Cops Eye Bouncer In N.Y. Student Slay

Police with a search warrant have taken several bags of material from the Manhattan bar where slain graduate student Imette St. Guillen last was seen alive.

Police have also questioned the bouncer at the bar, WCBS reporter Wendy Gillette reports, and are calling the man a potential suspect.

The potential suspect is a 41-year-old ex-con who has an extensive criminal record and is still on parole for a robbery rap, the New York Post reports. He was being questioned last night at the 75th Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn, and had been questioned by detectives previously in the investigation, according to The New York Times.

Officers searched for evidence for several hours at The Falls, the Bowery drinking spot the woman visited before she vanished in the early hours of Feb. 25. A lawyer for the owner of The Falls called detectives over the weekend and told them he had information about St. Guillen's last steps, sources told the Post.

After questioning, police learned that the bouncer left with the young woman and never returned. He was on duty at The Falls bar when St. Guillen disappeared Feb. 25, law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no one had been charged.

The police have also searched a commercial space above the bar for the first time, as well as the hallways, basement and roof, the Times reports.

Police brought plastic bags in and out of the door, and a detective appeared to show a picture taken with a digital camera to other officers. Investigators were looking into whether the inner doorway — which is kept locked and alarmed — and staircase were somehow used by the killer after snatching St. Guillen, Gillette reports.

The family of Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Democratic congresswoman and vice presidential candidate, has an interest in the office space and the rest of the building. Ms. Ferraro told the New York Times last night that her family had given the police permission to search.

"We are anxious to help them if at all possible to find out who did this terrible, terrible crime," she said. "We said absolutely yes," she said, referring to the police request. "Anything you want to do, you can do."

"I think they went in as much to eliminate any evidence as to search for anything in particular," Ferraro tells The Associated Press.

Authorities believe someone accosted the woman after she left the bar. Police have studied several security video cameras in the neighborhood but haven't found any showing her in the area at closing time.

The bouncer was seen speaking to St. Guillen in the bar before she disappeared about 4 a.m. on Feb. 25 — and cell phone records place the Queens man in Brooklyn about 6 a.m. near where St. Guillen's body was found, sources tell the New York Daily News.

Late Saturday, authorities received an anonymous 911 call from a man who gave the location of St. Guillen's body, and nothing more. Police traced the call to a public phone at a diner about a mile from where the body was discovered in a patch of weeds, and six miles from where she was last seen alive.

The 24-year-old criminal justice student from Boston was

She was buried over the weekend outside of Boston where her family lives. Friends and relatives at her funeral on Saturday remembered her for her infectious smile, bold confidence, love of board games and penchant for high heels.

"She was kind, she was loving and she wouldn't hurt anyone," her mother, Maureen, said Tuesday outside her home.

"What we've got here is a sexually sadistic pathological serial killer," criminal profiler Pat Brown told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "And he is the scariest of them all, the Hollywood type that we see in the movies and don't really think is going to strike in our neighborhood. But he's out there."

WCBS reporter Ti-Hua Chang reports that sources say the killer was careful and tried not to leave evidence behind. The clear tape on the victim's face did not have fingerprints, Chang says. However, St. Guillen fought her attacker, breaking off several fingernails during a struggle, police sources told the Daily News.

Previously, there were reports that police were exploring whether a fake cab driver who sexually assaulted a woman near the site where St. Guillen's body was dumped might be the same person who raped and murdered the student.

Officials were poring over the details of the cab assault, in which the driver sexually assaulted a woman at knifepoint on Lefferts Boulevard in the middle of last month's snowstorm about a mile from where St. Guillen's body was found.

In the previous assault, a man posing as a livery driver picked up a 32-year-old woman at Jamaica Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard on Feb. 12 as she was trying to get to JFK Airport in the middle of the blizzard. Although no evidence links the two incidents, police said it wouldn't be surprising if the phony hack had begun stalking women in bars.

"Anything is possible. Everything is wide open," a high-ranking police source told the Post.

Meanwhile, St. Guillen's family has appealed for the public's help in finding the killer.

"She was a beautiful girl, I mean beautiful inside also," her mother 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.

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 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."

"All I want is for them to find whoever did this," St. Guillen's ex-boyfriend Ryan Kocher, who met her at John Jay College, told the Daily News. He is putting up his own money, along with a contribution from John Jay, to offer a $30,000 reward. Police say anyone with information about St. Guillen should call 1-800-577-tips.