Her brother is in jail for their mother’s murder. She says Troy police got it wrong.

A Swansea woman is demanding that police and prosecutors go back and reconsider evidence that could exonerate her brother, who’s charged with killing their mother in Troy last year.

Andrea Hall, 41, said she believes Troy Police Department “jumped the gun” when they arrested Neil Howard, 45.

The Madison County state’s attorney’s office charged Howard with two counts of first-degree murder in the strangulation death of Norma Caraker, 60, widow of late Troy Mayor Charles “Tom” Caraker. A grand jury later indicted him. He pleaded not guilty.

“I am so angry,” Hall said. “Regardless of what they’re putting my brother through, they’re not doing right by my mother.”

Howard has been held on a $3 million bond since his September arrest.

Hall said Howard can’t get proper treatment for his health problems while in jail. In a motion for dismissal last fall, he stated that he needed a toe amputated due to diabetes and a bone infection and constant care following quintuple-bypass heart surgery.

Hall said she believed Howard was innocent at the time of his arrest, and she hasn’t changed her mind since learning about evidence on which police and prosecutors are basing their case.

“(My brother is) a good suspect, don’t get me wrong,” Hall said, acknowledging that he has a history of alcoholism and domestic battery, and he was accused but not indicted 19 years ago in Texas after a shooting that resulted in the death of their father.

“But they should have done more due diligence investigating my mom’s death. They were more concerned about keeping the community at rest.”

Hall and Howard have a half-sister, Jenny Hosler. She couldn’t be reached for comment.

Howard attended Cahokia High School, lived in Collinsville, Maryville and Hillsboro, Missouri, and formerly worked at Pilot Travel Center in Troy, according to court records. He has three grown children.

Police found Norma Caraker, a beloved metro-east waitress, dead about 1:30 a.m. Sept. 13, 2023, at the Lower Marine Road home she shared with her son. The Madison County coroner’s office determined the cause of death was asphyxiation.

Troy police investigated. They didn’t bring in the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis, a cooperative of local law-enforcement agencies that often gets activated on murder cases.

“We just felt like we had enough investigators and other partnering agencies (Illinois State Police Crime Scene Services and the coroner’s office),” Police Chief Chris Wasser said.

“That’s not uncommon, for local law-enforcement agencies to handle their own cases,” he added.

Hall said investigators turned Caraker’s house over to her and Hosler about four days after the murder, and they were disturbed to find a broken necklace chain in the living-room floor and a trash can containing soda cans that could have contained DNA evidence.

When Wasser was asked if he thought Troy police did a thorough investigation, he said, “Yes.” He declined to comment on evidence that was collected or witnesses who were interviewed.

“I don’t want to compromise anything with the investigation before it goes to trial,” Wasser said.

The state’s attorney’s office declined comment.

Hall said security video showed that Caraker was at the Time Out Sports Bar & Grill in Troy on the evening of Sept. 12, 2023, with a man she had met on an online dating website.

Hall said she believes her brother’s story that Caraker called him from the bar and told him to clean up the kitchen and go down to his bedroom in the basement because she was bringing home a date and that Howard put in earbuds to give them privacy.

Hall said Howard later texted Hall and his girlfriend to tell them that he sensed something was wrong but waited 30 minutes to call 911 because he was reluctant to interrupt his mother in the middle of the night.

“I told investigators that his story, what my brother told them, seemed very plausible,” Hall said, noting that she formerly lived with Caraker and Howard and knew their routines.

Hall said investigators interviewed her mother’s date and told her the man had an alibi for the time of the murder. Now he can’t be reached by Howard’s defense attorneys, she said.

In 2005, authorities in Dallas County, Texas, accused Neil Howard of murdering his father, George Howard, by shooting him, according to a report last fall by The Edwardsville Intelligencer. But they failed to get nine out of 12 grand-jury members to indict him, so he was released.

Five years later, Neil Howard’s brother-in-law, Josh Hosler, Jenny Hosler’s husband, obtained an order of protection, requiring Howard to stay away after Howard allegedly threatened to kill him.

“(Howard) is violent & when he says he’s going to do something — he’s serious,” Josh Hosler wrote in his petition. “He’s a raging alcoholic & will snap one day! In 2005 Neil was exonerated of 1st degree murder charges in TX, because he said (it) was self defense.”

Howard’s metro-east court records include convictions for domestic battery and alcohol- and drug-related charges.

Judges have granted orders of protection to a woman variously described in court documents as Howard’s girlfriend, a family member, his ex-wife and mother of his children. Hall said both contributed to the tumultuous relationship.

Andrea Hall said she and her husband, Sam Hall, who owns a Swansea construction company, decided to go ahead with their plans to get married the weekend after Caraker’s death. Howard was supposed to walk her down the aisle. Jenny Hosler took his place.

“(My brother is) not an angel,” Hall said. “But he’s not as bad of a guy as he’s made out to be. ... What he’s being charged with he did not do.”