April 23

April 23 is the date Amber and Jolene Howard are killed while Terry Maitland’s family is in Dayton and the real Heath Holmes is staying with his mother in Regis. The date links an apparently separate double murder to the investigation’s larger pattern: the account associates the sisters’ deaths with the Outsider and identifies similarities to Frank Peterson’s murder.

Circumstances and Setting

The sisters leave school on Monday, April 23, at about ten in the morning. Amber has a free period, and Jolene says she needs to use the bathroom; the investigators infer that the girls may have planned their departure together. Their school had classified them as at-risk students, and they had skipped school on earlier occasions.

The sisters are described as living in a low-income home in a difficult neighborhood, with an alcoholic mother and a father who is absent. These circumstances form part of the case’s background, but they do not explain or excuse the violence against them. The narrative places the girls’ vulnerability beside the ordinary detail of their leaving school, making the disappearance from routine the threshold of the crime.

The Murder and Its Discovery

The account identifies April 23 as the day the Outsider kills the Howard sisters. The sisters’ bodies are discovered midway through Heath Holmes’s vacation week, when a postman notices a large gathering of crows at a ravine about a mile from the Howard home and stops to investigate. His discovery brings the killings into the investigation.

A photograph shown during the investigators’ discussion offers a stark contrast to the circumstances of the case: Amber and Jolene are smiling at what appears to be a carnival or amusement park, holding cones of cotton candy. The image preserves them as children in a moment of shared pleasure, while the date marks the violence that will define the inquiry into their deaths.

Connections to the Wider Case

The chronology places the killings alongside two apparently incompatible accounts of presence. On Saturday, April 21, the Maitlands fly to Dayton and check into a hotel; at the same time, the real Heath Holmes is in Regis, staying with his mother. Two days later, the Howard sisters are killed. The juxtaposition forms part of the pattern through which the investigators question whether the identities and whereabouts established by ordinary evidence can be trusted.

The investigators also connect the Howard murders to the killing of Frank Peterson. Holly infers from newspaper accounts that parts of the girls’ bodies were missing and that their bodies had been drained of blood. Bill Samuels confirms that the Frank Peterson case shared comparable features, naming the areas of Frank’s body from which flesh was missing. The comparison makes April 23 more than a date in a separate local case: it becomes evidence of a recurring method and a link between the victims.

Significance in the Investigation

The date’s importance lies in the convergence of school records, family circumstances, the postman’s discovery, the vacation chronology, and similarities between the Howard and Peterson murders. Each detail helps construct the case, yet the juxtaposition of the real Heath Holmes in Regis with the broader identity puzzle complicates a purely conventional account of who could have committed the crime.

The discussion of April 23 also carries an emotional consequence for Marcy Maitland. When the comparison with Frank’s case is made explicit, she reacts with visible distress, then insists she will not faint or become sick even as she acknowledges that she is not all right. The investigation’s effort to establish a pattern thus reaches beyond evidence: it forces those present to confront the connection between separate victims and the possibility that the violence continues across cases.