The Murder of Imette St. Guillen: Case, Conviction, and Imette’s Law

The murder of Imette St. Guillen took place in the early hours of February 25, 2006, when the 24-year-old John Jay College graduate student was raped and killed after a bouncer named Darryl Littlejohn escorted her out of a SoHo bar called The Falls. Littlejohn, a seven-time convicted felon on parole, was convicted of first-degree murder and rape in 2009 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The case exposed a gaping hole in how New York policed nightclub security and led to a city law, informally known as Imette’s Law, requiring bars to verify that their bouncers were registered and free of disqualifying convictions.

Who Imette St. Guillen Was

St. Guillen grew up in Boston, raised by her mother after her father died when she was nine. She attended Boston Latin School and graduated magna cum laude from George Washington University. In 2004 she moved to New York for a master’s in criminal justice at John Jay College, where she focused on forensic psychology and the study of psychopaths and social deviants. She was on the Dean’s list and was expected to graduate with honors in 2006.¹ John Jay’s president, Jeremy Travis, called her an “outstanding student.”²

What Happened the Night of February 25, 2006

St. Guillen went out in SoHo on the evening of February 24 with a friend. Surveillance video around 3:20 a.m. captured the two women outside the Pioneer Bar, where they disagreed about whether to stay out. The friend went home. St. Guillen walked seven blocks alone to The Falls, a bar in lower Manhattan.¹

At about 3:50 a.m. her friend called to check on her, and St. Guillen said she was fine. A bartender at The Falls saw her sitting alone at the end of the bar around 3:45 a.m.³ When the bar closed at 4:00 a.m., the manager instructed a bouncer, Darryl Littlejohn, to escort her out.⁴

Two witnesses across the street later told police they saw Littlejohn help St. Guillen into a dark van, telling her, “Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.” At least one of them was able to describe jewelry that police had deliberately withheld from public accounts of the case.⁴ The bar manager later said he may have heard a yell or scream after Littlejohn took her outside.

Her body was found around 8:30 p.m. that same evening in a vacant lot at Fountain Avenue and Seaview Avenue in Brooklyn, roughly 11 miles from the bar. An unidentified man had called 911 from a payphone near a Brooklyn diner about 20 minutes earlier to report a body.⁵¹

The condition of the body told investigators a great deal. St. Guillen was wrapped in a quilt taped shut at both ends. A sock had been stuffed in her mouth. Packing tape was wound around her head from her eyebrows to her chin. Her wrists were bound with plastic zip ties and her feet with a dark shoelace. Her hair had been cut off. The medical examiner determined she died of asphyxia from compression of the neck and obstruction of the mouth and nose, and physical evidence showed she had been sexually assaulted.⁵

How Investigators Identified Darryl Littlejohn

Detectives traced St. Guillen’s credit card to The Falls and quickly focused on Littlejohn, with the two eyewitnesses who saw him load her into his van providing the earliest lead. But an initial hurdle: DNA testing of material under her fingernails and a semen stain on the quilt did not match him.⁴

The rest of the forensic picture pointed hard in his direction. Littlejohn’s blood was found on the zip ties used to bind St. Guillen’s wrists and on an automobile snow brush recovered near her body. DNA from his mother and brother turned up on the quilt. Carpet fibers and animal hairs from the quilt and packing tape matched samples taken from his basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens, and from the van he drove.⁵ Cell phone records showed his phone traveling from the vicinity of his Queens home to the Brooklyn dump site and back on the day of the murder.⁶

Police did not charge him with murder right away. They held him instead on a 90-day parole violation warrant, since his conditions barred him from being out after 9 p.m. and he had been working overnights at the bar.⁴ That bought time to develop the forensic case. In March 2006 a woman who had been kidnapped in a separate attack saw Littlejohn’s van in a news report and contacted police, leading to a search warrant for the vehicle.⁵ He was formally charged with St. Guillen’s murder in June 2006.⁷

Why Littlejohn Was Working at a Bar at All

Littlejohn had seven prior felony convictions, among them armed robbery, assault, and drug dealing. He was paroled in 2004 and was supposed to be monitored until 2007. A clerical error, officials later acknowledged, meant he received no monitoring after his release.⁸

He had also been attacking women in the months before he killed St. Guillen. On October 19, 2005, near the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, he impersonated a law enforcement officer in police-style clothing and gear bearing the words “Fugitive Agency,” demanded ID from a 19-year-old college student, handcuffed her, and forced her into his van. She escaped by jumping from the moving vehicle. He was later convicted of that kidnapping and sentenced to 25 years to life.⁹ Three days before that abduction, on October 16, 2005, he had sexually assaulted another woman, binding her and taping a knit cap around her head in a way strikingly similar to what he later did to St. Guillen.⁵

At The Falls, Littlejohn and a partner posed as federal marshals in tactical gear, badges, bulletproof vests, and handcuffs, and the bar’s staff took them for legitimate law enforcement.³ He used that false identity on St. Guillen herself shortly before he killed her.⁵ Existing state law required bouncers to be licensed and barred felons from security jobs, but nothing had enforced either rule at the bar door.

The Trial, the Verdict, and the Appeal

Littlejohn went to trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court in May 2009, before Justice Abraham Gerges, with Kenneth Taub as lead prosecutor. The prosecution described the case as “mostly circumstantial” and built it out of layered forensic and phone evidence.¹⁰

Retired NYPD evidence expert Nicholas Petraco testified that fibers from a red rug and three fur garments belonging to Littlejohn’s mother, found in his apartment and van, matched fibers on the packing tape and quilt used on the victim. On cross-examination he acknowledged that fiber analysis is less definitive than DNA.¹⁰ Prosecutors put in cell records placing his phone at his Queens home and then near the East New York dump site on the day of the murder, and two women who had survived earlier attacks testified about his methods.¹¹

Defense attorney Joyce David argued Littlejohn had been framed and pointed at the bar’s manager, Danny Dorrian, suggesting he had killed St. Guillen during “rough sex.”¹² Prosecutors countered that Dorrian’s DNA did not match any samples from the crime scene. Dorrian took the stand, admitted he had lied to police early in the investigation and that detectives had put words in his mouth during a long interrogation, and said he had nothing to do with the murder.¹³

After a single day of deliberations, on June 3, 2009, the jury found Littlejohn guilty of first-degree murder and rape.¹² On July 8, 2009, Justice Gerges sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole, to run consecutively with his existing 25-years-to-life sentence for the Queens kidnapping.¹⁴ Gerges also faulted the bar’s employees, saying, “If one of them had the common decency to call a taxi, we might not be here today.”¹¹

Littlejohn appealed on two grounds: that the trial court improperly admitted evidence of his uncharged October 2005 crimes under a modus operandi exception, and that cell phone tracking evidence should have required a hearing on scientific reliability.¹⁵ On October 30, 2013, the Appellate Division (Second Department) found that some of the other-crimes evidence was improperly admitted but held the error was “harmless and did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial” given the rest of the record. The court rejected the cell-tracking challenge, finding no novel scientific theory that required a special hearing. The conviction was upheld.⁵

What Happened to The Falls

The bar closed within months. In June 2006 the NYPD shut it down through a nuisance abatement action, citing four violations since the start of that year: three for serving alcohol to minors and one for selling after hours. The bar was also found to have violated state law by employing Littlejohn without a proper background check or security guard registration.⁷ It surrendered its liquor license on July 7, 2006, and never reopened under its original ownership.

Danny Dorrian was never charged with obstruction. An NYPD source explained the trade-off plainly: “The only thing we would have got on him is obstruction. But we need him as a witness. You charge him, you lose him as a witness.”¹⁶ Littlejohn’s defense alleged Dorrian was protected because his sister was married to a top aide to Rudy Giuliani; police dismissed the claim. The St. Guillen family sued the bar a year after the murder and reached a confidential settlement before Littlejohn’s trial began.¹⁷

Imette’s Law and New Rules for Bouncers

In August 2006 the New York City Council unanimously passed Local Law No. 35, sometimes called the Bouncer Bill, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed on August 23, 2006. The law required establishments employing security personnel to comply with state security guard registration requirements, keep proof of valid registration on-site, and maintain a roster of all guards working at any given time. Violations could trigger nuisance abatement, and a third violation within two years mandated license revocation.¹⁸ The city was empowered to prosecute venues that used unlicensed bouncers or ones who had not undergone background checks.¹⁹ The State Liquor Authority separately imposed a four-month freeze on new liquor licenses in congested nightlife areas.²⁰

Boston enacted a companion measure. City Councilor Michael Flaherty sponsored legislation requiring bar and nightclub owners to conduct criminal background checks on all bouncers. Mayor Thomas Menino signed it on March 14, 2007, along with an executive order authorizing revocation of liquor licenses for any establishment that employed a violent felon.²¹ Both the New York and Boston measures became known informally as Imette’s Law.

Scholarships in Her Name

John Jay College established the Imette St. Guillen Memorial Scholarship in partnership with the New York Daily News and the Association for a Better New York. Valued at $12,500 annually, it covers full-time graduate tuition, fees, and books for up to two semesters and includes a stipend. It goes to graduate students in the Master’s in Criminal Justice program who have completed at least 12 credits, maintain a minimum 3.7 GPA, and are completing an internship in criminal justice, crime prevention, or forensic studies.²²²³ A separate scholarship was established at Boston Latin School, where Imette and her sister Alejandra had been students.²⁴

Darryl Littlejohn is serving his life sentence without parole, to run consecutively with 25 years to life for the Queens kidnapping. His conviction was affirmed on appeal in 2013.

1
NBC News. The Search for Imette St. Guillen’s Killer
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ABC News. Imette St. Guillen Investigation
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NBC News. Bouncer Is Named as Suspect in Murder
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New York State Courts. People v Littlejohn, 2013 NY Slip Op 07063
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New York Times. Littlejohn Sentenced to Life Without Parole
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amNewYork. That’s All for the Falls; Bar Surrendered Its Liquor License
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GovInfo. Congressional Record, Volume 152
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CNN. Darryl Littlejohn Gets Life Sentence
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New York Daily News. Forensics Expert Testifies Against Bouncer Darryl Littlejohn
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San Diego Union-Tribune. NYC Bouncer Gets Life Sentence in Student’s Death
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New York Times. Deliberations Begin in Bouncer Case
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Gothamist. Danny Dorrian Grilled by Littlejohn Defense
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New York Daily News. Darryl Littlejohn Gets Life Without Parole for Imette St. Guillen Murder
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vLex. People v Littlejohn, 112 AD3d 67
16
Boston Herald. NY Bouncer: Giuliani Framed Me
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New York Daily News. Imette Suit Is Settled; Family to Get Cash From Bar Where She Was Abducted
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NYC Department of Buildings. Local Law No. 35 of 2006
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amNewYork. Clubs Without Proper Security Will Face Closure Under New Law
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New York Times. Imette St. Guillen Topic Page
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State Liquor Reform Alliance. Menino Signs Imette’s Law
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John Jay College. Imette St. Guillen Memorial Scholarship
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New York Daily News. Imette St. Guillen Scholarship Recipients Celebrated
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NBC News. St. Guillen Family Advocacy and Scholarship Efforts