Serial Killer Documentary - The Manhunt for Howell Donaldson

0:10 Losing your daughter, you're going to be devastated. Add to that, there's somebody out there who's still doing this.

0:22 We had concern right away after Monica's death that this was a spree killer.

0:29 This terrifies this community.

0:32 It's another killing.

0:33 What?

0:35 I said, that's my brother.

0:39 For 51 days not knowing what's going on with these murders taking place.

0:45 They're putting together a puzzle, and they have no idea what the pieces even look like.

0:50 There were really no red flags in his family.

0:54 He grew up in church. He shouldn't be a serial killer.

0:59 He had a successful life. He had something going on. I mean, come on. What really happened?

1:17 Thank you.

1:46 Seminole Heights is a beautiful, historic neighborhood in central Tampa. And over the past decade or so, it's really thrived.

1:57 It's a lovely place to live. It's a pretty low crime rate. It's a pretty diverse community.

2:05 If he was born and raised here, we always travel by feet. It was like a very unique, up-to-class place, Seminole Heights.

2:16 The weather's nice. The people are great. Tampa's a great place to live. It seemed like, to me, a place that I would like to move to one day.

2:29 This Florida neighborhood is also home to Howell Donaldson III. Born in 1993, he moves here from North Carolina as a young boy with his mom, dad, older sister, and younger brother. They have a happy life.

2:44 Donaldson.

2:45 Grew up in Tampa. He had a relatively normal upbringing.

2:49 He was born into a very loving family, a very devout family. Religion was very important to them. They were active participants. And he really had so many advantages growing up.

3:01 As a criminologist, we look to environment. He is raised in a devout Christian home, attends church, and seen as doing all the right things as a child growing up.

3:14 He attended and graduated high school here in Tampa. He was, by all accounts, a popular kid. He played basketball.

3:21 His parents were loving. His parents owned their own business. He lived in a middle-class community. And there were really no red flags in his family.

3:32 Seminole Heights is also home to popular student Benjamin Mitchell. Benjamin and Donaldson don't know each other and have never met.

3:41 Benjamin Mitchell, 22-year-old African-American.

3:48 On October the 9th, 2017, Ben Mitchell is waiting for a bus in Seminole Heights. He's all excited. He's going to see his girlfriend.

3:59 He was a full-time college student who had played sports and done theater in high school, and he was taking the bus and just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

4:11 And all of a sudden, he's shot and killed. There seems to be no motive. Nobody knows who did it. And if you're living in this community, it's got to be terrifying because this could happen to anybody.

4:30 Mitchell's death was a shock to the community. Most of the homicides we see in Tampa is an extremely safe city. are between people who know each other or people who are fighting for the reasons we commonly see those fights over drugs or other illegal activity. But to have a young man like Mitchell, who is just going about his day, killed for no apparent reason, caused some immediate concern with the law enforcement community.

4:59 With no leads, Tampa PD released this video of a person of interest in Benjamin's murder. a $ 3, 000 reward is offered for information leading to the killer's arrest.

5:13 We often find that once that killer gets past the first victim, an ease comes about. Two things that stop a serial killer, being caught or dying. For the most part, we don't believe that they simply stop.

5:43 I'm Kenny Hoffa. I'm Monica Hoffa's father. You know, we had a close father-daughter relationship. When we were together, it was like we never missed a beat. She grew up in Tampa. She lived with her grandmother and grandfather. Great people. They did the majority of her being raised. Her mother was deaf, and Monica was kind of her link between the hearing world and the deaf world. She had told me quite often that she would like to have been a deaf interpreter. Her and her mother were very, very close.

6:26 She was really a different kind of light, you know? She did not show up for her grandmother's birthday. And, you know, it's 24 hours before they could think that someone was missing. But it was not like her not to be around her grandmother, especially on her birthday.

7:02 A journalist is one of the first to learn of Monica's fate. Sick with fear, Kenny receives a devastating call.

7:09 I was actually driving to Tampa and got the phone call from my wife. And she said, baby, pull over. And I said, why?

7:19 What's wrong?

7:20 What's wrong?

7:21 And a reporter had called her, and she called me. And then the reporter wanted to get on the call with us, and he told me what happened. It was a very bad moment in my life. It was, I hope that you never experience anything like it. She was shot three times. Left in a overgrown lot. And they didn't find her body for two days. And as she was walking to meet a friend, And she must have recognized that someone was following her, because in this case, there were five shots that were fired. Two were misses, and the other three killed her.

8:27 It was especially heartbreaking that her body had been laying in this tall grass for two days. And so for that two days, her family had to wonder and worry about where she was. And then they had to worry about how long was she alive? You know, was she alive for hours? Was she alive for a day? If somebody had found her, could they have saved her? I mean, these are all the kinds of things that would haunt any family member.

8:51 They tell me that she died almost immediately, which is, you know, some... some comfort to know that she didn't lay in that field for two days and suffer. But still, there's really no comfort in it whatsoever.

9:18 Monica's body is found less than a mile from where Benjamin was shot.

9:24 So our second victim, Monica Hoffa, 32 years of age, white woman, different age, different race, different gender. There's no pattern here. Police investigation is looking for clues that link people together, time, space, location. These don't have that. They're people getting off of public buses. They're people walking down the street. This terrifies this community. So you can imagine that the police department is perplexed with the ideas of what's going to happen next.

10:03 Losing your daughter, no matter what, you're going to be devastated. Add to that, you know, there's somebody out there who's still doing this.

10:13 This type of crime, just from those two murders... had the appearance that it could impact anyone at any time. So immediately law enforcement got into action, working with the community, working with prosecutors, not just to follow the leads and try to find the suspect, but also to take prophylactic measures to make sure that this vibrant city could continue without a lot of disruption, without a lot of fear.

10:42 Like the rest of the community, James Felton and his brothers, twins Ronald and Reggie, were deeply troubled by the murders. They helped run a local church and food bank.

10:53 We never think that it would happen like that in that area, especially with a business suite. We were saying, oh, okay, we need to light up the bus stops. We need to be alert. It was kind of dark going down these suites. Sometimes you have to get your flashlight and say, hey, this is where I met a stop bus, you know, like that. If you see anything that looks suspicious, if you got a dog that barked, make sure you check.

11:17 You know, that's after more of the second. That's when they start getting serious about it. And so when we had the food ministry, you know, they get there like 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. Hey, don't come this early. Come when it's daylight.

11:32 With your typical homicide, you have a relatively small universe of suspects. Most murders, the victim and the murderer know each other. Here we have a situation where you have two victims not doing anything wrong in their lives. It's a little bit like searching for a needle in a haystack. Law enforcement doesn't know exactly where to start because they're putting together a puzzle and they have no idea what the pieces even look like. We have immediate concerns because you never know what's going to be the next murder.

12:06 But never knew that it was going to happen again and again and again. And that's when he started getting worried after the second one.

12:25 The apparently random shootings of Benjamin Mitchell and Monica Hoffa have sent shockwaves through this usually safe Florida neighborhood. Police believe the murders are linked and have CCTV footage of a potential suspect, but know nothing about the man in the video. Local man, Howell Donaldson III.

12:55 Howell Donaldson III was very interested in athletics, particularly basketball. He had his heart set on being a basketball star, and he practiced a lot.

13:06 So from this basketball ability that he has, he's searching to be that star. And he goes from high school to high school looking for that opportunity to be the starting guard. But you get this feeling as you're looking at his life, he's searching for something. He's searching for the greatness.

13:26 Donaldson absolutely was shooting for the stars. I mean, he was willing to give up a lot by changing schools. It is very clear that his number one priority in high school was basketball. And he was willing to do whatever it takes to try to be that basketball star that he not only, I think, wanted to be, but really saw himself as being.

13:52 Donaldson went up to New York City to St. John's University to attend college. He walked onto the basketball team there. He played for one year.

14:02 He doesn't get a scholarship. He's not recruited. And so he ends up walking on. That's a pretty bold move. The odds are stacked against you when you walk on at a university and want to be a basketball player. But he certainly was motivated to do that. Does that mean that Donaldson was unrealistic in terms of his skills?

14:24 Possibly.

14:26 And for somebody, I think, who was invested from a very young age in being this basketball star, that would have been really disappointing to him. It took him six years to get a degree. So we don't know how motivated he was to get through school, but we do know that he had the self-discipline and the perseverance to eventually get a degree.

14:55 Donaldson is back in Seminole Heights with a major in sports management and a minor in business. He's working at a medical education company, but is aiming higher.

15:04 He was looking for work in the sports industry, potentially as an agent.

15:10 The problem with that is that that takes years to become a sports agent. And it doesn't seem like Donaldson really understood that. And within three months, he's fired. And he's fired from absenteeism. He's basically not showing up at work.

15:27 It appears that Donaldson may have had some troubles with how difficult life proved to be. Again, a young man who had his future in front of him and who thought that success maybe would have come a little bit more easily than it had. And he didn't quite achieve what he had hoped on the basketball court or in his professional life at such a young age.

15:50 Now he has housing problems where he's moving from house to house, sleeping over at mom's house some days, girlfriend's house at another.

16:00 So what we're seeing, I think, is just a slow downward spiral. And along this period of time, we start seeing some other things happening that I think are adding to this downward spiral.

16:13 The question is, how do you respond to those low points? What is going to be the action when these tough situations of life continuously come your way. What's going to happen next?

16:36 20-year-old Anthony Neboa, who's autistic, happens to get on the wrong bus.

16:41 He's on his way home.

16:42 He was working packaging supplies to be sent to Puerto Rico to help with hurricane relief. He was an aspiring musician and a rapper. He was, you know, one of several children who had a close relationship with his siblings and with his parents. And he was someone who was stolen from our community, like Monica, like Benjamin, far too young.

17:04 His murder occurs.

17:07 Why?

17:07 Because he gets on the wrong bus, wrong place at the wrong time.

17:17 Anthony is killed barely 200 yards from Benjamin Mitchell and less than half a mile from Monica Hoffa.

17:26 I'm sure that when they examined the shell casings, they realized that, you know, this is the same shooter. And then when Anthony was killed, they knew they had a serial killer on their hands, someone who was, you know, committing all these murders in Seminole Heights. I think that the entire... area was just under the stranglehold of these murders, these killings. After Monica's memorial, that's when the rumors were like, oh, we think there might be a serial killer, and I think there might have even been some press coverage about that.

18:15 It was really intense in that neighborhood. You could feel just the tension. Nobody was on the street. We went to visit these memorials that they had put on the side of this building. People would have all their lights on. The city would make sure that all the street lights were up. I mean, it was very tense.

18:39 There was a palpable sense of fear in the community. And our mayor at the time famously said, you know, bring me his head on a platter.

18:48 This guy is not going to win. He's not taking over this neighborhood. He's not taking over these streets. You guys go hunt him down and bring his head to me.

18:59 All right, let's go get it done.

19:01 That's not the most diplomatic thing a mayor could say, but it captured the frustration and anger of the community.

19:13 The reward for information on the killer is increased to $ 25, 000. Police release new CCTV clips of a man walking away from the scene of Benjamin's murder, hoping someone recognizes the way the suspect appears to flip a phone in their hand.

19:29 Without any promising leads, without any evidence to help us find that one person who's committing these crimes, there's a real concern that this is going to continue.

19:40 If you're in that community, you are doing whatever you can to try to see any pattern, anything that's going to help you feel safer. So, for example, you have people who kind of go, okay, the first victim was at a bus stop. The second victim was maybe missed the bus, so I'm not going to take the bus, or I'm not going to walk down this particular street.

19:59 People were just frantically trying to figure out, how can I be safer?

20:05 Have your lights on because this guy had on a black hoodie, he had on, you know, black clothes. No one would catch the bus, especially when the third got hit.

20:19 At this time, Donaldson was working at a McDonald's, like a lot of young people do to try to make ends meet. But for someone who had told his friends that he was going to be a basketball star in college, for someone who had ambitions of being a sports agent, He must have felt like he had hit rock bottom with his career and his path in life.

20:40 It's almost like a narcissistic injury that these bad things have happened. And I think that at this point, that Donaldson is really angry about all the things that have happened to him. I do think there was a part of him that said, I am special. I'm going to be special in some way. You are going to pay attention to me. You are going to notice. Look what I'm doing. I can go out and I can... give somebody the gift of life or the gift of death at any moment, and I'm controlling an entire community. It's pretty clear that Howell Donaldson had absolutely no compassion for the people he was killing. As a matter of fact, it almost appears like he's out hunting for prey. And that is really the ultimate, I think, in dehumanizing somebody,

21:29 to go out and just kill a random person who you don't know who's never done anything to you, who you have no attraction to, you have no anger toward. It really is the ultimate in dehumanization.

21:45 With three murders in 10 days, law enforcement had some information to work with and are doing their best to develop suspects, doing their best to work with the community. But then there are no real leads going on for a while. Donaldson did a really good job of hiding after Anthony's murder and not putting himself in a position where he could get caught.

22:09 And the media moves on like they do because there's always things to talk about. And so at this point, things are slowly starting to creep back to normal. And then on November the 14th, another murder happens.

22:42 So it's been five weeks since Benjamin Mitchell was killed.

22:48 One morning, I got up and I heard what happened again.

22:55 This time, the victim is Ronald Felton, James' older brother and twin to Reggie.

23:01 One thing about Ronald, well, they always say that when we was born that we all look alike. We was like triplets. We went to high school together, elementary school, junior high school together, and we was always together. And Reggie was always the one that was so stubborn. So me and Ronald was more closer than his twin brother.

23:23 We never was apart, but he always look out for the others than himself.

23:33 Ronald was a construction worker. He'd spent 25 years on the job, and this was someone who was giving back to the community by working at a food bank. He was by himself at a time when there weren't a lot of people out. He was crossing a relatively busy street early in the morning at about 5 a.m. when there weren't a lot of people around, and that's when he was killed.

24:06 Why is the bus so full and everybody talking about the same thing? And I just looked around and said, what's going on? It's another killer.

24:13 What?

24:15 So I went up to the bus robber.

24:17 And he knew.

24:18 And it was saying that it was Ronald Felton. I said, that's my brother. He said, what? He just took me down to Hillsboro and there it was. I don't know if he stopped, but he got me there safely. And that's where they had everything was blocked. So when I went across the street, some of my family was there.

24:36 All of a sudden, we just braced each other. They said, it's him. I said, are you serious? Another murder happened in Seminole Heights. And it was Ronald Felton. When he was walking, that's when he heard someone behind. That's when he got shot. And he fell backwards. And when he fell backwards, he went up to him over him to shoot him again. Who would do this to a person?

25:06 The tragic irony of Ronald's death was that the morning that he was killed, he was actually going to a food bank to volunteer like he did regularly. So you have someone who, as a construction worker, has dedicated part of his life to giving back to the community at the moment when someone who has decided to rob this community of four innocent lives kills him in cold blood.

25:30 They couldn't even have us to come and see the body because the way they said where he got shot at. They said, no, we think we better not, don't see him. And they have them all cover up. I felt like this, this is the end of it. After they did, that's the way I felt.

25:57 This had become a story nationally and internationally because we had a serial or a spree killer in our midst in Tampa.

26:06 SWAT teams start patrolling the area. The community feels terrorized again.

26:11 When you look at the type of killing that occurred with this case, it is random. But then we have to look at what is random. Random could be easily accessible. Someone walking down the street, someone getting off a public bus. If I have an anger about me, if I have a weapon available to me, I'm looking for easy targets.

26:33 Seems random, but perhaps the key issue is access.

26:39 This time there's a witness. The police announced they are looking for a thin black male dressed in all black with a black baseball cap.

26:47 Imagine being the police of Seminole Heights, Florida. What appears to be random killings are taking place in your jurisdiction. People are fearful. There seems to be no pattern.

27:02 The reward for the capture of the killer is raised to $ 110, 000. But in the days following Ronald's murder, the police make no arrests. The killer is evading them again.

27:14 Even after four murders... In all the diligent work that law enforcement was doing and all the help we had from the community, it was really hard to develop a solid lead into the suspect. But just like Donaldson had this misperception of where he was in life that may have caused him to commit these crimes, he probably felt like things were closing in on him. And he panicked a little bit.

27:39 He's 24 years old, and one of the things we know is that You know, our brains continue to develop until we're at least 25. And so I think there's an immaturity there as well. You know, it's difficult when you're in your early 20s or early to mid 20s to think about the fact that a year from now, things could be completely different. Two years from now, things could be different. It's much more likely to think how things are right now is how they are always going to be. And I think for Donaldson, that was intolerable.

28:11 Donaldson had told people that he was looking to leave the state, that he was looking to flee. In our perception, he probably felt like the walls were closing in on him and he was going to get caught, so he was trying to escape from Tampa before it happened.

28:26 You know, he was trying to get a ticket to go back to New York. He was trying to leave Tampa.

28:39 He's working at McDonald's. He tells his manager that he's going to quit. He turns in his uniform. He says he needs to run to go buy a ticket to leave town, and he's gonna come back. Shockingly, he handed the manager a bag and said, hold on to this for me and don't look into it.

28:58 I would imagine most people, if somebody gave them a bag with something in it, a plastic bag, you would be concerned about what this is. Their relationship was not that close. He's given this to his manager, who, of course, looks in the bag.

29:16 And that was the stroke of luck that we needed, combined with law enforcement's diligence efforts to make the huge break in the case.

29:24 The bag contains a weapon, a gun.

29:29 Well, the McDonald's manager immediately knew that there was a problem. She found a police officer in the parking lot at McDonald's. And by the time Donaldson returned to the McDonald's, you had a whole group of law enforcement officers waiting to arrest him immediately.

29:54 But you're responsible for this?

29:55 No.

29:56 Because it's the gun, okay?

29:59 You murdered those people.

30:00 Your phone would put.

30:01 You right there at specific times.

30:04 We know it's you. Can you please tell us why? I don't know.

30:07 Why?

30:07 I just don't know anything else to say.

30:11 I just want to, I guess, talk to my attorney and talk to her who I need to talk to.

30:16 Shortly after Mr. Felton's death, my brother said there's a report on TV that they might have the guy at a McDonald's. So I started watching TV Everything I could watch online and watching the news. I think all the press was there and they came out and they said they've arrested someone. They believe in connection of the murders.

30:42 That's kind of when I saw, you know, the face of evil.

30:52 When Donaldson was arrested, when Donaldson was charged by my office, You could feel the sense of relief in the community.

31:06 Today is a good day. Today, the good guys won. Today, Seminole Heights can sleep.

31:19 The mayor, he talked to me when we had to say, he said, at night while y'all was asleep, I was with them trying to capture him.

31:32 I mean, who walks around with a murder weapon in a sandwich bag in McDonald's and then asks his boss to hold this while I go try to get money to get a ticket to get out of town? I mean, for all of his opportunities, he was just a dumb kid.

32:00 It's hard to explain how someone who had been relatively careful for a month in murdering four people hands the murder weapon to his manager at McDonald's and then walks away.

32:12 I have often said that 99.99% of serial killers do not want to get caught. And if they make stupid mistakes, it's because they're so narcissistic or so grandiose that they've convinced themselves that I can't get caught. I'm the smartest person around here. Is it possible that that is completely 100% what happened with Howell Donaldson?

32:41 Yes, it is.

32:42 I have to say this is one of those few situations when I have to wonder if on some level Howell Donaldson at the very least was wanting to stop doing what he was doing. It's so hard for me to believe it was just stupidity.

33:00 That led to that.

33:02 With Howell Donaldson arrested, the residents of Seminole Heights feel safe for the first time in 51 days. Investigators quickly link him to the murder spree.

33:13 He then is questioned, his car is searched, and they find bloodstained clothing. So the bloodstained clothing matches surveillance footage of the killer.

33:27 The gun that he handed to his McDonald's manager was the gun that was involved in all four murders. That was ultimately the strongest piece of evidence in tying Donaldson to these crimes.

33:42 I got to talk to Chief Dugan. I met Mayor Buckhorn. He's the one that said, bring me his head. There's t-shirts made, bring me his head. Once I had learned all the different things, and I had read all the things that they were possibly using to track and to find this guy, I was relieved, knowing now that he was behind bars.

34:19 So as Case moves forward, he enters a plea of not guilty.

34:26 I think one of the really problematic things about Donaldson was how he coped with things. And one of the things that you see or we see emerging is this lack of responsibility. It's not my fault. It's other people's fault. It's circumstances fault. It's anybody but my own fault.

34:53 There was a meeting with the state's attorney We all made the decision that we wanted him to have the death penalty. We wanted death.

35:16 Investigators are preparing for the August 2020 murder trial of Howell Donaldson III. The victim's families are hoping he's found guilty and sentenced to death.

35:26 We were able to build a strong case against Donaldson really on three different pillars. One was on his general description, one was on his whereabouts and location, and the third was on the gun and the ballistic evidence. But you know when you walk into court, you still have to persuade a jury unanimously, beyond and to the exclusion of any reasonable doubt, that he's the one who committed these crimes.

35:56 So we find after each and every one of these activities that he goes home, plays video games, and watches porn.

36:06 That's a pattern you see in spree and serial killers where they're able to commit these heinous, horrific, barbaric acts and then go back to their normal life every day. And it turns out that's exactly what Donaldson was doing. But think about the type of person, think about the type of mentality you have to have. It's really hard to wrap your head around. There's no such thing as a sure thing when you're talking about taking a case to trial. And the defense was doing as best they could to poke holes in our theory of the case, poke holes in the description of this young man who was seen on video, poke holes in the location we had for him as he was going from where he was staying and living to the murder scenes, poke holes

37:06 in the ballistic and forensic evidence we had connecting him and the gun to these murders.

37:20 Donaldson's defense team are successful in their request for each murder to be tried separately.

37:26 This ends up prolonging the difficulty for the victims' families. It makes the case take years and years before they can get a sense of justice, and it really ends up hurting them twice because they have to relive these tragedies throughout the court case as it continues for years.

37:44 When it comes to red tape and prolonging the inevitable... We should look for mercy for the victims. There needs to be some kind of preponderance of the evidence that says, listen, no matter what, you are tied to all of these murders with this evidence. And we cannot have all of these families suffer because you have the right to a not-so-speedy trial. I think what happened to me, the Feltons, the Nyboas, Benjamin's family, was nothing short of torture. Then the second year went by. Then the third year. Then the fourth year. Then the fifth year. And we're almost into the sixth year. And just thank God that he decided he had had enough.

38:45 Donaldson changes his plea to guilty on all counts. in a deal that will see him avoid the death penalty.

38:52 Sitting in jail for almost six years, I think he just wanted to do enough to get out of being executed so that he could just move on. And by doing that, I think he got some kind of gratification also. He knew he wasn't going to die. And you took my daughter's life.

39:22 I'll never understand.

39:24 I'll never understand why it took so long to get to this point. It was a total release. All the anger, all the pent-up frustrations I had with the court system, it was a release. It was a dedication, kind of, to my daughter.

39:54 He is sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

40:06 I struggled with forgiveness. I really did. And I know now forgiveness for me is kind of letting go and letting God shepherd me through the things that I can't shepherd myself through.

40:22 I said, this guy really had a good life, but what tricked him to do something like that? He went to college, basketball. He wants to better himself. And I just, at that moment, just looked at him and I couldn't shed a tear for him. I just couldn't do it. I just like, I couldn't do that. He had a successful life. He had something going on for himself, for him to really do that. I mean, come on.

40:54 This case really is about a young man who did not live up to his perhaps unrealistic expectations for himself and his accomplishments. And instead of finding a way to deal with that directly, took it out on the world around him.

41:08 He grew up in church. He's got a tattoo of Christ on his arm. He shouldn't be a serial killer. I'm at peace knowing now that when he went into prison, he thought he was somebody. but there's a lot of people there that think he's a nobody. I'm sure he is suffering now like we have been suffering.

41:33 We have four victims, Benjamin, Anthony, Monica, Ronald, who we can talk about as a college student and as a construction worker, but that will never capture who these people are. I sat with their families and heard the stories and saw the pictures and laughed and cried with them as we remembered the loved ones lost. Nothing will ever justify, nothing will ever explain these four innocent lives that were ripped from our community.

42:02 And Ronald left this legacy about love. Do what you can for people. If you want to leave here and be with God, love the people. Do what you can.

42:13 I'll never stop loving my daughter. She was just a great child who had a great sense of humor and a whole future ahead of her. She was really, she was a light in the darkness.