Well, now I know. It looks like he did six years and is out on probation. He used to be a friend of mine and was well liked on the pool tour. He never gave any indication of any perverse behavior at any tournaments I worked, but the only person who really hung out with Howard was Mike Lebron. In hindsight I never knew Howard to have a girl friend, although I'm pretty sure he had a wife back in Ohio but I never saw her at any tourneys.
True, I was curious about whether he was still in prison. I knew he had a gotten a fairly long sentence. As I recall now, someone may have told me he made a plea deal to avoid the possibility of getting a longer sentence. Unlike some of you I'm not so quick to condemn someone. I do know that people have gone to prison on trumped up charges of child molestation after stories have been coerced from kids under duress. Look up the McMartin trial if you don't believe me. That turned out to be totally false accusations that ruined an entire family. And they weren't the only ones.
(My buddy Amarillo Slim was also charged but never convicted for similar offenses. His daughter later recounted her testimony, saying she had been pressured into making accusations against him. I talked to him about it years later and he said the sheriff was out to get him because Slim had outsmarted him in the past in an unrelated matter.)
