Imette St, Guillen Murder case #DarrylLittlejohn #JohJayCollege #NYPD #DNA #Detectives #75Squad The SoHo bar bouncer convicted in the 2006 rape and murder of Imette St. Guillen, a 24-year-old graduate student, was sentenced to life without parole in Brooklyn State Supreme Court. “I hope that the conclusion of these proceedings today will provide you with some small measure of solace,” Judge Abraham G. Gerges told Ms. St. Guillen’s relatives. Ms. St. Guillen was last seen alive on Feb. 25, 2006, leaving the Falls bar through a side door at closing time with the bouncer, Darryl Littlejohn. Her body was found handcuffed, gagged and wrapped in a blanket alongside a desolate road in East New York, Brooklyn, later that day. The killing was widely publicized and led the City Council to pass legislation intended to make nightclubs safer. In court, Ms. St. Guillen’s mother, Maureen, read aloud a letter that her daughter had written on the night of her 24th birthday. She had spent the day shopping, she wrote, and then had dinner with two girlfriends at a Mexican restaurant before returning home to study. “I will never share another birthday with Imette,” her mother said. She recalled the last time she saw her daughter alive, when the young woman came to visit her in Florida just days before she was killed. She watched her daughter board the plane back to New York, she said, wearing a white shirt and hooded sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “The last thing she did was turn around and wave and mouth, ‘I love you,’ ” she said. Ms. St. Guillen’s older sister, Alejandra, struggled to speak, her voice shaking as she held back tears. Mr. Littlejohn, who is currently serving 25 years to life in the kidnapping of a young woman in 2005, did not make a statement before the sentencing and showed no emotion when the judge gave his ruling. And Ms. St. Guillen’s hands, and his DNA was found on the handle of a snow brush investigators found near her body. One of his mother’s hairs was found on the blanket Ms. St. Guillen’s body was wrapped in, as was semen from his brother Reggie Harris, who died in 1994. Prosecutors also used cellphone data to show that later on the day Ms. St. Guillen disappeared, Mr. Littlejohn made the trip from his home in Queens to the area where her body was found and back again. Mr. Littlejohn’s lawyer, Joyce David, said she would file a notice of appeal. Speaking outside the courtroom after the sentencing, she said Mr. Littlejohn had remained silent when asked if he wished to make a statement because “there was really nothing for him to say.” “It’s hard for him to say he’s sorry for something he didn’t do,” she said. Mr. Littlejohn has maintained that he was framed to protect Daniel Dorrian, who managed the Falls. Ms. David said that the appeal would focus on documents she has so far been unable to view, including personnel records of one or more detectives who worked on the case, and notes from investigators’ meetings.. But the lead prosecutor, Kenneth Taub, said, “Barring some successful appeal, he will die in jail.”
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