DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (AP) — A former criminal justice major and college cheerleader was convicted more than 15 years ago for the murder of three Florida prostitutes.
The jurors deliberated for more than eight hours before returning the guilty plea against Robert Hayes, who was linked by DNA evidence to the three victims after another murder in Palm Beach County, where he served as chef until his arrest in 2019. worked.
Hayes, 39, did not respond when the clerk read the jury’s verdict Tuesday night, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. Prosecutors will demand the death penalty during the sentencing phase starting next week.
Hayes graduated from Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach in 2006. The victims were found killed in the city his senior year.
The body of Laquetta Gunther, 45, was found around Christmas 2005 in an opening between an auto parts store and a mostly empty utility building. Julie Green, 34, was found on January 14, 2006 on a dirt road at a construction site. The body of 35-year-old Iwana Patton was found on February 24 along a dirt road. They were all naked, lying face down, shot in the head.
The deaths caused widespread panic among sex workers in the Daytona Beach area, leading some of them to work with investigators to memorize license plates and vehicle descriptions.
Hayes is also charged with the murder of Rachel Bey, 32, a prostitute whose body was found, strangled and with her jaw and teeth broken, on March 7, 2016, near Jupiter in Palm Beach County. It was three more years before investigators said the DNA from all four murders led them to arrest Hayes at his home in West Palm Beach.
Years earlier, authorities investigating the Daytona Beach murders interrogated Hayes twice but did not arrest him, as they investigated everyone in the area who had recently purchased a .40-caliber handgun, similar to the one used against the first three. victims, the newspaper reported. Police said he bought the weapon in 2005, shortly before the first victim was killed.
