Charlie Howard

Charles O. Howard (January 31, 1961 – July 7, 1984) was an American murder victim in Bangor, Maine in 1984. As Howard and his life partner, Roy Ogden, were walking down the street, three teenagers, Shawn I. Mabry, age 16, James (Jim) Francis Baines, age 15, and Daniel Ness, age 17, harassed, assaulted, and murdered Howard for being gay. The youths chased the couple, 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 partner escaped and pulled a fire alarm. 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 was published as Penitence: A True Story with Edward Armstrong, although Baines 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, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community have erected a monument along the Kenduskeag Stream honoring the memory of Charlie Howard as the victim of a hate crime. The Maine Speakout Project maintains the Charlie Howard Memorial Library in Portland, Maine. The library is open to the public.

Background Charlie Howard was from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A young, fair-haired man, Charlie was small boned and suffered from asthma. Charlie Howard was buried in Orchard Grove Cemetery, Kittery, Maine. His grave, previously unmarked, now has a stone.

Memorials On July 7, 2004, a twentieth anniversary walk was held in memory of Howard.

Twenty-five years later, the Bangor Daily News tried to locate Shawn Mabry, Jim Baines, and Daniel Ness, now middle-aged men, for their views on the murder. They were unable to locate Mabry and Ness at that time, but did find Baines, who was living and working in Bangor. Following his release from the detention center, he spoke regularly about tolerance to local students and even addressed the Maine State Legislature in "support of a bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation". In May 2011, vandals spray-painted graffiti and an anti-gay slur on Charlie Howard's memorial. Family and friends cleaned it up and rededicated it.

In 2021, a stone bench was installed in Portsmouth's Commercial Allery with an inscription of Howard's favorite song “I Am What I Am,” from the musical “La Cage aux Folles…”

July 7, 2024 was the fortieth anniversary of Charlie Howard's death, which was marked by a large memorial gathering involving residents as well as community groups, including the current Unitarian Universalist community in Bangor.

The gay poet Mark Doty wrote a poem about the murder called "Charlie Howard's Descent".

The murder is also the inspiration for a novel by Bette Greene titled The Drowning of Stephan Jones.

The line "faggot kicked into the icy river" in lesbian-feminist poet Adrienne Rich's poem "Yom Kippur 1984" is a reference to Charlie Howard.