PAUL DUROUSSEAU: A KILLER CABBIE

Article BY LORI BELL

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A serial killer terrorized Jacksonville, Florida, strangling young women to death, then callously disposing of their bodies. Law enforcement was powerless to stop the fast and furious Killing Spree, until crimes from this murderer’s past came back to haunt him.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on December 17th, 2002, 18 year old Nicole Williams was at home with her grandmother when she received a phone call. She informed her grandmother she had to go and cash a check. All of a sudden she left, and that was the last time her grandmother ever saw her.

Several hours later, when Nicole failed to return home, her family reported her missing to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department. Two days passed, then on December 19th, a man sitting in his car at a railroad crossing spotted a light blue blanket on the side of the road.

He walked over, saw it was a body, and called the police. It turned out, that in fact, the victim was identified as Nicole Williams. She was asphyxiated. Homicide detectives examined Williams’ phone records, curious about the urgent call she had taken right before she disappeared.

One of the things they found was 16 phone calls placed to her phone in the previous 10 days. They had no idea where these calls were being generated from.

In Northeast Jacksonville, on December 29th, 2002, 19 year old mother Nikia Kilpatrick was home in her apartment with her two-year-old and 11 months old son’s when she was visited by her sister, Rhonda.

As the sisters chatted, Nikia received a mysterious phone call. Sometime after Rhonda left, she called Nikia back up. Suddenly that phone conversation was cut short, and that was the last time she ever heard from her.

On January 1st, 2003, Kilpatrick’s cousin Sarah, who lived in the same apartment complex, knocked on Nikia’s door. Over the past two days, she has tried to contact Nikia repeatedly, but had never gotten a response. This time she saw movement through the blinds.

The two-year-old was looking out the window and that wasn’t right. Nikia’s cousin called the police, they went inside the residence, they found the Nikia lying on the floor, clearly dead with indications that her hands had been tied beforehand.

She had ligature marks, she had coaxial cable wrapped around her neck, and she was strangulated, so obviously they were looking at a homicide. Nikia’s residence was in tip-top shape last time anyone was there, and now it was in total disarray now.

It was a very disorganized and messy crime scene. The police examined the scene, including Nika’s body, but no valuable evidence was found. Law enforcement did not find any signs of forced entry, so robbery was ruled out as a motive.

An autopsy was conducted on Nikia, which revealed she was pregnant at the time of her murder. Detectives talk to Nikia’s boyfriend, the father of her unborn child. He was initially considered a suspect.There was some history of domestic abuse in their past, but he had an alibi, and was ruled out. With no other leads the case went cold quickly.

In Arlington, Jacksonville, on January 9th, 2003, 20 year old nursing assistant Shawanda McAllister was at home with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Rashid Topy. Her and her boyfriend were doing laundry together, and about 7 p.m. that night he left to go to school. Sometime after 9 p.m., Rashid returned home, but could not get inside Shawanda’s apartment.

Their relationship was complicated. She was currently three months pregnant with his child, but he recently started seeing another woman. He left his keys in the other woman’s car. He knocked on the door, he could hear the TV, but there was no response whatsoever coming from inside the apartment.

Rashid decided to run some errands. He returned later that evening, knocked on the door again, but still there was no answer. He walked over to the window and called out Shawanda’s name, but instead he heard a response from a male voice.

The disembodied male voice in the distance merely said “Shawanda doesn’t want to see you anymore. Leave her alone.” He was somewhat stunned by that, he could hear Shawanda’s voice inside. Rashid asked if he could get his work clothes.

Basically they packed up his stuff and tossed it out the window to him. He then heard Shawanda’s voice saying “Come back here around 1 o’clock .” he left and decided he would. Rashid returned to the residence one final time. He was knocking, and he was calling, with no response.

He finally wound up breaking a window, unlocked the door, and walked in. He made his way into the bedroom and saw Shawanda lying on the floor, half-naked with her arms and legs both tied up. There was also a slip knot cord wrapped around her neck.

It was clear she had been strangled, and at that point he started screaming “ somebody call the police my girlfriend’s been killed.” Police arrived within minutes. As CSI processed the crime scene they found two pieces of critical evidence.

While they examine the interior of Shawanda residence, police found an ATM receipt, it was for $280,000 withdrawn from Shewanda’s account only a few hours earlier. However, the cash was not found anywhere.

On the floor, underneath the bedspread, investigators found an even bigger clue, a used condom. Which they hoped would yield the DNA of Shawanda’s killer. At the same time the interior of the residence was being examined for evidence, other detectives were going through the neighborhood doing a canvas.

Two neighbors came forward with identical eyewitness accounts. One neighbor told them, sometime around 9:30 or so, they saw a Gator City Cab sitting outside the vicinity of Shawanda’s apartment. Then about 35 to 45 minutes later that same neighbor came out and saw a thin, black male, getting into it and driving away.

This is about 20 to 30 minutes before Rashid showed up and started yelling that his girlfriend had been murdered. Another individual stated that he not only saw the driver, and African-American, not only exit the vehicle, but actually walk to Shawanda’s house.

Police knew they had to find the driver of that cab, either as a witness or as a very possible suspect. Upon a detailed review of the Gator City Cab’s records for January 9th, Shawanda was in fact a passenger, and actually three separate cabbies drove her that day. One of them was Ronald Wimpy, another was Larry Lake, and the third was Paul Durousseau.

On January 11th, 2003, a man called nine-one-one from a payphone claiming to have information about the incident involving shawanda. Police received an anonymous tip, that Rashid was actually the murder suspect. Shawanda did not want the child, therefore Rashid killed her because he wanted the child.

Because he was at the scene and discovered the body, Shawanda’s boyfriend was considered an early suspect. Within a few days, after the full investigation of Rashid, and his full cooperation with the police, they decided that he, in fact, was not responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. He was ruled out as a suspect in her homicide.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on January 20th, 2003, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department received a missing persons report on 17 year old Jovanna Jefferson, her family hadn’t seen her for more than 24 hours. Since 9 a.m. the previous morning.

Jovanna told her aunt that she was going to go with a man named D and that D was a cab driver. A few hours, after her aunt last saw her, she got a strange phone call from Jovanna. She was telling her aunt that she was with D, but he was holding her.

The aunt got on the phone and pleaded with D to allow her niece to leave, but to no avail. She never saw her niece again. Detectives poured over Jovanna’s phone records. One of the names that popped up was Paul Durousseau, the same Paul Durousseau who had driven Shawanda in his cab the day she died.

The detective called Paul Durousseau, she asked him if he new anyone by the name of Jovanna Jefferson. He said no, and that was the end of that brief conversation. However, a day or so later, Durousseau called the detective back and said, in so many words, “Now wait a minute, I saw the missing flyer of Jovanna, and yes I did pick her up sometime in mid-January and gave her a ride”

The lead investigator on Jovanna’s missing persons case ran Paul Durousseau’s criminal history. She soon discovered that Durousseau was a registered sex offender. The detective found out in the year 2001, he was arrested for rape.

Strangely just days after Jovanna goes missing, Durousseau quit his Cab Company job. Detectives went to Gator Cab Company, they found his cab, and looked for trace evidence. The unfortunate thing was that it had been cleaned multiple times since he left.

Still law enforcement caught a big break when they found out that Durousseau had given a DNA sample during his 2001 rape arrest. That sample remained in cold storage at the Florida State Crime Lab. So what they did was took a DNA sampling of trace evidence from all the crime sights to see if they had a match.

Investigators waited several days for the results. In the meantime, they spoke with Larry Lake a colleague of Durousseau from Gator City Cab Company. Larry Lake happened to be the training driver for Paul Durousseau one of the first nights he worked.

Lake confirmed that he and Durousseau together, picked up Shawanda, but there wasn’t much verbal interaction between Shawanda and Durousseau. However, just a few hours later, Durousseau was driving on his own.

In early January, 2003, police in Jacksonville, Florida, were investigating the murders of three women. Law enforcement didn’t have any evidence connecting the crimes, but they suspected that the same perpetrator murdered all three women, especially since the Kilpatrick and Williams murders took place less than a mile apart.

Both the Williams and Kilpatrick murders had similar ties in the MO. They were both young African-American women, both were pregnant, and both of them had been strangled. Certainly these three similarities tie the two together.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on February 5th, 2003, a construction worker was clearing a vacant lot with his front end loader and made a grisly discovery. The body of missing teenager Jovanna Jefferson. Detectives arrived at the location, and not only did they find her body, they found a second body.

The second body was identified as 19 year old Surita Cohen. Cohen’s mother had just reported Surita missing the day before, but last saw her daughter on January 30th. Both young, African American women, had been strangulated, both had ligature marks, and their wrists were bound.

Jacksonville police believe that these victims at the construction site where the fourth and fifth victims of possibly the same killer. With the DNA results not back yet from the lab, the police didn’t quite have the probable cause to arrest Durousseau on these murders.

Still police devised a plan to get Durousseau off the streets. They found out there was a stolen DVD player, which was in Paul’s Durousseau ’s name, at a pawn shop. With an arrest warrant in hand for the theft of the DVD player, the police located to Durousseau at his wife’s home.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on February 6th, 2003, police took Paul Durousseau into custody. Their arrest warrant was for dealing in stolen property, but they were able to hold him on a parole violation stemming from his 2001 rape conviction.

For now the possible serial killer was behind bars, at least temporarily. In mid-February the DNA results came back from the state crime lab, and the report showed that the DNA samples taken from the Kilpatrick and Williams crime scenes, in fact, matched the cheek swab given by Paul Durousseau back in 2001.

Detectives were shocked to learn that Durousseau’s DNA connected him to an unsolved homicide from September, 1977, which occurred in Fort Benning, Georgia. It was at that time he met a 26 year old woman named Tracy Habesham.

They were seen dancing in a certain night club together. Two days later Tracy was found dead, strangled to death. There was DNA collected at the crime scene, and several years later it could now be linked to Paul Durousseau.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on February 21st, 2003, Durousseau was sitting in Duvall County Jail when police tried to question him. They told him right up front, we have your DNA recovered from the Kilpatrick crime scene, the Williams crime scene, and the Habersham crime scene back in the 1990s.

Despite that he denied having anything to do with these women, when detectives searched Durousseau’s home they found evidence that proved he was lying. Upon searching it they found blue blankets. The exact same type, fiber, and color, matched those which were found on the bodies of victims.

The police found cable, rope and cord, all very similar to the type of tying materials that were found on the bodies of the various women. They also took his sofa out of his apartment and tested that for DNA.

Three days later, detectives found additional evidence in Paul’s vehicle. Inside they found handcuffs, pocket knives, jewelry, and a list with phone numbers on it. Two of those phone numbers happened to be those of Surita Cohen and Jovanna Jefferson.

In mid June 2003, the long-awaited DNA results came back on the Jovanna and Surita cases. DNA retrieved from a sofa into Russo’s home match Jovanna. DNA extracted from the jewelry found in the Durousseau car matched Surita Cohen.

Now detectives had evidence to charge the Russo with the murders of all five women. Just who exactly is Paul Durousseau?

In 1970, Durousseau was born in Texas. He moved at the age of one to Los Angeles. He didn’t even know his biological father. Paul’s mother moved in with another man, who became violent to her and to Paul, beating them both with cords and belts.

By the time Paul was 11 his stepfather moved out. Paul and his family were now being raised by their single mother. Durousseau graduated from high school in San Fernando Valley, California, ended up joining the Army, and ended up in Germany.

While stationed in Germany, Paul met a fellow soldier named Nikia. The two married in 1995 and went on to have two daughters. Paul and his wife had a, what can best be described as a difficult relationship. There was much domestic abuse on his part towards her.

By November, 1997, Nikia had had enough, she fled from Durousseau, taking their two daughters and moving to the Sunshine State. Lo and behold several months later, Durousseau showed up. Paul and Nikia, now lived in Jacksonville, and continued to have a very volatile relationship.

He was beating her, had been grabbing her around the neck, and attempted to choke her. Durousseau ‘s delinquency and violence extended far beyond the home front. From 1991 through 2002, Durousseau was arrested on various charges, from carrying illegal weapons, to rape, to burglary, to trespassing. Even to molesting a fifteen-year-old girl.

The only extended jail time Durousseau served for any of his crimes was 30 days for the June 2001 rape arrest which led the State Crime Lab to store his DNA. And also 48 days for an August 2001 domestic battery incident with his wife. This guy’s rap sheet and escalation in criminal activity was certainly indicative of someone on their way too much more serious crimes.

DNA linked Durousseau to all five women as well as a sixth victim. With Durousseau behind bars, the investigation was ongoing. Police uncovered a 1999 homicide, Tyresa Mack, similar in look and in MO to the other homicides, to which he was already charged.

Tyresa Mack’s last hours were recounted by witnesses who said that they saw her at her apartment, she ended up leaving with a tall male in a blue jumpsuit, and was never heard from again. On July 26th, 1999, Durousseau strangled the 24 year-old mother of three to death inside her apartment then left her body on the bed.

When forensic investigators processed the scene they found a white telephone cord wrapped around Mack’s neck and the presence of semen. Detected DNA from that case was compared to Paul’s, and was confirmed. So at this point in time, Durousseau was going to be charged with Mack’s murder. Given the strength of the evidence, prosecutors decided to try to Russo on the Mack murder first.

In Jacksonville, Florida, on May 23rd, 2007, Paul Durousseau stood trial at Duval County Circuit Court for the 1999 murder of Tyresa Mack. He testified in his own defense. He claimed vehemently that Tyresa Mack and he had a relationship, and they had sex numerous times. It was consensual but he never murdered her.

Three weeks into the trial, the jury reached it’s verdict after just eight and a half hours of deliberation. The jury came back unanimous, Paul Durousseau was convicted of the murder of Tyresa Mack. The jury came back with a 10-2 to vote recommending the death penalty for Durousseau.

In the State of Florida, it is only a majority vote. On December 13th, 2007, the judge sentenced Durousseau to death. Prosecution decided to drop all five other charges against him. They had a solid conviction and a death penalty sentence. Allegedly, before all was said and done, Durousseau confessed to killing Habersham, his seventh murder victim.

Durousseau was a ticking time-bomb based on his criminal history, and the way he treated women. It was only a matter of time before he escalated to murder. As the jury so sentenced him to death, then he is right where he belongs. Durousseau remains on death row at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. No date has been set for his execution.