A Kansas man has been arrested and charged with the murders of his mother and aunt at the home the three shared in Lenexa.
Police said Luke Howard, 34, showed up at a Walgreens in Liberty, Missouri, on Wednesday covered in blood and told employees he needed to turn himself in to police, KMBC reported.
Lenexa officers were dispatched to the home at about 5 a.m. and found Joyce Austin, 71, and Valerie Howard, 63, shot to death. Police said the women were former sisters-in-law who lived together at the home with Howard’s son.
Luke Howard told investigators that he shot the two women when they gave him a 30-day eviction notice. Police said they had been called to the home twice previously this week on domestic disturbance calls.
Detectives said they found 10 to 12 shotgun casings in the living room.
An affidavit for Howard’s arrest says that police were called to the home on February 10 after he complained that his mother had grabbed him around the neck and pushed him. Valerie Howard told police that her son came into her room and broke an ashtray and caused her to fall. She said that he had started being violent toward both women in 2021 and that they had been locking themselves in their rooms “as much as possible.”
The day after that incident, the women served him with an eviction notice. He reacted angrily and called police, telling them that one of the women had pointed a gun at him, a claim he promptly retracted and said he just thought she was going to get a gun, KCTV said.
Austin told police that day that she knew Howard had two guns but did not know where they were kept. Authorities searched his room but found no weapons, and Johnson County Mental Health spoke with him. He told them he didn’t have any firearms.
Howard is behind bars in Clay County, Missouri, on a $5 million bond awaiting extradition to Kansas, KSHB reported.
