BLACK ON WHITE: BLACK SERIAL KILLER DNA connects Florida death row inmate to nearly 25-year-old rape & murder cold case

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DNA connects Florida death row inmate to nearly 25-year-old rape and murder cold case, sheriff says​


By Sarah Engel and Asher Moskowitz, CNN

2 min read

Updated 5:21 PM EST, Tue December 5, 2023

231205171445-eileen-truppner-cold-case.jpg

Eileen Truppner
Broward Sheriff's Office

CNN —

A nearly 25-year-old rape and murder cold case has been solved due to DNA forensics and genetics, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.


Sheriff Gregory Tony identified the victim as Eileen Truppner and the killer as Lucious Boyd, 64, at a news conference. Boyd is on death row for a murder committed two weeks before Truppner’s death, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.


In December 1998, Truppner’s body was found by a boater in southwest Broward County near US Route 27, according to a news statement from May.


Using DNA found at the crime scene, investigators contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement genealogy unit. DNA swabs from Truppner’s relatives were taken for comparison.

A nearly 25-year-old cold case rape and murder has been solved due to DNA forensics and genetics, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said in a news conference on Tuesday. Sheriff Gregory Tony identified the victim as Eileen Truppner, as well as the killer, 64-year-old Lucious Boyd. Boyd is currently on death row for a murder committed two weeks prior to Truppner's death, the sheriffís office said in a news release.


Lucious Boyd
Florida Department of Corrections

The office emphasized Boyd is a suspect in several other homicides. He reportedly traveled across the state of Florida and the sheriff’s office is looking for tips from anyone who may have had contact with him between 1995 and 1999.


“We strongly believe he’s a serial killer,” said Broward County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jonathan Brown.


This is the 21st cold case that has been solved since the Broward Sheriff’s Homicide Cold Case Unit was established in 2019.


“If you commit a crime, a brutal murder or a rape, whether it (was) 20 years ago or tomorrow,” Tony said, “We’re gonna track you down and bring you into custody.”


“The wound is open, it hurts and it hurts like it was yesterday,” Truppner’s sister Nancy said.


In November, a grand jury indicted Boyd for first-degree murder and sexual battery in connection with Truppner’s death.


CNN has reached out to the Broward County Public Defender’s Office for comment.
 

SUPER PREDATOR SERIAL KILLER​

Lucious Boyd​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucious_Boyd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Details
Lucious Boyd

FDOC mugshot
BornMarch 22, 1959 (age 64)
Broward County, Florida, U.S.
Criminal statusIncarcerated
Conviction(s)First degree murder
Kidnapping
Sexual battery
Criminal penaltyDeath
Victims1 conviction, 5-10 suspected
Span of crimes1993–1999
CountryUnited States
State(s)Florida
Date apprehendedMarch 26, 1999
Lucious Boyd (born March 22, 1959)[1] is an American convicted murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer. While convicted and sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Dawnia Dacosta, he is a suspect in at least ten other homicides or disappearances. He was acquitted for the 1993 murder of a man whom he claimed he stabbed in self-defense. He was profiled on Forensic Files.[2][3]
He is currently incarcerated in Union Correctional Institution.[1]

Background​

Boyd was born on March 22, 1959, in Broward County, Florida. His family owns a funeral home in Fort Lauderdale. Prior to 1998, Boyd had been married twice and was the father of at least eight children. He had been sued by four separate women for failing to pay child support.

Prior to 1998, Boyd was struggling financially and had to stay at his family's home in Plantation for periods of time. In 1996, his father, James C. Boyd, who was the owner of the family funeral home, died. In 1998, Boyd worked as a handyman for Hope Outreach Ministries. According to Boyd's family he had an ongoing cocaine problem.[4]


Crimes​

In 1990, Boyd choked his second wife, Julie McCormick, to the point of unconsciousness. McCormick had threatened to leave him for cheating on her. A felony charge of aggravated battery was brought against Boyd but was later reduced to a misdemeanor charge meaning Boyd was only given probation. In 1992, Boyd was accused of raping a girl during a date on her 18th birthday. No charges were filed however because the victim declined to prosecute.[4]

On October 18, 1993, Boyd stabbed Roderick Bullard to death on a Fort Lauderdale street with a kitchen knife during an argument over an automobile. Bullard was the brother of one of Boyd's girlfriends. Boyd told police that Bullard had hit him and that he "just lost it." He admitted that Bullard had no weapon and never threatened him. During the trial Boyd's defense attorneys turned the tables on Bullard, playing up the fact that he had cocaine in his bloodstream. The jury called Boyd's action self-defense and acquitted him of the killing.[3]


Possible murders​

Police believe Boyd is responsible for a number of unsolved murders, the sexual assaults of several women, and the disappearance of 25 year old Danielle Zacot from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1999.

On August 13, 1997, the naked body of 24-year-old Melissa Floyd was found in some high grass near a guardrail on I95 in Palm Beach County. She had been stabbed multiple times and was not positively identified until four months later. Floyd was known to use drugs near the Boyd family funeral home and her ID card was discovered by Boyd's family members on the funeral home grounds a few weeks after Floyd's body was found. However, there was no physical evidence linking Boyd to the crime.

On June 28, 1998, 19-year-old Patrece Alston was seen getting into a green Mazda with Boyd. The two were supposedly going on a trip to Winter Haven nearly 200 miles away. Boyd returned the next day without Alston, who has not been seen since. Boyd told the cops that witnesses could verify that Alston had also returned from the trip, but those witnesses later denied having seen her. Investigators are convinced that Boyd knows where Alston's body is located.[4]


Murder of Dawnia Dacosta​

www.findagrave.com

Dawnia Hope Dacosta (1977-1998) - Find a Grave...

Dawnia was the daughter of Tomlin Dacosta and Daphne Lewis-Bowe. She was a nursing student and had recently turned 21. She was devoutly religious. Dawnia was a really kind, dear person; and everyone loved her. She hoped to marry and have children someday. People from around the world...
www.findagrave.com
www.findagrave.com

Dawnia Hope Dacosta was a 21-year-old choir singer and student studying to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. On the evening of December 4, 1998, Dacosta left work at 10 p.m. and went to church where she prayed until 1 a.m. the following morning. On her way home from church, her car ran out of gas on Interstate 95. Dacosta walked to a nearby Texaco station, where a witness spotted her, noting that she looked scared. Behind Dacosta was a church van with the word "Hope" printed on the side. Dacosta was seen getting inside the van and a black male was seen behind the wheel, later identified as Boyd.

Sometime after getting into the van, Boyd struck her across the head. He took her back to his apartment, raped her, beat her and stabbed her thirty-six times with a screwdriver.[5] Her body, wrapped in sheets and a plastic shower curtain, was dumped in an alley behind a warehouse in Oakland Park and was not discovered until December 7.

Detectives from the Broward County Sheriff's Office began their investigation into Dacosta's murder by looking for the van. It was not spotted until January 30, 1999, where it was seen in front of a Christian day care center in Lauderhill. The van's owner, Reverend Frank Lloyd, was interviewed on March 22, 1999. Lloyd ran Hope Outreach Ministries and employed Boyd as his handyman. He told police Boyd had used the van from December 4 to December 7.

On March 25, 1999, a sample of Boyd's DNA came back from the crime lab as a match to the semen found on Dacosta's body. The next day, Boyd was arrested.[4]


Trial​

Boyd claimed he was suffering with memory lapses during his interviews about the murder of Dacosta. He was called a "cold-blooded killer without a conscience," by an interviewing detective and was told he would be going to jail for raping and killing Dacosta. Boyd then reportedly asked, "What took you so long to catch me?". He then demanded an attorney.

After Boyd was arrested, detectives searched his apartment and recovered blood that was later found to be Dacosta's. Two sheets that had been wrapped around the victim's body were identified as having disappeared from his apartment. Before he was sent to jail, Boyd accused the Broward County Sheriff's Office of working for the Ku Klux Klan and claimed he was being set up in an attempt to discredit his family.[4]

Boyd was eventually found guilty of Dacosta's murder and was sentenced to death on June 21, 2002.[6] He is currently on death row awaiting execution and is incarcerated in the Union Correctional Institution.
 



2002


Man sentenced to death for murder of student​

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


FORT LAUDERDALE -- A man has been sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and killing a nursing student after he kidnapped her as she walked along a highway to get gas for her stalled car.

Lucious Boyd, 43, was sentenced Friday for the December 1998 murder of Dawnia Dacosta. Broward Circuit Judge Ronald Rothschild also sentenced Boyd to 15 years in prison for sexual battery and life in prison for armed kidnapping.

Dacosta, of Deerfield Beach, was a 21-year-old pediatric nursing student and part-time American Express employee. Her body was found near a garbage bin, wrapped in a sheet.

Detectives said Boyd offered to give Dacosta a ride back to her stalled car after she purchased gas at a nearby station. Dacosta was never seen again.

DNA

Broward County sheriff's deputies arrested Boyd three months after the murder when a DNA sample from Boyd matched semen found on Dacosta's body. The DNA sample was taken after a previous arrest.

It was not the first time Boyd has faced murder and sex charges. In October 1993, he was arrested on first-degree murder charges in the multiple stabbing death of Roderick Bullard, 31, following a dispute about a car.

The charge was dropped to second-degree murder and a jury acquitted him in 1994.

Boyd had been accused of sexual battery or aggravated sexual battery four times since 1997 and acquitted in at least three of those cases.
 
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