A young woman who admitted killing her sports editor father with a bullet to the head when she was 17 was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
Crystal Brooke Howell, 20, of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in Haywood County Court on Monday. She was sentenced on first degree murder charges in the death of her father, Michael Howell, 50, for the 2014 crime.
Crystal, who was 17 at the time of the murder, killed her father with one shot to the head while he napped in their Sheepback Mountain home and then hid her father's body in a shed for a month, according to WYFF4.
She then set about spending her father's money and moving friends into the house for drug parties, according to authorities.
Crystal Brooke Howell, 20, pictured left in a mug shot, was sentenced to 30 years minimum in the murder of her father Michael Howell, pictured right
Crystal and her father, Michael, lived in a large cabin in a remote area of Maggie Valley called Sheepback Mountain (above)
'She then started to drive his car and spend his money. She had her friends move in, had a drug-fueled party, and even had a stripper pole installed in the kitchen,' said Assistant District Attorney Jeff Jones said in a Haywood County DA news release, according to the Huffington Post.
Crystal had been living with her dad after her parents divorced five years earlier.
On February 24, cops say Crystal was caught shoplifting while out with her father, and the two returned home. It was there she began to plot to kill him, according to the Columbia County News-Times.
Crystal Howell, then 17, admitted to killing her father while he napped and then hiding his body in a plastic storage container for a month until two friends discovered it. She is seen above in Facebook photos
She shot him in the head while he was napping in his eight-bedroom cabin in the rustic mountains and then she disposed of the ejected shell and removed her father's body to a storage shed.
She was able to get her father's body into a plastic storage container and covered it with a sleeping bag, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
Michael Howell was 50 when his daughter killed him
She told friends that her father had moved to Georgia and killed himself, then moved several pals into the house.
But it all fell apart on March 22 when two of the men who were staying at the house went into the storage shed and, while cleaning up, moved a pinball machine.
One of the men, Anthony Talley, spotted the plastic storage bin and looked inside, finding Michael's body.
'I never want to see anything like that ever again in my life,' Talley told the Augusta Chronicle. 'It has ruined me.'
Crystal's mother, Kristina Rester, said that Crystal had shown up at her house in Augusta, Georgia that day with Michael's Land Rover and a U-Haul trailer, saying her father had released her from custody and that she wanted to live with her mother.
But she only stayed long enough to take a shower and then left to meet a friend. Meanwhile, two of Crystal's house guests were poking around the storage shed at the cabin in Sheepback Mountain and would discover Crystal's gruesome secret.
Rester said her daughter had behavioral difficulties and bucked authority, but that the two of them 'had had a good summer' and often spoke.
'The reason she wasn’t living with us was that she couldn’t follow the rules here,' Rester told the outlet.
She told friends that her father had moved to Georgia and killed himself, then moved several pals into the house. She is seen left in a Facebook photo and right in a mug shot
Crystal got her father's body into a plastic storage container and covered it with a sleeping bag
On Monday, Crystal was sentenced to 25 years in prison before she can apply for parole, with an extra five to seven for hiding her father's body. She is seen above in a Facebook photo
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ShareCrystal's aunt, Brenda Ellis, says her niece is mentally ill.
'I can tell you there is a lot more wrong with Crystal than has come out,' Ennis told the Columbia County News-Times. 'There have been so many issues but they have compounded by all that she has been through over the years.'
'She’s not a heinous monster. It is a heart breaking tragedy, that’s all I know. People need to understand mental illness is serious and it can be pushed to the limit and I think this is what has happened.'
On Monday, Crystal was sentenced to 25 years in prison before she can apply for parole, with an extra five to seven for hiding her father's body.
She will serve her sentence at the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections.
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