By Ivan Pereira
Darryl Littlejohn, a convicted kidnaper with a long rap sheet, was found guilty of first−degree murder and rape by a Brooklyn jury Wednesday afternoon in the 2006 death of a John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduate student.
Jurors took one day to come to their decision to convict Littlejohn, who is already serving a 25−year−to−life prison sentence for kidnapping a York College student months before he killed and raped Imette St. Guillen. St. Guillen, a 24−year−old student at John Jay, was found dead in a Brooklyn ditch on Feb. 25, 2006, a day after she visited the SoHo bar called The Falls where Littlejohn, 44, worked as a bouncer.
Prosecutor Kenneth Taub said the Jamaica resident had taken St. Guillen away from the bar, raped her, beaten her to death and dumped the body. Littlejohn’s DNA found around the ditch and on St. Guillen’s body was Taub’s key evidence in the three−week trial.
Investigators also found cell phone records that placed Littlejohn, who has been in and out of prison since he was 17, at the ditch where the body was found.
Littlejohn is scheduled to be sentenced on July 18, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. He faces a maximum of life in prison without parole.
The bouncer was convicted in October in Queens Criminal Court of the kidnaping of former York College student Shanai Woodard. Woodard, who testified in the St. Guillen case, was walking home from classes on Oct. 19, 2005, when she was confronted by Littlejohn, who was disguised as a law enforcement official.
He handcuffed, beat and threw Woodard into his van and drove off. The York student was able to get out of the moving vehicle and escaped from Littlejohn.
When she saw his face on news footage of his arrest in the St. Guillen case, Woodard called police and identified Littlejohn as her kidnapper.
