This is NOT a neighborhood for a woman to stroll alone at 3 am.
Posted on 03/01/2006 10:56:18 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet
NEW YORK — Investigators seeking witnesses and suspects in the brutal slaying of a graduate honors student have been studying security videotape from the neighborhood where she spent her last night out with friends, police said Tuesday.
One tape shows the victim, Imette St. Guillen, talking to a female friend at about 3 a.m. Saturday outside Pioneer, a bar in the Bowery section of Manhattan. The two can be seen parting ways, with the friend leaving by cab, police said.
The friend later told police St. Guillen sounded fine when she checked on her by cell phone about 30 minutes later. The victim informed her friend she had moved on to another bar in the same neighborhood, police said.
New York Police Department officials said they had collected other video from security cameras in the area hoping they would offer more answers about St. Guillen's final hours. Investigators also were looking for clues at a Brooklyn diner where an unidentified man used a telephone to call 911 with an anonymous tip her body had been dumped on a desolate roadside.
Police discovered the body at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in Brooklyn's East New York section. Someone had bound the 24-year-old victim's face, hands and feet with packaging tape before wrapping her in a flower-print bedspread; investigators believe she had been raped.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is a terrible story. I find it interesting though that the bedspread is much like one would find in a hotel/motel. I wonder if anyone in NYC recognizes what hotel or motel it came from (if it did)?
You just cannot be a woman and be alone at 3 a.m. in a bar. It is just never, ever going to be a safe thing to do. Predators look for women who do this (and I am in NO WAY blaming the victim.) Very sad story.
I always feel so badly for friend's and family's of these type of crimes - it's horrifying that the whole world knows the horrible way a loved one died. There's no reason we should all know this.
Don't forget the chateaubriand, he's gonna need LOTS of that!
Sure you can, buy a gun.
There is something about this story, that to me, doesn't quite ring completely true..accordng to reports in the NY papers, she had been clubbing/bar-hopping with her friend..in that I don't think we yet know the whole story.. and when they left the last bar, she declined her friend's offer to share a cab, saying she "wanted to walk." NO WAY..this is a smart, city savvy woman..a crimnal justice major..no way she decides to walk alne at that hour in a deserted neighborhood. And the description of the way the body was wrapped, and displayed/positioned, the anonymous phone call, her hair chopped off..this was not a random event...She knew her killer, indeed may have been going to meet him.
There is something about this story, that to me, doesn't quite ring completely true
I don't think there is a subjective theory yet on who did it. It could have been someone familiar, or some random wackjob. And oh, you are right, young women never go hang out at bars at 3am, or later by themselves. never.
This is NOT a neighborhood for a woman to stroll alone at 3 am.
Where was Bill at the time?
I heard an interesting theory on Fox this morning - that perhaps she ran across some shady characters while doing her grad work in forensics/law enforcemen,t and that they have been recently released from prison or mental institution.
In Austin sexual assault and rape of men is known to individuals that work the rape crisis centers. In Brownsville the disappearance of Americans in general, but specifically women, is all too common.
I say take care of your business during the waking hours.
But hey, just as people won't choose their friends wisely neither will they let someone tell them they can't be out at 4 AM.
"This is NOT a neighborhood for a woman to stroll alone at 3 am."
She's no doubt very "smart" what with being a graduate student, etc.
But I have heard that alcohol is a mind altering substance. And I have also heard that the first effect of drinking alcohol is loss of inhibition, distorted judgement, etc.
So I suppose it was possible that earlier, before drinking she might say she wouldn't walk around this neighborhood at 3:00 AM.
But she apparently did, after her mental abilities were changed.
It is even possible the person/people that raped and murdered her were drinking or drugging.
Lesson. She was obviously innocent. And the killer is evil.
Leave out the alcohol and she has a taxi ride home, perhaps a hangover.
Add alcohol. She is brutally murdered.
One gal wondered why this guy, an acquaintance, made an advance at 3 am... after all, she had only gone to his house in pajamas.
I don't agree with any of this. There isn't any evidence she was a smart, city savvy woman in these news stories. She is from Boston, did well in college and graduate school, and was studying criminal justice at John Jay.
None of that spells 'smart, city savvy woman' in my book. I hailed from downtown nyc for 33+ years, actually not that far from where she was last seen, and I know many women (otherwise smart women) who have very little grasp of spots that present physical danger.
It's an unintended side-effect of Rudy cleaning up the city. People think they are safer than they are. Don't underestimate a young woman's belief that nothing will happen to her, even at 3am, even in the Bowery.
What you say may be true, but there's no evidence that she was all that street smart in the news accounts. Actually, her last decision to take a stroll to another tavern at 3am on Bowery suggests to me she wasn't all that street smart at all.
So, she gets the bright idea to find someone, anyone will do. She goes out to meet people.
Some of these gals are really strange, weird and lonely. If they were not then they'd have many friends surrounding them and helping guide their path.
I've been to grad school and have seen these types throughout both my undergrad and grad years.
Double R,
Exactly. Check my post right before yours. Doing well in school and being a criminal justice major doesn't make her all that street smart. I know many women (well into their 30s) in nyc who don't think twice about situations like this.
It's dangerous out there. You can't be fearful, but you can be smart.
She wasn't.
The reason for publicizing this is a reminder that young women ought not be out alone. Stay with your group, leave with your group. Just one more bar, just one more drink when you are alone lets the predator have a chance at you.
My girlfriend in Germany was a very shrewd girl.
One evening, her friend left our group to go have a drink with a guy she'd just met. My girlfriend walked up to the guy and DEMANDED his ID. The guy presented her with his drivers license. She kept it until her friend returned safely.
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