Howie Detterick

Howie Detterick, the twelve-year-old son of cotton farmer Klaus Detterick and his wife Marjorie, is the brother of the nine-year-old twins Cora and Kathe. On a warm June morning in 1932, he is the first person in the household to realize that something is terribly wrong. Sent by his mother to fetch the girls from the screened side porch where they had been allowed to sleep as a treat, Howie returns "white around the gills and with his formerly sleep-puffy eyes now wide open" and reports simply, "They're gone." His discovery sets in motion the chain of events that will lead to the arrest of John Coffey.

Role in the Search

Howie does not remain behind when his father learns of the abduction. Despite his mother's desperate pleas for them not to go alone, Klaus Detterick takes the shotgun he keeps mounted in the mudroom and gives Howie the .22 rifle that had been saved for his birthday in July. Together, father and son set off to track the abductor. The boy follows his father at a near-run, holding his gun as soldiers do when crossing contested ground under heavy fire. Paul Edgecombe later reflects that it is a wonder Howie never stumbled and accidentally shot his father in the back. Along the way, Howie is the one who finds the first crucial piece of evidence: a shred of yellow cotton cloth from his sister Kathe's sleeping-shorts, plucked from a bush at the edge of the dooryard. Twenty yards beyond it, they find a piece of faded green cloth from Cora's nightie, confirming the direction of the abduction.

Witness to the Aftermath

When the posse, led by Deputy Rob McGee and Bobo Marchant's dogs, finally catches up to John Coffey on the bank of the Trapingus River, Howie is present for the horrific discovery. Coffey sits on the riverbank, the bodies of the naked girls curled in each arm, bawling up at the sky. The trampled, blood-soaked patch of grass where the girls were found is so appalling that many of the men have to sprint back into the woods to vomit. Howie, who had held up admirably until then, reels back against his father and nearly faints when he sees the rest of Cora's nightgown lying in that bloody patch. After Klaus Detterick launches a flying kick at Coffey's head and has to be hauled off by four men, Howie joins his father on the riverbank. They kneel wide-legged, hugging each other forehead to forehead, sobbing together in the aftermath of the nightmare.

Thematic Significance

Howie Detterick represents the innocent witness to violence, a child whose childhood is shattered by the crime. His presence in the search and at the discovery underscores the profound, collateral damage of the murders—not only the loss of the twins but the permanent scarring of their brother. Paul Edgecombe, reflecting on the case years later, notes that Howie's father, Klaus, died of a stroke in March of the following year, a man aged beyond his years by grief. Howie himself is left to carry the memory of that morning, a boy who saw what no child should see, and whose life is forever marked by the events on the riverbank.