COURTS

Accused Daytona Beach serial killer seeks to exclude evidence from Palm Beach murder case

The Daytona Beach News-Journal

The case had grown cold. Daytona Beach Police believed a serial killer had shot three women in the head and left their naked bodies in several spots around the city between 2005 and 2006.

But despite a law enforcement task force, the murder cases remained unsolved a decade later. Then in 2016, DNA from one of the Daytona Beach victims matched a murder victim in Palm Beach County.

By 2019, the case had grown hot as an investigator watched Robert Hayes toss a Steel Reserve beer can and a partially-smoked cigarette before boarding a bus in Palm Beach County. The investigator collected the can and cigarette and sent them to a lab to examine the DNA.

The DNA linked Hayes to two of the three killings in Daytona Beach and a killing in Palm Beach County, according to testimony.

Hayes, 38, was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder for the killings in Daytona Beach. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty.

He is also charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Rachel Bey in 2016 in Palm Beach County.

Hayes has pleaded not guilty.

Hayes was in court on Thursday before Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano at the S. James Foxman Justice Center in Daytona Beach.

Assistant State Attorney Andrew Urbanak is asking Zambrano to allow evidence from the Bey case to be used against Hayes in the Volusia County murder cases.

Hayes' defense attorneys, Francis Shea and Chris Anderson, opposed the request. Anderson said at the start of the Thursday's hearing that while the three women in Volusia County were killed by gunshots, Bey was strangled.

Hayes, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and a white face mask, occasionally would lean over to speak to his attorneys during the hearing.

Hayes studied criminal justice at Bethune-Cookman University and graduated in 2006. He was also a cheerleader at the school.

Daytona Beach Police believed they were looking for a serial killer after the bodies of the three women were found in 2005 and 2006, Detective Dave Dinardi testified on Thursday. Dinardi said he was not the original detective on the case, but when that person retired, Dinardi took over.

The three women had worked as prostitutes.

The first body found was that of Laquetta Gunther, 45, on Dec. 26, 2005. A man had gone to relieve himself in a narrow alley between two buildings in the 700 block of North Beach Street when he saw her body. Gunther was naked, according to testimony. She was face down in the space between the two buildings. She had been shot in the head.

The following month, on Jan. 14, 2006, a construction supervisor found the body of Julie Green, 34, in a field along a dirt path near where new homes were being built for Bayberry Lakes, west of LPGA Boulevard. Green was also found naked and lying face down. And she had been shot in the head. The muzzle of the barrel was touching her skin when the gun was fired, according to testimony.

It would be another month before the third woman was located. Thirty-five-year-old Iwana Patton’s body was found on Feb. 24, 2006, on an access road near some bushes and scrub off North Williamson Boulevard and Mason Avenue.

In a few years, the undeveloped land would be home to the city’s new police station. But on that February day it was a crime scene. Patton was naked, lying face down. She had been shot in the head.

Unlike Gunther and Green, Patton was not a regular prostitute and worked as a nurse's aide, police have said.

Daytona Beach Police detectives found unknown male DNA on Gunther and Patton. They did not find DNA on Green.

Detectives did find a 40-caliber shell casing and projectile at the scene of Green’s killing. They also found a 40-caliber shell casing at the scene where Patton’s body was found.

Daytona Beach Police formed a task force to locate the serial killer. They believed that the murder weapon was a 40-caliber Smith & Wesson VE pistol, so they checked gun dealers and got a list of everyone in the area who had purchased one. Police then called those gun owners and asked to test fire their weapons and to submit to a DNA swab, Dinardi testified.

Hayes’ name was on a list from Buck’s Gun Rack in Daytona Beach. But when police called Hayes, he told them he had given the pistol to his mother as a gift, Dinardi testified.

However, Hayes’ mother later said he never gave her the gun, Dinardi said.

And in 2009 Hayes reported the gun stolen to Riviera Beach Police, Dinardi said.

The case then grew cold until December 2016 when the DNA found on Gunther was matched to DNA found in Bey’s murder in West Palm Beach.

Detectives worked through DNA genealogy and found four half-siblings. Then they got the beer can and the cigarette, which led to the match, and secured a search warrant for additional DNA from Hayes.

Hayes was arrested in September 2019 at his home in West Palm Beach.

The hearing continues Friday.