been reported before?

• 21:33Ashley Flowers?

  So he told us that there was no big reason. He's like, I just don't go out of my way to publicize or share details about cases that get solved in general, unless the chief asks, like, asks me to. And he said he wanted to protect Melanie's family's privacy by not sharing the info with anyone, including Detective Shepherd. Which, again, it feels odd to me. I've never heard of that, but like-

• 21:53Speaker 01

  And like, you also said it wasn't even in like, the case file. Like, the information wasn't there to get, right?

• 21:58Ashley Flowers?

  Dude, I don't know.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Okay, again, more questions, but continue.

• 22:02Ashley Flowers?

  Paul Bustamante isn't a suspect in any other LAPD cases. And listen, Moharo couldn't do a deep dive into this guy or go looking for other old homicides that he might be connected to because his case got closed. And every day in LA, they were being thrown new homicides to work. I mean, like, I get that. But, that's where we come in.

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• 23:08Speaker 01

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• 25:33Ashley Flowers?

  So Paul Bustamante was never a suspect during the investigations of either of these cases, which means when our reporter Malika started trying to deep dive into this guy, there was nothing to go off of, like, none of the stuff we normally have: interviews, statements, background on this guy. All we had was his name, two locations, and Detective Moharo's memory that he might have had some kind of military tattoo. Good luck. Now luckily, these days you can learn a lot from a name, more than you would think. And here's what we found. Paul was born in LA in 1946. We don't know much about his early life, but from census records, it looks like that he may have been adopted and then raised by

• 26:15Ashley Flowers?

  an aunt and uncle. And he went to high school in the LA area, too. Now, the men Paul likely knew as his dad and his brother both served in the military. And from military records, we learned that Paul did, too. He joined the Army in 1966, served overseas in Germany as a rifleman and a radio operator until he was discharged in 1968. And honestly, this kind of clicked for Melanie's boyfriend, because if Paul was also the stalker that he saw in the bushes, that would explain how he was able to outrun him because of his military training. Now, marriage records show that in 1972, Paul got married to a

• 26:57Ashley Flowers?

  woman who was a PhD student at UC Davis studying sociology. Now, I don't know if he met her after he moved north, or if he moved north, like, because he met her or whatever reason, but this is kind of an interesting side note. So while this woman was getting her PhD, she taught classes to inmates at a women's prison, and she authored a paper called "The Nature of Female Criminality."

• 27:21Speaker 01

  So she's basically an expert on criminal behavior?

• 27:24Ashley Flowers?

  I am dying to talk to this woman.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  This is a silly question. Did we reach out to her?

• 27:31Ashley Flowers?

  Of course we reached out to her, but she didn't even respond to our request for an interview. But I am so interested in hearing what she has to say.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Honestly, about anything, but specifically about this.

• 27:41Ashley Flowers?

  Truly. So if she or anyone who knows her is listening, we would love to have any kind of conversation.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  So did she go to UC Davis with Elizabeth?

• 27:49Ashley Flowers?

  So they were there at the same time, but Elizabeth was an undergrad. And I mean, it is a big school. All I know is that whatever their relationship was, it didn't last long. Because they divorced three years later in 1975. And then it's just a year later that Melanie is murdered in LA. So at some point, he had to have made his way back down to LA. But I don't know if that was to live and he moved, if this was just a visit or what. And as far as I can tell, he wouldn't have had any ties to the school that Melanie was going to. So I doubt that they crossed paths there. But Melanie did volunteer at a free clinic. And the detectives that we spoke to wondered if maybe that could have been a VA,

• 28:33Ashley Flowers?

  which was and still is, close to the apartment that she lived in? And because Paul was a vet, maybe he was one of her patients? Or maybe he at least saw her there? But that's literally just everyone taking a wild guess.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  So he murdered Melanie in 76? And Elizabeth in 77? What was he doing between 77 and 2006?

• 28:55Ashley Flowers?

  That's the big question. I know in 77, he re-enlisted in the Army Reserves out of Sacramento. And then he kept committing petty crimes until he died. And the rest of his life, he bounced back and forth between Northern and Southern California. So I wonder if there are more cases out there? And listen, this has worked when we've done it before, so why not try it again? If any investigators are out there listening and you have a cold case that sounds similar to this, email us. Or if you know a local case from your hometown where a young woman maybe just made a move, like within a couple of days. And then she was stabbed inside her apartment, but there was no sexual assault? Contact me.

• 29:39Ashley Flowers?

  The email is [email protected]. And I'm also looking for anyone out there who knew Paul Bustamante, neighbors, coworkers, Army buddies, acquaintances, anyone who may still be alive today. Again, email me, [email protected].

• 30:10Ashley Flowers?

  When Elizabeth Wolfe died, her parents established the Elizabeth Mary Wolfe Environmental Learning Center out of UC Davis. And so, in honor of her and Melanie, we've made a donation. And we're gonna have a link to that and all of our source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 30:57Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing: Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful: you never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.