A Lenexa man will spend more than 65 years in prison for fatally shooting his mother and aunt in their shared home last year, a case that followed days of domestic disturbances and an eviction notice.

A Johnson County judge sentenced Luke Howard on Aug. 24 to 65 years and three months in prison for the Feb. 12, 2025, killings of Valerie A. Howard, 63, and Joyce E. Austin, 71, at a home in the 15400 block of West 90th Street in Lenexa, the Kansas City Star reported.

The sentence totals 783 months: 618 months on one count and 165 months on the other, running consecutively, according to KMBC.

Howard pleaded guilty May 13 to two counts of second-degree intentional murder as part of a plea deal that recommended Monday's sentence. He was originally charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

The killings

Lenexa police officers responded to the home around 5 a.m. on Feb. 12, 2025, for a welfare check after a caller reported people inside may have been shot.

Officers found Valerie Howard on the living room floor with two gunshot wounds to the abdomen. She was declared dead at the scene. Austin was found dead on a couch in the living room with gunshot wounds; she was cold to the touch, according to investigators. Approximately a dozen shell casings littered the living room floor.

Later that day, Howard walked into a Walgreens pharmacy in Liberty, Missouri, with blood on his clothes and told pharmacists he needed to turn himself in. He told Liberty police he had shot and killed his mother and aunt, saying he killed his aunt "because she had evicted him from his house," according to Fox 4 and court documents.

Days of warnings

Court documents detail multiple police contacts with the family in the days before the shootings.

On Feb. 10, 2025, Lenexa officers responded to a domestic disturbance at the home. Howard told police his mother grabbed him by the neck and pushed him. Valerie Howard told officers her son had broken an ashtray and pushed her, causing her to fall. Austin called police separately that day, saying Howard had threatened her and that his erratic behavior scared her.

Valerie Howard told police her son had been violent toward her since 2021, and that she and Austin had been locking themselves in their rooms as much as possible.

The next day, Feb. 11, Austin served Howard with a 30-day eviction notice. Court documents say he reacted angrily. Howard also called Lenexa police that day claiming a woman in the house had pointed a gun at him; he later recanted that statement. When officers spoke with Howard on Feb. 11, he denied having any firearms, and officers did not find any, despite Austin's suspicion that he did. A family member later told investigators Howard had a 10mm rifle and a handgun stored in a closet.

The shootings occurred the following morning.

Howard is being held at the New Century Adult Detention Center, according to the jail's inmate roster.