Darryl Littlejohn has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the sex slay of Imette St. Guillen.
The hulking bouncer showed no expression as the jury forewoman announced that he was guilty. Relatives and supporters of St. Guillen wept in the second row right as the decision was read.
It took the Brooklyn jury little more than an afternoon to return the verdict in the shocking sexual abuse slay of St. Guillen, a young graduate student who had a fateful run-in with the bouncer during a night of carousing on the Bowery.
Her nude body was found on a desolate stretch of road in Brooklyn. She had been bound, gagged and sexually assaulted before she was killed.
During closing arguments Tuesday, the defense said Littlejohn, 44, was framed. Prosecutors argued he's a sexual predator who liked to pretend he was a law enforcement officer. The first-degree murder count required that jurors believe that Littlejohn had not only killed the graduate student, but also sexually abused her.
Jurors discounted the defense theory that bar manager Danny Dorrian was responsible for St. Guillen's death after rough sex.
St. Guillen was last seen in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2006, quarreling outside a Manhattan bar with a friend. St. Guillen, who was from Boston but attending graduate school in Manhattan, wanted to continue drinking. Her friend insisted they call it a night. The spat ended with the pair going their separate ways, never to see each other again.
St. Guillen went to The Falls, owned by the Dorrian family, and stayed past closing until she was asked to leave and was escorted out by Littlejohn.
The nature of her abuse was eerily similar to two women who say Littlejohn attacked them — except they lived through it, prosecutor Kenneth Taub said. The women testified during the trial, recounting their stories on the stand. Both said a stocky man dressed in fatigues stopped them on the streets of New York City in 2005 and demanded their IDs. They were abducted; one woman escaped, the other was blind folded, sexually assaulted and eventually released.
In his closing statement, Taub said St. Guillen was killed when the others lived because she could be traced back to him.
"If he let her live, she would wake up sober the next morning and say 'The guy that raped me is the guy who threw me out of the bar,'" Taub said.
At the time of her death, St. Guillen was studying criminal justice at John Jay College in Manhattan.
Littlejohn is already is serving 25 years to life in the kidnapping of another young woman. Authorities said that was part of a sex attack spree. Littlejohn faces an additional term of life in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 8.
