Charlie Howard (murder Victim)

Charlie Howard (murder Victim)

Charles O. Howard (January 31, 1961 – July 7, 1984) was an American hate-crime victim in Bangor, Maine in 1984. As Howard and a male companion, Roy Ogden, were walking down the street, three teenagers, Shawn I. Mabry, age 16, James Francis Baines, age 15, and Daniel Ness, age 17, harassed Howard for being gay. The youths chased the pair, yelling homophobic epithets, until they caught Howard and threw him over the State Street Bridge into the Kenduskeag Stream, despite his pleas that he could not swim. He drowned, but his friend escaped and pulled a fire alarm. Charlie Howard's body was found by rescue workers several hours later.

This event galvanized the Bangor community in ways similar to the killing of Matthew Shepard, although the case never attained the same level of national notoriety. As an adult Jim Baines later spoke to various groups in Maine about his involvement in the murder and the damage that intolerance can do to people and their community. His story, Penitence: A True Story by Edward Armstrong, was published, although he received no royalties from the book. The Maine Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance, which later became EqualityMaine, was formed in part as a reaction to Howard's death.

The Bangor City Council and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have been working on a monument to be installed along the Kenduskeag Stream honoring the memory of Charlie Howard as the victim of a hate crime. On November 14, 2007, the Bangor City Council approved the monument, and the Charles O. Howard Memorial Foundation is raising money to install the monument. On July 7, 2004, a twentieth anniversary walk was held in memory of Howard. The Maine Speakout Project maintains the Charlie Howard Memorial Library in Portland, Maine. The library is open to the public.

This incident inspired a similar scene in the beginning of Stephen King's novel It, where three homophobic teenagers throw an openly gay man, Adrian Mellon, over a bridge and into the Kenduskeag, there to be set upon and murdered by the monster Pennywise. Mark Doty wrote a poem about the tragedy called "Charlie Howard's Descent". The murder is also the inspiration for a novel by Bette Greene titled The Drowning of Stephan Jones.

Charlie Howard was from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A young, fair-haired man Charlie was small boned and suffered from asthma. He was often made fun of as a small child, and was bullied in high school due to his sexual orientation. He did not attend his graduation to spare his family from the taunts he often received. With his poor grades, he knew college was not for him.