Results tagged “imettestguillen”

A judge today sentenced 41-year-old bouncer Darryl Littlejohn to life in prison without parole after being convicted last month of the rape and murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen. Littlejohn did not speak on his own behalf and NY1 says he showed no visible sign of remorse. Defense attorneys say they plan to appeal after trying to peg the murder on Danny Dorian, the manager of the club Littlejohn met and left with St. Guillen from. Today the judge "chastised workers of (The Falls) and asked how they could show such indifference." Before the sentence, St. Guillen's mother read a letter from her daughter about her life in New York and her sister told the court, "I understand there is no punishment that will bring Imette back and that is why there is never closure." Littlejohn will serve the sentence consecutively along with 25 years he received for another kidnapping and assault of a Queens woman.

The mother of Imette St. Guillen is speaking out for the first time since bouncer Darryl Littlejohn was convicted of the rape and murder of her daughter earlier this week. 63-year-old Maureen St. Guillen said that despite her gratitude at the jury's decision, she doesn't believe in closure and said that "the wounds are open for life." She says that while she attended almost all of Littlejohn's trial, Mrs. St. Guillen could not bear to come in on days in which the gruesome details of Imette's murder were recounted. She told the News, "I think about Imette every minute of every day. Sometimes you see a person who looks like her. Her hair, her body shape, that long dark straight hair." St. Guillen also shared with the paper that she now always wears a heart locket with Imette's ashes inside; she also travels with an urn that has both the ashes of her daughter mixed with those of her late husband inside.

Now that a jury has found Darryl Littlejohn guilty for the murder of John Jay graduate student Imette St. Guillen, St. Guillen's family is working on their civil suit against the bouncer. And the NY Post reports that Littlejohn stands to inherit $750,000 from his late mother's estate. Initially, when St. Guillen's lawyer Joseph Tacopina did a search in 2006, Littlejohn, an ex-con, had no money to his name. But this past April, Queens Probate Court filings showed that Littlejohn's mother left two homes, one in Queens and one in South Carolina. Tacopina said he would file for a lien on the estate, "We did not expect this was going to happen. But we had our eyes on any court decisions in his name...We want to get [the money] in the hands of the Spirit of Imette Foundation." Lawyers for Littlejohn, who faces life in prison for the murder, say they plan to appeal.

As the defense vowed to continue their fight another day, the mother of Imette St. Guillen wept with joy and expressed gratitude to the jury who quickly delivered a guilty verdict against Darryl Littlejohn for the rape and murder of her daughter. Outside the courtroom where the bouncer was convicted yesterday, Maureen St. Guillen said, "With Imette's death, all of our lives are forever darkened. A little piece of us died with her. Her love and caring for others was never-ending."

Just a little over three weeks after the Imette St. Guillen trial began, it is now in the hands of jurors who will decide the fate of Darryl Littlejohn for sexually assaulting and murdering the graduate student from Boston. In closing arguments yesterday, Littlejohn's defense lawyer Joyce David accused police of a conspiracy to protect his boss, bar manager Danny Dorrian, whose brother-in-law was an adviser to Rudy Giuliani. David said, "Darryl Littlejohn was the solution to all their problems: solving the city's biggest crime at the time, protecting Danny Dorrian and protecting Rudy Giuliani from another scandal while he was running for President." David said St. Guillen and Dorrian could have had "a weird bondage thing." Prosecutor Kenneth Taub responded to the vague allegations by calling them "the rankest kind of speculation" and said there is "a mountain of evidence" against Littlejohn. Update: After six hours of deliberation, the jury has found Littlejohn guilty of rape and first-degree murder.

Yesterday, defense lawyers for Darryl Littlejohn, a bar bouncer accused of murdering a John Jay College student in 2006, rested their case. Yesterday, those lawyers put two police detectives on the stand: One said that while numerous items were taken from Littlejohn's Queens apartment, none "were ever linked to [murder victim Imette] St. Guillen and DNA testing failed to yield a match," while the other said that few items from the bar where Littlejohn worked— and where St. Guillen was last scene—were taken as evidence. Littlejohn's defense has suggested that the police should have paid more attention to bar owner Danny Dorrian. Littlejohn has already been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in the kidnapping of a Queens woman in 2005; he is also suspected in a kidnapping and rape that is very similar to St. Guillen's attack. Closing arguments are expected today and the jury will likely get the case shortly afterward.

Yesterday, a woman described a rape and attack very similar to how John Jay College student Imette St. Guillen was attacked. St. Guillen was found dead in 2006, and a bouncer at the bar she was last seen, Darryl Littlejohn, is on trial for her murder. While the woman was unable to pick out Littlejohn in a lineup, a judge allowed her to testify because the attack was so similar to St. Guillen's and another woman's. The Daily News reports that the woman described being "snatched off" Queens Boulevard, and then "the attacker handcuffed her and bundled her into a car," threatening her with a gun. "Warning her to shut up, the attacker drove her to a bedroom that sounded similar to Littlejohn's basement apartment in his mother's Jamaica home. The attacker taped a knit cap over her eyes - a key detail because Littlejohn allegedly taped over St. Guillen's eyes." After raping her, her attacker "forced her to clean up and change into shorts and a T-shirt," which had LIttlejohn's mother's DNA on it.

Yesterday, a young woman told a Brooklyn jury that seeing media coverage of a man suspected of killing Imette St. Guillen helped her realize it was the same man who tried to kidnap her months earlier. Shanai Woodard said, "I was watching the news with my mother and I saw a picture of the van come across the screen. I started freaking out really bad. 'Mom, that was the van I was in. I know it is.'" Littlejohn is on trial for St. Guillen's murder, which took place in February 2006, but earlier this year, Darryl Littlejohn was convicted and sentenced for 25 years for trying to kidnap Woodard in October 2005. Littlejohn had grabbed Woodard off a Queens street, threw her into his van, and "punched [her] in the head two to three times." Woodard, who was also bound, eventually escaped the moving van and managed to find help. The Daily News explains that the judge allowed Woodard's testimony was allowed because the "similarities - a young woman abducted, hands bound behind, hit in the head and her eyes covered - were striking enough to let the jurors hear."

Danny Dorrian, the former manager of downtown bar The Falls, was hammered on the witness stand by defense lawyers representing his former employee, Darryl Littlejohn. Littlejohn is on trial for the murder of Imette St. Guillen, last seen at The Falls on February 25, 2006.

Danny Dorrian, who owned downtown bar The Falls, the last place 24-year-old John Jay College grad student Imette St. Guillen was seen, testified that he lied to police who were investigating St. Guillen's murder because he remembered how his family was treated during the Preppy Murder: "I could just imagine the repercussions it would set off -- lawsuits, police, bad press. If I pretended it didn't happen, maybe it wouldn't be true. I didn't believe it was true."

Yesterday, a downtown nightclub bouncer went on trial for the 2006 murder of a John Jay College graduate student. Imette St. Guillen's naked body was found off the Belt Parkway, bound and wrapped in a floral blanket shortly after she was missing. Prosecutors said in their opening that the DNA of Darryl Littlejohn, the bouncer last seen kicking her out of a bar, was found on ties around her wrists and that the blanket had traces of his mother's and brother's DNA. However, the defense proposed that Littlejohn was framed and suggested the bar's owner was the real killer.

Three years after the murder of Imette St.Guillen, jury selection was supposed to have started yesterday in the trial of suspect Darryl Littlejohn. Littlejohn, an ex-con, was a bouncer at the bar St. Guillen was last seen at. However, selection was delayed until next month because of issues with the DNA evidence prosecutors say links Littlejohn to the crime. Last week, the Daily News reported that Littlejohn's mother's hair was found on the blanket that the John Jay College grad student was wrapped in, but then the News reported yesterday that the DNA of Littlejohn's brother—who died in 1994—may have found on the blanket, which was not made until 1998. Littlejohn's defense lawyer suggests the evidence was tampered, "The evidence itself, the plastic ties, the quilt, the snow brush, were moved from lab to lab. They were transported by detectives involved in the case. At any point in time the evidence could have been tampered with," a claim the police deny. Additionally, the defense also says the police never took voice samples of bar owner Dan Dorrian "to compare it to that of an anonymous 911 call Feb. 25, 2006, directing police to the location of St. Guillen's body."

Darryl Littlejohn, who will be on trial for the 2006 murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen later this year, was found guilty in an unrelated kidnapping case. In October 2005, Littlejohn apparently "posed as a police officer and handcuffed [a] York College student," according to the NY Times. The victim, Shanai Woodward, was forced into a van but she escaped; she later testified that she was afraid he would kill her. Investigators revealed her DNA was found in his van, which apparently convinced jurors. Littlejohn's defense is planning an appeal, claiming the St. Guillen case may have influenced jurors.

Somehow, the NY Post has obtained police interviews with Claire Higgins, the best friend of John Jay College graduate student Imette St. Guillen, whose brutal 2006 murder shocked the city.