Police Question Bouncer in Connection With Slain Grad Student

March 6, 2006 — -- A bouncer with a long and violent criminal past has emerged as a suspect in the brutal slaying of Imette St. Guillen, a New York graduate student whose death prompted fears that a serial killer had perhaps made his first strike.

St. Guillen, a 24-year-old Boston native, was seen on Feb. 25 at the Falls bar in Manhattan. Hours later, her naked and bound body was found in a desolate area of Brooklyn.

The bouncer, Darryl LittleJohn, 41, had been previously arrested and convicted on charges of armed robbery, weapons possession and sale and possession of drugs. He had obtained early release from state prison in New York three times, despite one instance of having violated his parole.

Authorities say LittleJohn's calls from his cell phone place him in Brooklyn, near where St. Guillen's body was found, at about the time forensic experts believe she was killed. The calls also place him at the Falls, the bar where St. Guillen was last seen alive, at about the same time as St. Guillen, police sources said.

Police said that while several pieces of evidence, including the cell phone records, pointed to LittleJohn, police did not, as of this morning, have enough pieces in place to ask the district attorney to charge him with the crime.

Over the weekend police executed search warrants for the bar and its business offices, as part of an effort to gather evidence, especially pieces of physical evidence, such as a device used to cut translucent beige packing tape like the kind that was wrapped across the young woman's eyes, nose and mouth, and contributed to her death by asphyxiation. St. Guillen was also violently choked.

Police were also reinterviewing many of St. Guillen's friends who had been with her at the Falls. It appears St. Guillen and her companions may have argued, and that St. Guillen then stayed at the bar after they'd departed.

Nancy Quade, Sally Hawkins and Chris Francescani contributed to this report.