A Manhattan bouncer was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder Wednesday in connection with the gruesome slaying of a New York City graduate student, authorities told NBC News.
An announcement of a murder indictment against Darryl Littlejohn, 41, is expected Thursday, a law enforcement official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the indictment was still sealed.
Littlejohn, a parolee with a long rap sheet, has been the prime suspect in last month’s slaying of Imette St. Guillen. Blood found on the plastic ties used to bind St. Guillen, 24, was matched to Littlejohn, a bouncer at the bar where she was last seen alive, the New York Police Department commissioner said.
St. Guillen’s family left their Boston home for New York Wednesday, NBC reported.
No more details were immediately available about the indictment.
Littlejohn worked at The Falls bar, where a manager told police he ordered him to escort the woman out when she stayed sipping a drink past the 4 a.m. closing time; he recalled hearing the pair arguing before they disappeared through a side door.
Sometime during the next 17 hours, the student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan was raped, strangled and suffocated. Her naked and bound body was found in a remote section of Brooklyn on Feb. 25 with a sock stuffed in her mouth and her head wrapped with packaging tape.
History of crime
Records show Littlejohn’s first brush with the law came at age 17, when he robbed someone with a shotgun. Over the years, he was convicted on drug and gun charges using names like Darryl Banks, John Handsome and Jonathan Blaze — the name of a comic book character.
His aunt Addie Harris has tried to defend him publicly in the St. Guillen case, arguing, “Many people have a record, but that doesn’t mean he committed that type of crime.”
Littlejohn shouldn’t have been working at the bar St. Guillen visited because the job kept him out past his 9 p.m. parole curfew. Officials say they only knew about a second job he had at a mortgage company.
In addition to linking the blood to Littlejohn, investigators said that his cell phone was used in the area where the body was found.