Houston, TX: Police in Texas say a 29-year-old man will go to jail after being found guilty of killing a woman and chopping her body apart.
A news statement from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office on April 29 says that on February 6, 2022, Henry David Cossette picked up 18-year-old Sara Ann Goodwin and took her to his apartment in the Alief area of Houston.
Prosecutors say that Cossette put Goodwin on top of him at his flat and strangled her to death.
Police say he then went to the store and bought trash bags. When he got home, he broke up Goodwin’s body in the bathroom of his apartment and put the pieces in different trash bags before throwing them away in a rural area away from the highway, according to police.
Officials said that earlier that night, Goodwin told her friend she was being picked up, so they tracked where her phone was.
A friend reported Goodwin missing after she hadn’t answered for a while and her phone’s battery had died, according to authorities.
An official in the district attorney’s homicide office named Dana Nazarova said, “He looks and acts like a normal person you might see every day.” “But you never know what someone can do when the door is closed.”
Police say that two weeks later, Cossette tried to set fire to his flat and neighbors called 911.
After firemen put out the fire, Cossette told them he had killed a woman and told them where the trash bags were found, according to the police.
Prosecutors said Cossette was given a 45-year prison term.
She said, “This young woman had her whole life ahead of her and did not deserve to die.” “The defendant killed her on purpose—he was on top of her and choking her as she took her last breath. She had no chance to fight back.”
The closest city to Alief is Houston, which is about 20 miles away.
