McTIGHE: Brutal.
Brutal way that she suffered.
Why somebody would want to do this
to somebody else is beyond my comprehension.
NARRATOR: The murder of a sable-eyed beauty
in the prime of her life.
TAUB: She was wrapped in tape,
and she had had a sock shoved down her throat.
This is against every woman's instinct,
to leave your friend behind.
NARRATOR: A mystery that sparks a media firestorm
and a plea for justice.
He handcuffed her and threw her in the back of a van.
This was not somebody in law enforcement at all.
This was an abduction.
He's on parole.
He knows that we're looking at him.
TAUB: He was not a truth teller.
Well, is that because he somehow involved this homicide?
NARRATOR: The truth will be revealed.
McTIGHE: At least now we can say for sure,
his DNA is not supposed to be there.
I mean, I wasn't physically jumping up down,
but inside, I was.
NARRATOR: Every day in North America,
dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline,
the minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery
and catch the killer.
♪♪
New York City, where people come
to chase their dreams and find success.
Not far from the bright lights of Manhattan is
the Belt Parkway in South Brooklyn
and the notorious area of Fountain and Seaview.
FISHER: Fountain Avenue is in one of
the grittier areas of South Brooklyn.
The Belt Parkway runs along one side of it.
There's a creek that runs along the -- the other side.
It's desolate, it's a dead end,
no foot traffic, if any.
Johns bring girls down to that area
because nobody's gonna bother you there.
FISHER: It's been a known mob dumping ground.
There's no reason to go there unless
you're, uh going fishing or dumping a body.
NARRATOR: On Saturday, February 25th, 2006,
a 911 call comes in at 8:26 PM.
[phone beeps]
We get this anonymous call that a guy saw what he believed
was a body being dropped out of the back of a vehicle.
And then he hung up.
NARRATOR: Homicide detectives John Cornicello
and Sean McTighe
of Brooklyn's legendary 75th Precinct,
also known as the 7-5, respond to the call.
McTIGHE: We had found a girl.
She had tape all over her face.
She was wrapped up in a blanket
on Fountain Avenue on the side of the road.
Initially, we thought it was a local prostitute,
could've very easily something happened, and...
the girl was disposed of there.
CORNICELLO: We weren't sure if it was a sex crime,
but she's wrapped up in this blanket and, you know,
you want to keep it intact
as much as possible before it goes to the medical
examiner's office.
McTIGHE: Brutal, brutal way that she suffered.
Why somebody would want to do this
to somebody else is beyond my comprehension.
NARRATOR: Detectives immediately start to process the scene,
looking for any clues that could help with
the investigation.
McTIGHE: We did our initial canvas in the area,
obviously looked for evidence around the body.
Underneath her was a snow brush,
so it could be important evidence.
CORNICELLO: There's no wallet. There's no I.D.
Nothing to kind of help us to zero in on who she is.
NARRATOR: The detectives' only lead at this point
is the anonymous 911 call
made a couple of miles from where the body was dropped.
The call came from a payphone by a diner on Linden Boulevard.
Can we identify the caller?
We spoke to the people in the diner,
and we didn't get any -- Any results there.
And it's a public payphone.
Fingerprints -- it's not gonna be of any value.
So we didn't have anything to go on.
NARRATOR: With their initial canvass
netting little to identify who the victim is
and what happened to her detectives are faced with
another challenge.
She was preserved, for lack of a better word,
because it was freezing, it was February.
So that puts a hamper on pinpointing at this point in
the investigation, the time of death
to find out exactly where she was and how she died.
THOMAS: When you don't know where someone has been
in the last 24 hours, and you have someone who
is found in the way that she was found, it's New York City,
she could have come in contact with anyone.
So if you don't have a timeline,
you have an unsolved murder.
NARRATOR: With so many unanswered questions,
the detectives know that the road to the killer runs
through identifying their Jane Doe.
CORNICELLO: We have to start by finding out who she is,
and we really had a clean slate,
unfortunately, to go on,
McTIGHE: She was found in a desolate area.
There were no cameras near where she was found.
There wasn't a lot of people to be interviewed.
There wasn't a big area to canvass.
So we're hoping that the medical examiner will find
any little thing in the investigation that's gonna
help us identify her, 'cause I can't find out
who killed you unless I know who you are.
NARRATOR: The only thing detectives can be sure of
at this point is that a woman's body
was found at 8:26 PM at Fountain and Seaview.
They're counting on the autopsy to reveal
more about how and when she died.
TAUB: Her wrists were bound from behind with plastic zip ties.
Inside the blanket, she was wrapped in tape,
and below the tape,
she had had a sock stuffed into
her mouth and shoved down her throat.
So ultimately, she died of asphyxia, the inability to get
air to the lungs and blood to the brain.
And it became clear from the autopsy
and the internal examination
that she had been the victim of a brutal sex crime.
McTIGHE: She had distinctive tan lines,
like boy shorts tan lines as opposed to a bikini.
And it's February.
So this person obviously was just at a beach somewhere.
NARRATOR: Her fingernails were also cut very short,
and a chunk of her hair was hacked off.
And the way the fingernails and the hair were cut,
that's not normal.
STOCKDALE: Why would someone cut off a woman's hair?
Makes me think that this person is very careful.
They're very planful.
They know what they're doing, and they don't want
DNA evidence.
McTIGHE: The medical examiner could say
that time of death was within 12 to 24 hours
of when we found her.
NARRATOR: Detectives must now piece together Jane Doe's last
24 hours to find her killer,
starting with identifying who she is.
TAUB: The Daily News put out online rather quickly
the fact that the police had provided to them that
a body has been found and appears to be homicidal in such
and such location, in such and such a time.
GILLIS: Sometimes, the police and the media have a very
cooperative relationship.
We can help them by getting the message out that a body has
been found, that a killer's on the loose,
you know, asking for help from the media to get the word out
about it so they might be able
to identify who this person was.
And that message goes out to millions of people
very quickly.
NARRATOR: The morning after Jane Doe's discovery,
a young woman,
Alejandra St. Guillen, comes into the 75th Precinct.
She's seen the news bulletin and has information.
Her sister is missing.
McTIGHE: We bring in the interview room.
I ask her, "Why do you feel that this person is
the person you think it is?"
She says her sister just got back from vacation
from Florida, visiting with her mom and her stepdad.
And she was out with friends the night before,
so that's important, because of the tan lines.
But we just wanted to make sure.
And I had a Polaroid picture now from the autopsy,
and I showed her the picture,
and she was obviously distraught.
Just in total disbelief,
shock, you know, hysterical crying.
So without even saying a word,
I knew it was her relative.
NARRATOR: Detectives are finally able to identify
the victim of this grisly homicide.
She's 24-year-old Imette St. Guillen.
Imette was from the Boston area.
She'd gone to a private school, Boston Latin.
She was raised by her mother after her father died
when she was nine years old.
Imette was following in her father's footsteps.
He had studied criminal justice, and she was a criminal
justice student at John Jay College.
Imette was a brilliant young woman, you know, honor roll.
She could have gone and done anything.
So now I have her name.
I get her family members' names, I get her friends' names,
and then we decide who we're gonna go to first.
NARRATOR: The night before Imette's body was found,
she was out celebrating her upcoming 25th birthday with her
best friend, Claire.
Claire came into the 75th Precinct,
she sat down with us,
and went over the course of events of that night.
This particular night, they went to the Pioneer Bar
in Manhattan.
CORNICELLO: In the old days, the Bowery was drunks
and bums and if you stopped your car, they would, you know,
try to clean your windshield with dirty rigs, and you just
wanted to get away from it.
But, you know, but now,
in 2006, this is -- this is an up-and-coming area,
so they were just going out to have
a nice social night in a nice area of Manhattan.
I remember Claire telling us that it was between 3,
3:30, maybe.
Bars close at four in New York.
Claire wants to go home, Imette wants to still stay out.
So they leave the Pioneer Bar,
and they're having an argument outside of the bar.
It wasn't normal for her to keep partying like this
and not wanting to go home
and not wanting to be with her friends.
TAUB: Claire had tried to get her in a cab a couple times
but was unsuccessful,
and she threw up her hands and said, "You want to stay out?"
Stay out. I'm going home," and did.
McTIGHE: Claire gets in a cab, she leaves.
Imette now walks the opposite direction of the bar.
That's 3:30.
Claire now feels guilty and upset that
she left her there, so Claire calls her.
That's probably quarter to 4.
Where are you?
I'm gonna come get you, gonna bring you home.
But Imette doesn't know what bar she's at.
"I've got a drink. Once I finish my drink, I'm leaving."
Claire's worried about her, but, you know,
eventually, Imette convinces her that everything's gonna
be okay -- I mean, this is against every
woman's instinct to leave your friend behind.
And that's the last time she ever spoke to her.
NARRATOR: Detectives have determined the last time anyone
spoke to Imette St. Guillen was around 3:45 a.m.
She was in a bar alone
and had just left her best friend, Claire,
but they don't know which bar.
McTIGHE: I need to know where does she go
when she left Claire?
When Claire pulls away in that cab,
does she go north, south, east, west?
Did she have a fight with anybody?
Did somebody give Imette a ride home?
A million questions, because we have
to find out what happened to this girl.
I have kids. I have girls.
And I remember going home and saying,
"Here's the deal. Don't ever forget this.
"You go out with somebody, you leave with them.
You don't leave your friends behind."
Just a terrible, uh, life lesson to have to learn.
I've been out to bars.
My girlfriends have been out to bars where,
you know, someone decides to leave early.
You end up being there alone.
Maybe you want to have one more drink.
And this case really hammers home
how vulnerable young women who are alone
in bars after they've been drinking can be.
CORNICELLO: So her friend doesn't know where she is.
Friend knows that she has a credit card.
So we start getting records on her credit card usage.
Where was the credit card used?
McTIGHE: She bought two rum and cokes
at the Falls Bar in Manhattan.
That's probably quarter to 4.
Now, she bought those two drinks with cash,
it would have hurt our investigation tremendously.
ARNTFIELD: What strikes me about this case,
what really resonates, is the little
breadcrumbs we leave behind in our lives.
You have to ask yourself, had she not bought those two rum
and cokes with a credit card and left some kind of
trail behind,
what other evidence do we have that she's even at the bar?
So something as every day, as seemingly
benign as using a credit card ends up being so critical
in this case.
McTIGHE: The Falls Bar is only two blocks away from
the Pioneer, so when you come out of the Pioneer,
you make a right and a right, and you can literally walk into
the front door of the Falls.
So the Falls Bar is the last place we know she was.
We have a starting point now we can narrow down -- 3:45 AM,
she's there.
NARRATOR: Detectives are now working with
a 16-hour window, between 3:45 AM,
when Imette paid for her drinks, and 8:26 PM,
when her body was found in south Brooklyn.
So we're in Manhattan.
My expectation is we're gonna have video all over the place.
You know, this is Manhattan, not Brooklyn.
So we task a team with finding video.
Maybe we can pick her up somewhere,
anything else that can maybe piece this together.
NARRATOR: Security camera footage shows Imette
entering the Falls Bar at 3:40 AM.
But there is no footage of her leaving
the bar when it closes at 4 AM
or any time thereafter.
Now we know where she was alive
and well at around closing time on that Saturday morning.
So now you have to look at the universe of characters
who were in that place who might have something
to say about this.
ARNTFIELD: How many people did she come
into contact with that night,
and narrowing down that list of persons of interest to
potential suspects,
you would always start with the staff.
Who are the natural surveillance of the bar?
These are the people working there who keep an eye on things,
and those are the bartenders and the bouncers.
NARRATOR: Detectives believe someone at the Falls Bar
could be a witness or even Imette's killer.
The bartender remembers serving Imette that evening.
TAUB: She's the one that actually
sold the two drinks to Imette.
She remembered Imette being intoxicated, and being the end
of the night, and being obligated to close the bar,
and that there was talk of her having to leave.
NARRATOR: The bartender tells detectives at 4 AM,
bar manager Daniel Dorrian wanted Imette
out the door once and for all.
CORNICELLO: The barmaid remembered
Dorrian wanting to get her out of the place,
because, and I don't know the exact words,
but she had been drinking and, you know, she's crazy.
We got to get her out of here.
Now it's time to go, she's like, "I paid for my drinks.
I'm not going anywhere."
Dorrian gets fed up.
Maybe he doesn't want to deal with it.
Maybe he's drinking, he tells the two bouncers,
get her out of here.
NARRATOR: Daniel Dorrian's name is well known to police.
His family owns a number of bars across the five boroughs.
Dorrian, um,
was a piece of work.
I mean, first, he said he didn't
remember her even being in the bar.
McTIGHE: He said, "Well, I was working,
"counting the money for the night, proceeds,
so I don't know what you're talking about."
CORNICELLO: So on one hand, you have
Dorrian's statement, and then you have the barmaid,
who paints a whole different picture.
So now again, that's like, you know, why is he
being evasive?
He was not a truth teller, and one has to ask oneself well,
is that because he'd somehow involved in this homicide?
CORNICELLO: You know, you go back to a hunch.
The story, just... something was missing.
He says he didn't know anything, didn't see anything.
Something just wasn't right.
NARRATOR: Their suspicions raised by how
Daniel Dorrian's story contradicts the bartender's,
detectives question Dorrian about his whereabouts
after the bar closed at 4 AM.
CORNICELLO: He says he's in an office in an isolated area.
He's providing an opportunity where he's by himself,
and now he's got this wide timeframe of,
"Well, I don't know when she left,
"I don't know when they left, and then I was there for maybe
another hour."
McTIGHE: The bar's already closed.
Nobody was with this guy.
So that's something we keep in the back of our mind.
Maybe he had something to do with this.
CORNICELLO: Under the circumstances, there's just
too many things that have to be answered, you know,
that leave a question in your mind as an investigator.
It raises him to a pretty high level.
Did he try to pick her up, and then did something go bad,
and now is he our perp?
NARRATOR: Detectives have zeroed in on bar manager
Daniel Dorrian as their first suspect
in the brutal murder of 24-year-old criminal
justice student, Imette St. Guillen.
If you're tellin' me you closed the place up,
she was there.
We know what time she was there from the receipt,
but he's just saying, "I don't know who this girl is."
Obviously, there's something more than that.
FISHER: The Falls was connected to the Dorrian family,
a notorious family in New York, for several reasons.
The patriarch, Red Dorrian, was known as a bootlegger
back in the Twenties.
The family opened a bar on
the Upper East Side called Dorrian's Red Hand
after the patriarch.
It was known as a place where prep school kids
could go and get drunk and hook up with each other.
That bar became notorious in
the mid-Eighties for the Jennifer Levin murder,
the Preppy Murder.
It was a black eye for the family.
ARNTFIELD: In this case, we see Dorrian lying initially
about his alibi.
This is not that uncommon in that people lie in murder
investigations all the time,
and they think they're white lies, and in reality, they can
really derail an investigation.
At the same time, it's uncanny that this is the second
high-profile murder linked to a series of bars and nightclubs
owned by the same family.
It's like lightning striking twice in the same place.
So now we start to say, "Well",
"wait a minute, his father had this bar,
"patron is in there,
is killed,"
and it creates all of this bad press
on this restaurant and father in his business.
Now we're sitting here, and it's a Dorrian bar,
and we've got a female victim who was in here at
some point -- Is it connected to him?
Or he can see where this is going,
and he's trying to distance himself from the circumstances.
NARRATOR: As detectives weigh their next move with Dorrian,
there is an unexpected development in the case.
We get a phone call, "Get to headquarters right away.
Don't tell anybody what you're doing or where you're going."
So I'm looking at my partner,
I said, "Well, the guy's turned himself in."
CORNICELLO: Daniel Dorrian wants to come in
and give us a statement,
but he wants to do it
at police headquarters, he doesn't want to come
to East New York.
Very, uh,
different.
NARRATOR: Detectives question Daniel Dorrian again
about the night Imette disappeared
after closing time at the Falls Bar.
McTIGHE: Now he says, "All right, listen.
"This is what happened.
"She was there," so he tells us that he sees Imette,
she's very drunk, she's at the end of the bar,
and she's arguing with him.
"I'm not leaving. I paid for these drinks."
So that's when he puts the two bouncers on her,
Darryl and Tim,
which is -- that's their job, escort people out of the bar,
and that's what they did.
NARRATOR: At 4 AM, the main entrance
to the bar is already locked,
so the two bouncers, Tim Catella
and Darryl Littlejohn,
escort Imette out a secondary side door exit at
4:10 AM, where there are no security cameras.
TAUB: Ultimately, Dorrian, when he did come around,
he said, "Listen",
"that girl walked out of here under her own power,
aided by my two bouncers, Tim and Darryl."
NARRATOR: Daniel Dorrian remains a suspect in Imette's murder,
but detectives put him on the back burner
while they question the two bouncers.
Danny Dorrian didn't do any research on any of
the people that were doing security for his operation.
He had no idea who was working for him.
TAUB: The police department's investigation revealed the lack
of attention and concern and care
that the manager of that bar exercised in hiring
his bouncers.
How did you get your bouncers? "Oh, this one recommended
"this one and, you know,
"he knows a friend, and I paid him 100 bucks off the books at
"the end of the night, and that was it,
and as long as they showed up and did their job, I was happy."
McTIGHE: Once we start going into
their backgrounds, Darryl was on parole for sure,
and Tim was on probation.
You have a curfew in general,
but then you definitely can't work in a bar on parole.
Now we know for sure you two were
the last persons to see this girl outside this establishment.
ARNTFIELD: Two doormen,
neither of them had any business working at the bar,
interacting with vulnerable people under the influence
of alcohol.
At this point, the decision is who do you zero in?
NARRATOR: Detectives shift the focus of
their investigation to two bouncers at the Falls Bar,
Tim Catella and Darryl Littlejohn.
They both escorted Imette St. Guillen out of the bar at
4:10 AM, 14 hours before her body was found in
South Brooklyn.
So now we're gonna circle back and ask them,
What happened? How did you get home that night?
NARRATOR: Detectives start with Tim and ask him to
come to the 75th Precinct to answer some questions.
McTIGHE: Tim lived in Staten Island.
Darryl lived in Queens, complete opposite directions.
So Darryl would go north of Manhattan towards either
the bridge or the tunnel,
and Tim would go to take the ferry over to Staten Island.
Maybe 4:15,
he said, "I went to the ferry,
and I saw Darryl talking with Imette."
But he says he has no clue to what happened
to either Littlejohn or Imette after he walked in
that direction.
NARRATOR: Detectives need more than Tim's word to corroborate
his story,
but they're putting him on ice until they talk to the second
bouncer, Darryl Littlejohn.
FISHER: Darryl Littlejohn's an ex-con.
He was on parole at the time,
and his employment at Dorrian's bar was a violation
of his parole agreement.
NARRATOR: With Darryl Littlejohn
directly in their crosshairs, detectives
use his parole as leverage to
haul him into the 7-5 for questioning.
So...
start with a basic timeline,
just like we have in the case.
Tell me your daily schedule. Tell me your routine.
How do you get to work? How do you leave work?
What are your hours? How long you been working there?
Do you remember this girl?
He said he argued with her about
racism and crime with black men.
Darryl said he was a U.S. Marshal,
which we know he wasn't,
and they were just arguing about crime,
how the statistics for black men are off
than they should be.
It was just a basic argument in a bar -- he says
he walked her out the door, and she was on her way.
He doesn't know how she got home.
She got in a cab or a subway, and left.
Littlejohn denies having anything to do
with Imette's murder,
but detectives press him for details about what he was doing
between 4:15 AM,
when Tim walked away from him and Imette,
and 8:26 PM, when her body was found in south Brooklyn.
He's on parole,
and he's also very cautious,
and he knows that we're looking at him.
McTIGHE: I mean, we talked to him for two days,
over eight hours and eight hours.
He never said, "I don't want to talk to you."
He'd say, "I borrowed my ex-girlfriend's car",
"and I was with her.
I went to see my mom in the nursing home."
He went to the nursing home.
He was -- he didn't go visit his mom.
I asked him, I said,
maybe he went home with Imette, maybe
they had sex and she had a heart attack and died.
Is that possible?
But he was a career criminal.
He wasn't talking.
NARRATOR: Detectives are being stonewalled by
Darryl Littlejohn,
but they've obtained warrants for a sample of his DNA and are
now able to search his house and vehicle.
This was front page news, and so when the police
department executed a search warrant
on Darryl Littlejohn's home in Queens,
the camera crews from the local TV stations were on
scene, and they led their news story
with a live shot from in front of the home.
CORNICELLO: We find empty bottles of bleach
in the garbage.
If he cleaned up the house with bleach,
he was gonna destroy DNA evidence.
So the crime scene investigators took apart
the drain in the sink,
looking for hair fibers or blood.
It was spotless.
It was devastating.
NARRATOR: Adding to detectives' frustration is the pressure
from the ongoing media coverage
and the public's desire to see Imette St. Guillen's
killer brought to justice.
She was a sable-eyed beauty is
the way the Post used to describe her
and how she was a grad student.
She had a very strong will, and she went her own way.
It was a reminder that things can
happen, and the city's a dangerous place.
CORNICELLO: You go out with friends, you're in a bar,
you're having drinks,
you're having a good time, having a celebration.
Your friends go home.
You decide not to go home with them,
and then you're never seen again.
It's shocking, and it's -- And it hits home,
because so many people
will sit there and say, "I've done that."
And that's what really, I think, took over everybody's attention.
When a case has sort of captivated the attention of
a city, especially a large city
like New York City, there can be an immense amount of
pressure for investigators to solve the case quickly,
especially if there is a concern within the community
that there could be a killer in
their midst and that they might be next.
By getting the message out,
the public might be able to report suspicious activity that
they saw when they were leaving a bar late at night.
NARRATOR: The persistent media coverage eventually unearths
a significant lead for detectives.
TAUB: A young woman who was a college student
at York College was watching a newscast,
and she had been a victim of an unsolved crime
just a short time earlier,
back in November of 2005, and she saw in the background with
the clean lights of the camera,
she saw Darryl Littlejohn's van, and she said,
"That's the van that I was abducted in."
She had been on her way home from college classes
when she was abducted by a man
who seemed to be some sort of law enforcement
and was suggesting that he was going to arrest her,
and he handcuffed her and threw her in
the back of a van, but it gradually occurred to her
that this was not
somebody in law enforcement at all, and this was an abduction.
And so when the van slowed down and roll around a corner,
she opened the door and jumped out.
And she escaped and survived.
So what happens is, the police take
Littlejohn and put him in a lineup,
but she can't make an identification of him.
But the significance of this young woman's abduction was
that there was a pattern
to Darryl Littlejohn's conduct that was
so similar to Imette's case.
He engaged young, attractive women
and pretended to be in law enforcement
and then abducted them,
and they met foul play.
Everyone was a suspect until Darryl Littlejohn emerged
as a real suspect.
NARRATOR: With a pattern of behavior and the means,
detectives are certain that Darryl Littlejohn is
the only person who had the opportunity to kill Imette.
I think, unfortunately, with people who are sexually
sadistic, there may be people who require more aggression,
more pain, or more suffering to be inflicted for them to
achieve the same level or a higher level
of sexual arousal, almost like a high.
We would call these people increasers.
So for him, there's an increased likelihood
that he has fantasies that are
compulsively driving him to do this, and that
because he's aroused by power or control and domination and hurt
increases the likelihood that homicide would be the result of
any of the sexual attacks that he may perpetrate.
NARRATOR: With the clock ticking, detectives
interview a new witness,
a security guard who works nights in the area where
Imette's body was dropped.
McTIGHE: He remembers walking along Fountain Avenue
and seeing a minivan,
and a guy's inside the van on the phone,
because the phone's lit up.
He didn't give us a plate,
he didn't say for sure that was Darryl,
but it's the same type of minivan that Darryl owns.
TAUB: The fellow that worked at the landfill as a nightwatchman,
his shift was supposed to be from seven PM to seven AM,
12-hour shifts, but he wasn't always on time.
Police department got his MetroCard,
and they were able to trace exactly when he boarded
the first train or bus in the Bronx and took the train to
Brooklyn and then got on a bus in Brooklyn to go to his job.
McTIGHE: So he's supposed to be a work at seven.
It's late -- now it's 7:30
as he's walking down this route on Fountain Avenue.
Timing is unbelievable.
He was at the right place at the right time.
The evidence was overwhelming that this was Darryl's van
and, of course, the description, limited
though it was, was spot on.
I felt very confident
Darryl Littlejohn was not just the person who dumped the body,
but he was also the killer.
NARRATOR: Detectives are closing in on
the prime suspect in Imette St. Guillen's murder,
Darryl Littlejohn.
But their evidence in the case is entirely circumstantial.
Particularly if you wind up with a circumstantial case with
no confession, with no eye witnesses,
the timeline becomes
all that more important, because
your circumstantial evidence that you collect
and gather either fits, or it doesn't fit.
And a lot of that has to do with
the timing of certain things that happened leading
up to the murder and then in the investigation after the murder.
NARRATOR: Detectives have an eyewitness account of a van
matching Darryl Littlejohn's in the precise area where Imette's
body was dumped, and one detail stands out --
The driver was using their cellphone.
TAUB: Within a very short time,
we had gotten a warrant for Darryl Littlejohn's
phone records and cell tower records indicating
the location of the towers that handled calls
that he received at a certain time.
And it turned out to be highly significant, because eventually
we were able to determine that there was a woman who was
calling Littlejohn,
and when she got disconnected, either intentionally
or otherwise by Littlejohn, she called him back.
And so there were these two phone calls that were made at
crucial times,
hitting off specific towers in Queens and in Brooklyn.
It put him driving from Queens to the general
location where the body was found and back again,
right at around the time that
the night watchman puts this vehicle there.
NARRATOR: Detectives have now placed bouncer
Darryl Littlejohn exactly where Imette's body was dumped
less than an hour before police were called to
the scene at 8:26 PM.
The phone records, to me, are extremely important, because
they nailed down the time, they put him doing something,
not just in general, but at a relevant time.
NARRATOR: But without physical evidence or a confession,
they can't link Littlejohn directly to the murder.
We see in Imette's case, um,
that they get really to sort of the seventh inning stretch
in this case -- they have nearly
all the circumstantial evidence they need,
but there's just that one missing ingredient to allow
them to make the final push to the ninth,
and a lot of investigators may have rolled the dice
and gone to trial with what they already had,
but we see them hold out and stay focused, looking for that
final piece to close the circle.
And that often can mean the difference between making
an arrest and someone being
acquitted at trial, and making an arrest and making sure that
person never gets out.
NARRATOR: But then detectives get the break
they've been hoping for.
Ken's callin' me.
The only thing he can say is, "We got DNA."
I said, "What?"
"We got..." [laughs]
It was an interesting case.
Ken calls up, and he says, "We got DNA."
NARRATOR: Forensics have come back on the snow brush
found near Imette's body.
Darryl Littlejohn's DNA is a match.
TAUB: They could have easily have left it behind,
and had they done so,
we would have been without a piece of evidence.
But I'm grateful that it was whatever number of feet
away from the body, and a detective chose to pick it up.
I don't know, something about it
made him say, "I'm gonna take this,"
and that turned out to be very fortunate.
NARRATOR: Littlejohn's DNA also matches
a speck of blood found on one
of the zip ties used to bind her hands and feet.
McTIGHE: So at least now we can say for sure this is him.
His DNA is not supposed to be there.
I mean, I wasn't
physically jumping up and down,
but inside I was.
CORNICELLO: It solidifies all of this circumstantial evidence
to the fact that his DNA is there.
How could his DNA be there
if he wasn't responsible for the killing?
We were so involved in this case, and it was just,
you know, when we finally got the piece of evidence,
it was just -- It was overwhelming.
NARRATOR: Detectives can now piece together
Imette St. Guillen's final 24 hours,
So we know that Claire
and Imette leave the Pioneer Bar around 3:20.
They're three out front talking and arguing
about going home until about 3:30 -- Claire gets in
the cab, she goes home.
Imette goes to the Falls Bar.
She orders her two drinks at the Falls Bar
probably around quarter to four.
FISHER: She got into a conversation
with Darryl Littlejohn in which she was talking about
the criminal justice system and the incarceration rate
of black people.
I believe he was offended by what she said, and, uh,
decided that this is the woman he was going to prey on.
McTIGHE: I think either he offered her a ride
or he followed her walking and then forcibly
put her in the car.
She ends up in Queens in his residence.
From that point on is when
obviously something happened between Darryl and Imette.
FISHER: She was beaten up and raped pretty badly.
CORNICELLO: There was evidence that she struggled
with him, and he strangled her.
NARRATOR: Detectives now estimate that Imette was
murdered between 5:15 and 7:15 AM,
based on the final autopsy results.
Now he's got to get rid of the body.
So why did he choose that place?
Maybe he had driven past it dozens of times and said, "Well",
"that would be a good place to dump a body," I don't know.
NARRATOR: As Darryl Littlejohn drags Imette's body
out of the van, his snow brush
falls out onto the ground.
One thing that I'm grateful that crime scene
had the foresight to pick up was a little
cheap brush, because ultimately,
it turned out to be important.
NARRATOR: But one question remains unanswered.
What was Darryl Littlejohn's motive?
ARNTFIELD: This was, in fact, the work of
a random stranger and a random attack.
And there's absolutely no question in my mind that this
could have been the beginning of Littlejohn's career
as a serial killer and that were it not
for Imette's use of the credit card and some good
investigative work, we'd be talking about, um,
far more victims.
NARRATOR: Darryl Littlejohn is convicted for the murder
of Imette St. Guillen on June 3rd, 2009.
He is sentenced to life without parole.
CORNICELLO: The timeline was critical on this case.
That's how you develop your story.
You got a start, and you got an end, and you got to
try to piece it in in the middle,
and that's how you build your case
and bring the person to justice
who was responsible for that.
There's nothing more satisfying than doing something like that.
McTIGHE: You had DNA evidence. You had hair and fiber.
You had phone work.
You had interviews, you had canvasses.
You had video downloads.
Every tool as an investigator, we utilized.
It's never gonna bring back their relative
or their loved one,
but you do the best you can for them to give them closure.
I've talked to Imette's mom,
and whatever success we had in
the courtroom doesn't change things for her.
She doesn't have her Imette back.
She doesn't get to see her have children
or get married or have a successful career.
But years later, they created a scholarship in her honor
at John Jay.
I would like to think
that those who enter the field associated
with Criminal Justice can look at Imette
and say, "This is someone who could have been me."
"That's why I need to do my job well
and take it seriously, because the stakes are that high."