Ex-Con's Home Searched In Student Slay

(CBS/AP)  New York detectives searched the Queens home of a bouncer at the Manhattan bar where slain graduate student Imette St. Guillen was last seen alive, WCBS reporter Ti-Hua Chang reports.

Police say the bouncer, identified in reports as 41-year-old Darryl Littlejohn, is a parolee with convictions for armed robbery, gun possession and drugs under multiple names — but no record of sex crimes. Police confirm that Littlejohn is a potential suspect but said he was not under arrest.

The 24-year-old criminal justice student (video)

from Boston was raped, strangled and suffocated with packaging tape. Her body was found on the side of a service road in Brooklyn.

Based on a tip, investigators began questioning the bouncer and scouring the two-story building housing The Falls bar for evidence. The New York Post reports that cops discovered tape and wires similar to those found on St. Guillen's body in the bar's basement. Detectives also found plastic ties that match the ones that were used to bind her wrists and ankles, according to The New York Times.

"If Littlejohn's DNA is there, he's nailed," criminal profiler Pat Brown told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "If it's not, they'll have more trouble. They'll have to come up with enough circumstantial evidence in his car and his home to nail him."

The bouncer was the only bar employee who did not voluntarily submit to DNA testing, Chang reports, but his DNA is on record from previous crimes.

The Post reports that police began questioning Littlejohn after The Falls owner, Michael J. Dorrian, told police that he had ordered Littlejohn to "Get her out of here!" because St. Guillen was so drunk at the end of that night.

Dorrian told cops that Littlejohn hauled St. Guillen out a side door of the building at 218 Lafayette St., the Post reports. Dorrian and an unidentified bartender said that moments later, they heard arguing in a hallway just outside a door to the bar, the sources said. They then heard a scream from the same direction.

Crime scene unit detectives, dressed in white coveralls, also searched the yellow house on 121st Avenue, which is owned by Mr. Littlejohn's mother, Lucille Harris, according to The New York Times. The detectives were looking for evidence that might indicate St. Guillen was at the house in the hours after she disappeared.

Littlejohn's aunt, Addie Harris, who lives with Littlejohn, said the warrant for the Queens home targeted the basement, first floor and driveway of the two-story building. Cops were hunting for blood, sand, hair and DNA evidence, Harris told The Daily News. Police tell Chang a cat is significant because feline hair was found on the bedspread used to wrap St. Guillen's body.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page »