Source: Bloody nose likely DNA source

By Michele McPhee

NEW YORK - A history of nose bleeds could explain why Darryl Littlejohn’s blood was found smeared on the plastic bindings used to tie up murder victim Imette St. Guillen, a law enforcement said last night, hours after the career criminal was indicted and charged in her macabre murder.

The career criminal accused of killing the Boston native claimed in a TV report aired last night that the absence of wounds on his body should raise questions about the blood allegedly containing his DNA found on plastic straps that bound St. Guillen’s wrists.

But a law enforcement source said jailed suspect Darryl Littlejohn is prone to nose bleeds, easily accounting for the evidence. He is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and unlawful imprisonment.

In a jail interview with WCBS-TV, Littlejohn, 41, denied killing St. Guillen and said police “have the wrong person.”

He said he was asked to escort St. Guillen out of The Falls bar, where she was drinking, just before closing; his attorney did not allow him to be questioned about what happened next.

Littlejohn said he had provided a DNA sample when asked.

“I cooperated fully, even before I was placed under arrest,” he told WCBS for the interview, which was conducted on Tuesday and aired last night.

Asked whether he killed St. Guillen, he said, “No, I did not.”

The longtime felon was working as a bouncer at The Falls, the Soho nightspot where St. Guillen was last seen alive on the morning of Feb. 25.

“We’re grateful he was finally charged. We want this part to be over with so we can begin grieving,” said Boston Police officer Luke Holbrook, who considered St. Guillen a sister. His father, Frank, is the longtime companion of the victim’s mother, Maureen St. Guillen, and helped raise Imette and her older sister Alejandra.

Police also recovered carpet fibers from Littlejohn’s Queens home that matched threads recovered from brown packing tape that completely swathed St. Guillens face. Investigators said she had been sexually assaulted in a way that was not human and that Littlejohn stuffed a white gym sock down her throat and bound her hands behind her back with the ties; her ankles were tied with shoelaces.

Just after 7 p.m. yesterday, Littlejohn was brought out of Rikers Island and fingerprinted at the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn - not far from the gruesome scene where St. Guillen’s body was found after an anonymous caller dialed 911 from a nearby payphone roughly 17 hours after she was last seen standing outside The Falls with Littlejohn.

Among the spectators in the courtroom at Littlejohn’s arraignment today will be St. Guillens and the Holbrook family, along with another BPD officer who traveled with the family to New York City for support.

Littlejohn insisted in his TV interview that police have the wrong man. “It’ll be so easy to play the race thing, or what-have-you. But, I’m a likely suspect because I have a criminal background and I wasn’t supposed tobe there working,” Littlejohn told a CBS reporter.