A Florida jury has found serial killer Robert Hayes guilty of slaying three women while he was majoring in criminal justice at college, prosecutors said.
Hayes, 39, was convicted by a Volusia County jury Tuesday of first-degree premediated murder for gunning down three women in late 2005 and 2006 as he attended Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida prosecutors said.
Hayes was found guilty of killing Laquetta Gunther, 45, Julie Green, 35, and Iwana Patton, 35, with a .40-caliber handgun he bought from a local store.
State Attorney R.J. Larizza said prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against the former college cheerleader and band member who had a darker side unknown to his friends.
Hayes is also accused of strangling a fourth woman, Rachel Bey, 32, whose nude body was found in Palm Beach County in March 2016. All four women worked as prostitutes, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.
Hayes was arrested in 2019 after DNA found on his cigarette was linked to Bey. Investigators then tied him to the three earlier slayings using ballistics and DNA evidence. An expert testified at Hayes’ trial that the chances the recovered DNA wasn’t from the college graduate was 1 in 3 septillion, prosecutors said.
Hayes is also charged with first-degree murder in Bey’s slaying. Prosecutor intend to seek the death penalty in that case as well.
A jury will take up Hayes’ penalty phase in the three slayings on Monday. If jurors don’t unanimously decide he should be sentenced to death, a judge will send him to prison for life without parole, the News-Journal reported.
