POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

This is important to my hometown, so it’s important to me [UPDATED by Dan]

Mackenzie Cowell

Last spring I visited my old high school football venue for probably the last time. I was there with my family celebrating my youngest niece's high school graduation. She was born when I was in high school, and there is simply no way to convey how much she and her sisters mean to me. When she was a baby their home burned down. My sister got her and one of her sisters (3 months and 2 years old) out in the nick of time with the clothes on their backs and a diaper bag. As I've watched those babies grow into beautiful young women I still shudder once in a while at how unfathombly horrible that day could have gone. Our family would have been destroyed.

So these were the things I was thinking about during that commencement, at least up until the point where I held my breath with thousands of my neighbors as the parents of one of her classmates were presented with their daughter's posthumous diploma. Her name was Mackenzie Cowell. She was 17 years old, taking classes at the local beauty school and a member of the drill team. Her body was found February 13, 2010 beaten, stabbed and strangled to death. My hometown isn't Mayberry, but it is still small enough to only have one high school. Everyone was shaken. It is also notable that this was a pretty, white, female homicide victim that did not get national news coverage.

When I checked my Facebook page yesterday afternoon almost all of my hometown friend's Facebook status updates were about news that an arrest had finally been made in the Cowell case. Like myself, many were people who grew up there, left the area as adults, but still cared a lot about the girl next door they never met.

Christopher Wilson

So far we know that the alleged killer, Christopher Scott Wilson, is 29 years old, was a student with Cowell at the local cosmetology school and lived in the basement of another salon where his mother is the landlord. According to probably cause documents he has a tattoo of Hannibal Lecter. One female reported him trying to choke her, he was "obsessed with death, dead bodies, serial killers" and perhaps most disturbing, there is a claim that Wilson told someone he killed a guest at a hotel he worked at by strangling her with a belt. The police haven't been able to confirm a killing, but if he only made it up it's still really sick.

Wilson's DNA and Cowell's blood were found on a piece of duct tape found where the body was discovered. There were also 2 blood spatters found at his apartment. Verizon is 90% sure that her cell phone pinged near a boat launch and his residence the evening she went missing.

It also looks like there was an attempt at dismemberment. She was not sexually assaulted. For those interested, I'll keep updating this as the case develops. A 1 million dollar bail has been set, something tells me Wilson isn't going to fare well in the prison yard. Or the shower.

crossposted at KillTruck

UPDATE: We always knew he would come to grief:

Kill Truck

KillTruck is a wife, mother, blogger and native midwesterner now living in Eastern Washington state. She writes about politics, pop culture, parenting, wifing and a few other subjects she has no authority to write about. She has macabre fascinations with prostitution and/or cannibalism. In her free time she enjoys eating and/or drinking her feelings, liveblogging Lifetime movies, thinking about Scott Brown and mocking things she doesn’t understand.

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