Grisly Student Slay Shocks NYC

Splashy covers adorned New York's tabloids with lurid details of one of the city's most gruesome murders in recent history.

A graduate honors student whose naked body was dumped on the side of a road in Brooklyn on Saturday, had been

Investigators seeking witnesses and suspects in the St. Guillen's slaying have been studying security videotape from the neighborhood where she spent her last night out with friends, police said Tuesday.

The New York Daily News tabbed the killer the "Mummy Maniac," while the New York Post featured the supposed last words spoken to St. Guillen by her friend: "Are you going home?"

One tape shows St. Guillen, talking to a female friend at about 3 a.m. Saturday outside Pioneer, a bar in the Bowery section of Manhattan. The two can be seen parting ways, with the friend leaving by cab, police said.

The friend later told police St. Guillen sounded fine when she checked on her by cell phone about 30 minutes later. The victim informed her friend she had moved on to another bar in the same neighborhood, police said.

Police officials said they had collected other video from security cameras in the area hoping they would offer more answers about St. Guillen's final hours. Investigators also were looking for clues at a Brooklyn diner where an unidentified man used a telephone to call 911 with an anonymous tip her body had been dumped on a desolate roadside.

Police discovered the body at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in Brooklyn's East New York section. Someone had bound the 24-year-old victim's face, hands and feet with packaging tape before wrapping her in a flower-print bedspread; investigators believe she had been raped.

The bedspread, covered with pink, purple and red flowers and green leaves on a white background, was the fitted kind used by motels and hotels, police said. Investigators were canvassing local motels and hotels to see if anyone there had information on St. Guillen or her assailant.

According to sources used by the Daily News, the murderer chose St. Guillen at random.

The dozens of detectives working on the case in Manhattan and Brooklyn also were eager to identify and locate the 911 caller, believing he may have inside knowledge of the killing.

The Post reported that according to police, St. Guillen fought her attacker, but was overpowered and had a sock shoved in her mouth.

St. Guillen, who was from Boston, was scheduled to graduate this semester from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. She attended George Washington University as an undergraduate and graduated magna cum laude.

Her mother, Maureen St. Guillen, speaking to reporters outside her Boston home Tuesday night, appealed for the public's help.

"If anyone can help in any way with information, call the New York Police Department," she said.

The family has been dealing with the death by

"Really, what we want to do is just concentrate on the positive things and the life of my daughter and not focus on all the negative aspects," she said. "She was a beautiful girl, I mean beautiful inside also. She was kind, she was loving and she wouldn't hurt anyone."

The family earlier said it plans to establish a scholarship in her name at Boston Latin high school, where she was a 1999 graduate.

She was remembered by professors as an excellent student and who set an example for others.

"It's an ironic tragedy," said Joshua Freilich, her sociology professor at John Jay. "She had everything going for her."

St. Guillen enrolled at John Jay in 2004, initially to pursue a master's degree in forensic psychology, and was on the dean's list for 2004-05. Last fall she changed her field of study to criminal justice, school officials said.

"There are no words to express the deep sadness and sense of loss that we, of the John Jay College community, feel about Ms. St. Guillen's tragic death," college President Jeremy Travis said in a statement. "The entire John Jay community joins together in extending our heartfelt condolences to Ms. St. Guillen's family."