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A suspected serial killer linked to the deaths of at least three women more than a decade ago in Daytona Beach has been arrested in South Florida, law enforcement officials announced Monday.

Robert Hayes, 37, was tied to the Central Florida killings after a similar 2016 homicide in Palm Beach, Daytona Beach police Chief Craig Capri told reporters at a news conference.

As of Monday, Hayes had only been arrested in the Palm Beach County case, Capri said. However, DNA evidence collected in that killing matched samples from the Daytona Beach homicides, he said.

“At this point in time, we have not charged him yet with ours, but we have linked him with forensic evidence to three of our murder victims,"” said Capri, who called Hayes a “disgusting serial killer.”

Police have worked more than a decade to solve the killings of LaQuetta Gunther, Julie Ann Green and Iwana Patton, whose bodies were found in Daytona Beach between 2005 and 2006. The death of a fourth woman, Stacey Gage of Holly Hill, may also be linked to the same killer.

“We don’t know at this point in time if it’s related,” Capri said. “We’re still investigating that.”

The killings began on Christmas Eve in 2005.

That’s when Gunther was last seen alive. The 45-year-old painter and labor hall worker left the Daytona Beach home of her best friend, Stacey Dittmer, promising to return in a few hours so they could complete a holiday tradition of cooking a full Christmas dinner together.

Her body was found in an alley on North Street, partially nude with a bullet through the back of her head.

Green’s body was found at a construction site off LPGA Boulevard Jan. 14, 2006. She, too, had been shot in the head. A Jacksonville native with two daughters, Green, 34, was among a group of friends who had signed a poster that was hung in Gunther’s memory in the alley where she was found.

They also both frequented Willie’ Place, a bar on Madison Avenue.

Patton, a 35-year-old nursing assistant who lived in Holly Hill, was found dead off a dirt path near Williamson Boulevard and Mason Avenue the following month.

 
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A jury in Volusia County, Florida, convicted Robert Tyrone Hayes, 39, of being a serial killer who shot and killed three women in Daytona Beach.

The penalty phase is scheduled to begin Monday.

In closing arguments, the state said there were similarities in how he murdered Laquetta Gunther, 45, Julie Green, 34, and Iwana Patton, 35, in separate incidents from December 2005 to February 2006. Each of the women was shot in the head and abandoned in a remote area. Prosecutor Andrew Urbanak maintained that these similarities were evidence of premeditation.

“This wasn’t a situation where there was any signs of struggle, any signs of fights, anything like that,” he said. “It was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head in two of the cases, front of the head in one of the cases, in a remote location where no identification is found, and they all happened in–as I’m going to repeat throughout this closing argument–strikingly similar fashion. I submit to you from those circumstances alone this was a premeditated killing. The location speaks to it. The way the victims were left speaks to it. The way the murder was inflicted speaks to it.”

Authorities said the women were similar in height, weight, and age, and were each sex workers.

Prosecutors showed investigators interrogating Hayes on whether he knew Rachel Elizabeth Bey, 32. He faces a separate case for allegedly strangling her to death in Palm Beach County in 2016. In footage, Hayes denied even knowing her.

Prosecutors said they linked Hayes to the 2000s killings using new advances in DNA technology. Hayes also gave a different phone number from his when asked during a police interview, according to a detective.





 
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