a crime of opportunity?

A passer-by stops to read a reward poster in the case of John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduate student Imette St. Guillen, who was found raped, bound and murdered in East New York last month. (JRM)


by JOSHUA RHETT MILLER

NEW YORK -- The brutal rape and murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen appears to be a “crime of opportunity that went sour right away,” according to a former NYPD detective.
“I don’t think his intention was to kill this girl,” said Michael Gaynor, who now runs East Coast Detectives, Ltd., after 20 years and hundreds of homicide cases with the NYPD. “I think he was trying to convince her to have sex with him and that didn’t work. He was very angry and this was a power thing for him.”
Gaynor said the “person of interest” in the case, a 41-year-old parolee bouncer from The Falls bar, where St. Guillen was last seen alive, probably had one of two motives.
“In cases like these, the motive is simple -- sex or money,” Gaynor said. “In this case, it could’ve been either one. But he did know [St. Guillen], she’d been in that bar before.”
The bouncer, whose identity is being withheld because he had been charged, was being held last night on a parole violation at Rikers Island jail, according to Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD’s top spokesman.
Scott Steinhardt, spokesman for the state’s Division of Parole, confirmed that the man was at Rikers last night. He allegedly violated conditions of his parole by failing to observe his 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew, Steinhardt said.
The man’s employment at a mortgage lending company had been approved by parole officials, Steinhardt said, but they had no knowledge of his employment at the SoHo bar.
“We were not aware of that, and had we known about it, we certainly wouldn’t have approved it,” he said.
The bouncer last visited his parole officer on Feb. 14. He also had an unannounced home visit on Feb. 2 by that parole officer, according to Steinhardt.
“He’s got a residence, he’s employed, his supervision was unremarkable,” he said.
In July 2004, the man was conditionally released after serving time for a 1995 bank robbery conviction.
Meanwhile, reports that investigators have cell phone records possibly linking the bouncer to the East New York location where St. Guillen was found is “extremely damning,” Gaynor said.
“This is going to be a combination of street cops and scientists doing their jobs together,” according to the private investigator who thinks an arrest will come within 24 hours. “[Investigators] have had enough time to get things done and the whole world is watching.”


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