Murder defendant Daniel Howard in court after airport arrest

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Following his arrest at a Spokane, Washington, airport on Friday, the former Idaho State Police trooper on trial for murdering his wife was back in court Monday morning in Kootenai County.

Testimony in the murder trial of Daniel Howard wrapped up for the week Thursday afternoon in Kootenai County, Idaho. Then on Friday evening cops arrested Howard at the Spokane International Airport, which is just on the other side of the Washington border with Idaho. As part of his bond, he is prohibited from being within 2 miles of an airport. But Howard’s defense attorney Jason Johnson said his client was not attempting to flee, but was following someone who was returning a rental car at the airport.

“There were no bags in the car, he had no tickets, he was not even in the airport itself,” Johnson said. “He was in the rental car parking lot.”

Johnson asked that the jury be polled on whether they heard about the arrest because of the extensive local media coverage, but the judge denied the request, saying he had already instructed them not to watch or read anything about the trial.

Howard was out on bond as he stood trial for the Feb. 2, 2021, death of his wife Kendy Howard. The disgraced cop allegedly killed his wife and left her body in a bathtub in an attempt to make it look like a suicide. Testimony has been going on for the last two weeks and the trial is expected to wrap up this week.

Prosecutors have said that Howard choked his wife to death and then shot her after she was dead to make it look like a suicide. His defense has maintained Kendy Howard took her own life.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office arrested Daniel Howard in April 2023.

Kendy and Daniel Howard’s daughter, Brooke Wilkins, said in an Oct. 1, 2021, post to Facebook that her father’s story that her mother died by suicide never made sense.

Former Idaho State Trooper Daniel Howard, left, on trial for his wife’s murder, was arrested at the Spokane, Washington, airport on March 15, 2024. He was extradited back to Idaho and was back in a Kootenai County courtroom on March 18, 2024. (Screenshot: Law&Crime Network)

“He called it in as a suicide,” she wrote. “There are multiple reasons why this doesn’t make sense but I don’t want to interfere with the ongoing investigation.”

She noted that her mother never touched guns.

Wilkins said that her father had long subjected her mother to physical and emotional abuse.

“The marriage was always bad,” she wrote at the time. “But it became terrible the last couple years. She was coming to work with bruises. She would do anything not to be home when he was. He would threaten to kill himself if she wanted to leave. Last December she started talking seriously about divorce. She was getting financials together. Had met with attorneys. Was looking at houses in her hometown.”

Wilkins said that law enforcement escorted Kendy Howard out of the home a week before her death.

Kendy Howard reportedly had told her husband in 2013 about having been romantically involved with his friend, Matthew Wood. Prosecutors said Howard poured syrup in the man’s vehicles, left him vulgar messages, fired a shotgun at his home and threatened to kill him, according to the newspaper.

“Damaging Wood’s property with corn syrup, stealing his guns, stealing his mail, placing the anonymous letter in Wood’s mailbox, placing the graffiti on his lawn, following him in a patrol car, pointing a rifle at him and even shooting his roof with a shotgun were done in a way to cause the most emotional damage to Wood but limit any physical evidence the perpetrator was Daniel Howard,” a detective wrote in an affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast.

Howard did not admit to all of those acts, but he did agree to give Wood restitution, according to the Spokesman-Review. His plea deal included a guilty plea for the motorcycle charge and also for possessing a white-tailed deer without a tag after he shot the animal. Howard also agreed to Alford pleas — which allow a defendant to submit a guilty plea while maintaining their innocence — for felony malicious injury to property and petty theft.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Art Verharen reportedly sought a five-year prison term during the January 2015 sentencing, reasoning that Howard betrayed the public trust as an officer and that he had put a lot of thought and preparation into committing the wrongdoing over the course of nine months.

Ultimately, First District Court Judge Benjamin Simpson sentenced Howard to 120 days in jail, a three-year suspended prison sentence, probation, and 600 hours of community service. He said that he believed Howard lived under immense stress after fatally shooting a woman in 2011. In that incident, a fugitive had backed a Jeep into Howard, who mistakenly shot the woman, according to the outlet. An outside agency determined he was justified in opening fire, and he returned to work after nine months of leave.

Some who spoke on Howard’s behalf in court said he was not the same as before. Friends said the shooting, as well as the affair, was too much for him to handle.
“He was just in a really dark place,” said Joseph Sullivan, a former ISP trooper who moved on to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Spokane.

Kendy Howard, who had since reconciled with her husband, was among the five people who came to court to talk on his behalf at his 2015 sentencing hearing, according to the Spokesman-Review. At that hearing, defendant Howard had also expressed remorse.

“I screwed up and I stand here utterly ashamed,” he said, adding that he “will forever endeavor to correct these wrongs.”

Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.