Queens Nurse’s Murder Suspect Used Dating Websites To Meet Victims, Says Police

A man accused of strangling a nurse to death in Queens, New York, was also suspected of raping a woman and using dating websites to meet potential victims, the police said on Thursday.

The accused, 27-year-old Danueal Drayton, was arrested Thursday from a hotel room near the Los Angeles, where he was allegedly holding a woman captive.

Officials investigating the death of Samantha Stewart, a 29-year-old nurse, connected the murder with the rape of a woman in Brooklyn several weeks earlier, New York Police Department (NYPD) officials told CW-affiliated PIX 11. A DNA match connected the two cases, a police source told New York Post.

"Here you have detectives flying across the country and potentially saving a life at a hotel," NYPD Chief Dermot Shea said. "This was good old fashioned police work and some really good detective work."

NYPD officers worked with members of the New York, New Jersey, Pacific Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force in order to track down Drayton.

On July 17, Stewart was found dead inside her bedroom at her family home in Springfield Gardens, Queens, with injuries to her head and neck.

“A lot of sorrow is in my heart,” her aunt, Ruby Dixon said. “My niece was the best you ever could find in a human being.”

The police had been on the lookout for the person responsible for Stewart’s murder. They were also searching for the person connected to the rape of a 23-year-old woman that happened a month before in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Finally, both investigations led to the same suspect when the New York and New Jersey joint Task force caught Drayton.

“There was a separate woman in a hotel room in California that was being held against her will,” NYPD Chief Shea said.

“Right after he commit a gruesome murder here and destroy my family, he went to California and just almost did the same thing,” Stewart’s father, Kenneth, said. “Thank God they catch him before he could destroy another family.”

The police believe Drayton employed multiple dating websites to find Stewart and his other victims. They described him as a sexual predator who hunts victims on dating sites such as Tinder, Daily News reported.

“The common denominator in these two cases — one being a murder, one being a rape — is dating websites,” Shea said. “So this individual is known to us and it is believed by us that this individual uses dating web sites to meet women and then victimize these women.”

According to the police, this was not Drayton’s first brush with the law. In June, he was arrested for allegedly choking an ex-girlfriend at Inwood Park in Nassau County. His bail had been set at $1,000 on July 1, but on July 5, Drayton walked free when a judge dropped the bail requirement due to an objection by the district attorney.

Drayton has five prior arrests in Connecticut, including a strangulation arrest in 2011.

"There's potentially more victims out there," Shea said, asking for anyone affected or with any additional information to come forward.

Any additional victims have been asked to come forward and contact the police.

Police officers with Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood division arrested Drayton at around noon, CW-affiliated KTLA 5 reported. Drayton, who is from New Haven, Connecticut, will face murder and rape charges when he is taken back to New York from California.