Murder With My Husband - 147. Dawnia Dacosta - The Devastating Discovery

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

On this episode of MWMH, Payton and Garrett discuss the disappearance and murder of Dawn Dacosta and how her case led to a serial killer. Links: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: Bob Norman, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, "Lady-Killer," 23 September 1999, archived (www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/lady-killer-6326373) Forensic Files, "Church Dis-service," aired April 3, 2009 on TruTV wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucious_Boyd supremecourt.flcourts.gov/content/download/347254/file/02-1590_AmdInit.pdf murderpedia.org/male.B/b/boyd-lucious.htm charleyproject.org/case/patrece-lashelle-alston charleyproject.org/case/danielle-marie-zacot Newspapers.com sources: Trevor Jensen, Sun-Sentinel, "Jury finds man innocent in stabbing," 7 May 1994, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/239011506), citing print edition, p.2B Donna Pazdera, Sun-Sentinel, "Car breaks down, woman disappears," archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/238945930), citing print edition, pp. B1-B4 D. Aileen Dodd, Sun-Sentinel, "Deerfield woman found dead," 8 December 1998, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/617140415), citing print edition, pp. 1B-3B Donna Pazdera and A. Tacuma Roeback, Sun-Sentinel, "Missing nursing student's body found," 8 December 1998, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/238947101), citing print edition, pp. 1A, 10A Donna Pazdera, Sun-Sentinel, "Family mourns as police seek killer," 9 December 1998, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/238948852), citing print edition, p. 3B Donna Pazdera, Sun-Sentinel, "Man wanted for questioning in murder," 23 December 1998, archived (https://www.newspapers.com/image/238940798), citing print edition, p. 3B Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yes, you energy, energy for everything. Cast the banner now to learn more. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. Thank you so much for all of the love we are receiving on Binge.

It seems like everyone is loving it. I know this is something that we have been so excited to release. And so I'm so glad that it's going well and that you guys are all loving it. Payton's worked really, really hard on this. If you have not yet listened or if you haven't been able to check it out yet, there's going to be links everywhere. And one of those will take you to Benjed. It's another true crime podcast and I promise you're going to love it.

All right, Gare, do you have your 10 seconds? Honestly, we've just been pretty busy getting everything ready for the release of Binge. I feel like I go through these phases of different breks with foods. Like right now, I've been eating muffins the last couple days before it was nothing. Yeah. It was just go to Dutch Bros every single morning. And now I'm back to like no Dutch Bros, so muffins. So I feel like I'm on a muffin phase.

I'll probably hit a donut phase. Just switch it up a little bit. Other than my breakfast phases, nothing too crazy has been going on. So I think on that note, let's hop right into it. Okay, so our episode sources are Broward, Palm Beach.com, forensic files, Wikipedia, Florida Courts, dot gov, murderpedia, dot org, Charlie project, and newspapers, dot com.

Okay, so jumping into this case, heaven forbid that your car breaks down while you're driving on the highway. At best, this can be just a day shattering inconvenience for people, but it's also an unforeseen circumstance that can drop you into an unsafe position depending on where you're able to pull over. Fortunately, it's not quite as bad in 2023. Nearly everyone has a cell phone and the option of remaining inside their vehicle until help arrives. But in the 20th century, even in the 90s, this wasn't an option for many people.

And there have been many bad people out there, always ready to take advantage of a person in this vulnerable situation. And today's story is about one such person and one such man. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a period of economic decline and political unrest in Jamaica. And families who had the means to do so left the country and relocated to the United States in pursuit of greater opportunity, stability,

and financial security. In the 1980s, over 25,000 Jamaicans immigrated to Broward County, Florida. Making this region the second most attractive US city for Jamaican immigrants ranking just below New York City. Now, Daniel Hope, DeCosta was born in Jamaica on December 1st, 1977, and her family was one of the many who landed in the Fort Lauderdale area in the 80s when

Daniel was just 10 years old. Can you believe that real quick, 10 or up this? I've never been the Florida. You've never been the Florida. I've never been the Florida. I've been so many times. I know, I need to go. I've never been the Florida. You need to go.

So Danya's family consisted of Danya, two sisters, two brothers, and her mother. Danya attended Deerfield Beach Middle School and Deerfield Beach High School. And in 1998 she was enrolled full-time at Broward Community College, where she was studying to become a pediatric nurse. Now while going to school, Danya had a part-time job at American Express as a customer service representative, and she was able to save most of her earnings because she was still living at home

with her mom, her sister, and her two brothers. Now, Donia's life was simple, but full. She had her family, which was very close in loving. She had her studies and her nursing ambitions, and she had her church, which was a major part of her life. Donia was a member of the Faith Tabernacle Church in Deerfield Beach, which had over a thousand members, but was a tight-knit community that was like Danya's extended family. Many of her closest friends were friends

from the church, where she was very active in her congregation deeply involved in the youth ministry and saying in the church's choir. Now Faith Tabernacle was so important to Danya that she attended at least four times a week and she would spend six hours worshiping at church every single Sunday. It didn't leave her with any time for dating, though, and she didn't even have male friends. But although she may not have been interested in dating or pursuing casual relationships, she still fantasized about romance and marriage. The evidence of this was right there on her bedroom wall, where a magazine cut out of a white wedding gown was pinned to the wall above her bed. And she kept a similar catalog cut out in her backpack, a full-page ad featuring an assortment of

engagement rings. This is so funny because of social media, we don't do that anymore. No, she was interesting before Pinterest. Exactly. I mean, I remember when people used to cut out magazines, put them on their binder, you know, all their stuff. Yeah. You just don't do that anymore. Well, for Danya, it's a parent from her cutouts that she longed for male companionship. But she was saving herself for marriage. She was waiting for the right man with the same values to appear in her life. A man she hoped she would meet at church. Now around the neighborhood where she lived with her family, Danya was seen as an angelic, almost saintly figure, and she was known for being the friendly, outgoing young woman who could always be heard singing church hymns when she was out and about

in the neighborhood. And while most 21-year-olds might celebrate their milestone birthday by going out and drinking or partying, Danya spent hers at church. And when Friday night arrived, her first Friday night as a 21 year old woman, instead of going clubbing like the other women her age, Danya headed over to the Faith Tabernacle Church for an all night prayer service. It was December 4th, 1998. Danya had worked that day until 10 p.m.

when she punched out and headed directly to Faith Tabernacle Church. And while Danya usually went to church with her sister Rochelle, this night was different. Her sister was swamped with homework so she's decided to stay behind. So Danya went to church alone, prayed and tell around midnight and then she left the prayer service and dropped by the home of her other sister Cheryl. She watched TV as Cheryl's for a little while and then she headed out ready to return home and go to sleep. Meanwhile, back at Dawnia's home, her mother Daphne was getting ready for bed and was expecting Dawnia home any minute. And as she lay in bed,

Daphne kept her ears tuned to the front door, waiting for it to open, waiting to hear Dawnia's footsteps enter the house. But instead, silence persisted throughout the night, leaving Daphne restless, getting up two or three times every hour to check Donia's bed. At one point, she knocked on Rachelle's door and asked her younger daughter if she had heard from Donia or if she'd come back at any point maybe while Daphne was dozing, but Rachelle hadn't heard a word. And by early the next morning, Donia's bed was still empty, with no sign of having been slept in.

She hadn't come home. Daphne had barely gone any sleep, wondering about her daughter all night long. And during the night, during her fitful sleep, Daphne had a dream, or more accurately a nightmare. A premonition that something was horribly wrong and that Daniel was not okay. Which, I mean, obviously there's something wrong because I mean, you look at how she lives her life and her religion and everything.

She's not someone to just also not come home one night. She's not probably not sneaking off. I mean, for a 21st birthday, she spent the whole day and night in church. Right. So something's going on. Right. So first thing in the morning, Daphne began frantically calling family and friends, but none

of them had seen her daughter. So Daphne and Rachelle got into the car and drove to the Faith Tabernacle Church, thinking maybe Danya had, for whatever reason, spent the night there, which would have been completely out of character for her to spend the night anywhere without calling home first to let family know, but in a situation like this you desperately cling to whatever possibility might explain why your loved one didn't return home. But when Mother Daphne and Sister Rochelle arrived at the church, Danya was not there, and she hadn't been seen there since 12.30 the night before or early morning.

Donia's loved ones left not knowing where to turn next. But then, as they were driving back home, Daphne and her mother spotted something on the shoulder of the I-95 off ramp to Hillsboro Boulevard. It was Donia's car. A grey 1974 Ford LTD. Its hazard lights were still flashing and Daphne knew this was her daughter's car. Danya had been having transmission problems with this vehicle so it seemed that perhaps the car had broken down and maybe instead of venturing out alone in the middle of the night she'd slept in the car while it was broke down. So Daphne pulled in front of her daughter's car and walked over to it. But when she looked inside the vehicle was empty. There was a blanket in the back seat. The keys were nowhere to be seen. And this is when a horrible filling came over Daphne.

She could now only consider one possibility. Her daughter had run into foul play. Daphne slammed the door to her daughter's car and ran back to her own. That day, she and her children systematically went through their neighborhood, knocking on the doors of neighbors, passing out flyers with Danya's face and description on it. And as the search picked up steam, it also picked up manpower, as people in the community began to join the search. And by the end of the day, they had over a hundred of their friends, family and neighbors, acquaintances, and even strangers, helping them with their search for Danya. But nothing turned up, not even a clue.

So before heading home, they went to the Broward County Sheriff's Office and formally filed a missing persons report. Now in so many cases where someone goes missing and their family or friends report, especially the day of the disappearance and an adult. They're often brushed off by law enforcement who fell to take the report seriously or act on it until more time has passed. We've seen it before in cases that we've covered. However, with Danya's disappearance, the police were on it right away.

And this was due to the circumstances in abandoned car on the side of the road, just a mile or so from where her home was. If she'd been hit by a car, which sometimes happens when people have car trouble on the highway, there'd have been a body. And in this case, the missing woman led a squeaky, clean lifestyle

about whom only positive things could be said. She's the most loving person anyone could know. She smiles at everyone, she never has anything harsh to say. Her mother described her. And everyone agreed that Daniel was not the kind of person who would just disappear on her own without any contact with her family or friends that she was close with. So these circumstances left absolutely no wonder. The Broward Sheriff's Office wasted no time in launching a full-scale search with helicopters, motorcycles, and dogs, as well as an expanded door-to-door canvas

and distribution of missing person flyers. What investigators had also determined, almost from the outset, was that the gas tank of Daniel's car was empty. And a small gas canister that she usually kept stored in her trunk was missing. That's extremely weird. Well, so it appeared to them that it actually

wasn't transmission trouble, but maybe Danya had run out of gas on the highway. Once again, I don't know how you how you find someone. Like if someone had come up with a car, taking her and is now gone, how in the world do you even get a lead? Right. Well, and that's kind of where they're at right now with everything going on but her mom tells police this isn't the first time that she's run out of gas she had run out of gas once before and in that instance she walked to a nearby gas station got some gas and returned to her vehicle to fill her tank

enough to get back to the gas station to fill it the rest of the way so they're thinking she's done this once before, she probably did it again. The nearest gas station to where Danya had left her car was a Texaco filling station about three quarters of a mile away. So detectives interviewed the cash year who was on duty that night. And it was learned that at around one thirty a.m., around the time that Danya was last seen, a woman fitting her description wearing a floral print dress was seen at the Texaco station carrying a small gas canister, much like the one that was missing from Danya's trunk. So police checked Danya's credit card activity and confirmed that she'd used the card

there that night. She'd spent $1.26 of gas. So this means she did make it to the gas station and this woman that the cashier saw was most likely Danya. The cashier put detectives in touch with another woman who had also it to the gas station and this woman that the cashier saw was most likely, Danya. The cashier put detectives in touch with another woman who had also been at the gas station and both that woman as well as the cashier claimed that they had seen a well-dressed man in his late 30s or early 40s approach the woman and offer help. So basically these two eyewitnesses are saying, yeah, we think that was Danya and that morning

at 1.30 a.m. we saw a man approach her asking if she needed help. You know cameras. I'm assuming at the gas station. No cameras. Okay, okay. According to eyewitnesses, the man said, how far do you have to go? The eyewitnesses confirmed that Danya then apparently got into the man's van and the man drove away, supposedly driving her back to her car to fill up the gas.

Oh, great. That's what the eyewitnesses thought. But of course, what happened after that was a mystery now. One witness described the van as green light, maybe till, the other witness insisted it was Burgundy. So the police had two conflicted descriptions of this man's van that Danya was last seen getting into. But the Burgundy witness offered an additional detail.

She distinctly remembered seeing the word hope on the side of the van in Block lettering and for whatever reason the witness was left with the impression that this was a church van of some kind Which begins to make perfect sense because although Danya was a very prudent safety conscious person One who ordinarily wouldn't even talk to a stranger, especially a man. She saw hope. Yes, if a stranger were well dressed, well spoken, and appeared to be affiliated with a church, that might lead Danya to believe that the stranger was safe. And after all, it was uncharacteristic of Danya to even go walking alone at night, but,

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That's rocketmoney.com slash husband. Rocketmoney.com slash husband. So a benign looking stranger offering a ride in his church van might have seemed like a safer alternative to Danya than walking back to her car alone at 2 in the morning. And if the stranger wasn't so benign, he surely would have recognized this and taken advantage of it. So that's where the investigation was at when it began on Sunday morning. The story hit the news the following day on Monday morning. Her family

watched the coverage of it from the house that Donia shared with them. And tragically, not too soon into the investigation, the family's worst fears were confirmed. No. There was breaking news three days after Donia went missing. The body of a woman had been found at 8.20 a.m. that morning, this would be Monday, dumped beside a garbage dumpster. She needs a wheeze. That was fast, three days. Three days. Extremely fast.

Well, the body was in an alleyway behind some warehouses, 10 miles south of the Texaco station where Danya was last seen. Danya's family saw the news and began praying. Praying that this body was not Danya's. A gathering of over 80 of their friends from the community and from church held a vigil on the family's front lawn, leading a collective prayer for Danya's safe return. But at 8.20pm that night, exactly 12 hours to the minute that the body was found, police cruisers, and

a chaplain showed up at the DeCosta home. Daphne knew immediately what that meant. It meant that their prayers had gone unanswered and that this was Danya. A wave of up at the DeCosta home. Daphne knew immediately what that meant. It meant that their prayers had gone unanswered and that this was Danya. A wave of sorrow swept through the house and all the people gathered there. What had been the murmur of solemnly hopeful prayers now turned to moans of grief. Even before the body was taken autopsy, it was clear that Danya had died of violent death. She had been wrapped up tightly in several layers. There was a purple laundry bag and a trash can liner over her head.

And the body was nude. She was folded into the fetal position and bundled inside of a shower curtain, a yellow sheet and a brown sheet. So just wrapped very extensively. I'm going to trigger warning, which is weird. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Almost like a mummy. Right. Yeah. And I'm gonna trigger warning which is weird. Yeah, right. Yeah, almost like a mummy right Yeah, and I'm gonna trigger warning here because we are gonna go into some more gruesome details Okay, but whoever dumped her had also driven over her legs on The alley give me a break which that left behind in tire impressions on her body That could be used to rule out or ruin a suspect vehicle. So it was a piece of evidence, but it's awful. Oh, horrible.

It's awful. It was clear from the state of decomposition that Danya had been dead for at least 48 hours by the time that she was found. So she was murdered not long after she disappeared. And you have to keep in mind that although it is December during our story in the late 90s, this was South Florida, and the temperatures were still pe story in the late 90s. This was South Florida, and the temperatures were still peaking in the 80s during this weekend of Donia's murder.

I thought you were gonna say it's Florida, so there's always crazy things happening in Florida. No, no, just the weather. Was she sexually assaulted? She was sexually assaulted. But trying to figure out what happened, investigators interviewed the businesses that operated out of the warehouse

as behind where Donia was dumped, because keep in given my she was kind of dumped in a public area that's why her body was found so fast and some of the business owners that police talked to were working in the warehouse on Sunday night late into the night and they didn't see the body during that time. So, it was determined that the body was probably dumped sometime in the early morning hours on on Monday within several hours of it being found by landscape workers. So whoever had done this, even though she had died almost after she was taken, she was held, her body was held somewhere until it was dumped Monday morning. So after this, her body was taken to the medical examiner's office where the full story of

her violent death began to kind of take shape for investigators. She had a large horse shoe-shaped bruise on her head that suggested that she'd been delivered a hard blow, hard enough to knock her unconscious. Although this injury wouldn't have been fatal. Neither were any of the 36 superficial puncture wounds across Donia's chest, hands, arms, and head. What does that mean? What do you mean by superficial?

They were star-shaped wounds that appeared to be inflicted by a screwdriver and the only purpose that the medical examiner police could find for it was torture. Oh my god. So she had been tortured. So there's no reason at all? They weren't meant to kill her. And it was also clear that again, like you're asked, she had been sexually assaulted and then there was the death blow to Donia's head.

This was delivered by some kind of heavy instrument with a sharp edge, because whatever it was, it penetrated her skull and eventually caused her death. This wasn't before the hours of sexual assault in the torture that she suffered. So for Donia's family and everyone who knew and loved her, this was an unimaginable fate. Daphne, Donia's mother, tried to keep herself composed, but it was hard. Donia's funeral was held at the Faith Tabernacle Church, which had been like Donia's second home. The church was filled almost to capacity that afternoon, with over a thousand mourners,

paying their respects. For investigators, their number one priority in solving Donia's murder was tracking down the man with the van. With the help of the witnesses at the Texaco station, a composite sketch was made and released to the media, along with a description of the man's van, except one detail the investigators held back from the public was the word hope that the eyewitness

had saw. I wonder why they would hold that back. Well, they wanted to make sure that the suspect didn't hide the van, didn't paint over it, concealed word. Or take the sticker off or whatever it is. So they felt like it was specific enough that it's their best lead, but it's also kind of tragically ironic that their best lead is the word hope on a side of a van, because if you remember at the beginning of the story, Donia's middle name is hope. Oh, I do not remember that. So detectives Glenn Bukata and Kevin Kaminsky

with the Broward County Sheriff's Office built a list of every business and organization in the county with the word Hope in its name. From Hope Church to Hope Chiropractic Center to Hope Thrift Center. Wow. And after running this list into the ground, they were left no closer to finding the mystery green,

maybe burgundy, van with the word hope on the side of it. So what I mean, I mean, he could be in Mexico. He could be in Alaska for all we know. He could be anywhere. How do you track it down, especially, I mean, 20, 30 years ago, things were, things were so much different. Like as far as technology and cameras and tracking, there's so much different. Like as far as technology and

cameras and tracking, it's just so different. I mean, if you draw it to the current Idaho cases, they were able to track him down because of his car. Yeah. Because of cameras. Like that, it was literally what led them to him. Yeah. And it was phone, everything. And now we have such a distinct van with a word that's very distinct and they can't find them. But no cameras, no cell phones, or you can track the where they're at. I mean, how do you find someone? Well luckily for a police at this point, a tip does come in. About a burgundy church van parked at a house not far from where

Donia went missing and only two blocks from her own home. It was a house where four male roommates lived, all of whom had access to this van, connected to the community church of God in Christ. Now as the police showed up at the home to interview the men, they peaked inside the van and immediately saw something of interest. It was a floral print dress, which is exactly what Danya had been wearing the night that she was abducted. And remember, she was found new, so her clothing and belongings were still unaccounted for. So they confiscated the van and began to process it, thinking this was their break. But to their disappointment, they found that the tires did not match the entire impressions

found on Danya's body and in the alleyway where she was dumped. Why were those clothes there? And then, Danya's mother took a look at the floral dress and didn't recognize it. Oh, okay. It wasn't the one Donia had been wearing. Got it. So it seemed like this lead was suddenly falling apart.

But the detectives wanted to make sure to solidly eliminate each of these four men. So they took their DNA and their fingerprints because they had what they believed was the killer's DNA from skin cells found beneath Danya's fingernails from when she struggled with her killer and also from sperm recovered from her body and they also had multiple fingerprints found on the plastic bag that had been included in the mummy part of the body so they sent the DNA and the fingerprints off to the crime lab and that's when it was confirmed nothing matched. These four men had nothing to do with Donia's murder. Which if we know anything about

DNA, I mean even now you can get fingerprints, you can put them in the system and if nothing comes up, nothing comes up. Nothing comes up. So it was back to square one for detectives, but with not much more to go on other than the hope church fan, fingerprints that matched no one in the national or local databases and DNA, which like Gertje said, well, before forensic genealogy you needed a suspect to compare it to. It was filling to the BSO detectives like Donia's murder was destined to just become one of their counties many cold cases. Meanwhile, Christmas at the DeCosta household was drained of joy. It was bare bones. The living room had no tree, no Christmas decorations, the presents were all

unwrapped, and the presents that Danya had bought her family, which she had hidden in various spots throughout the house. No one in the house could bear to search for them. It was too painful. A piece of everyone in the family had died, along Danya and it looked like her murder might not ever be solved. Another month went by without any more leads. And then on January 30th, 1999, it was purely by chance the detectives Bukata and Kaminsky who were out working another case and driving through Lauderdale, Florida, happened to spot a van very similar to what the Texco witnesses had described. Which is insane to me.

Why is that guy still driving that van? Right. Well, I don't know. I'll explain. Okay, okay. So it was till colored, like one of the witnesses had reported. And it had the words, here's hope across the side panel. But hope was appearing much more prominent.

It was in capital letters. It was in a larger font, and it was burgundy lettering. So maybe the witness couldn't see the here's at 1.30 AM at night. But the hope was prominent enough that that's all she saw. So the van was parked in front of the generation hope daycare, which was connected to hope outreach.

Oh, even worse at a daycare center. Yes. So they made note of the van and after working other cases for the next two months, they returned to Donia's case in late March and decided to pay a visit to generation hope daycare. So they do wait two months to go follow the sleigh. I don't understand. They were working other cases, but I don't have an explanation for you. It's going as the case goes on, you're going to get fresher. Yes, that they waited this long. They needed to find out who owned the

van so they go back to the daycare center. Detectives arrived at the center and were greeted by the pastor Reverend Frank Lloyd, who was a friendly looking man around 53 years of age. He was the one who owned the van, he told the detectives, but he says he wasn't using the van on the night in question. Well, who was the detectives asked? The pastor couldn't tell them offhand. It had been over four months since Donia's murder.

However, much to their luck, the pastor was a consummate record keeper and stored logs for every transaction at the church, including when the church vehicles were borrowed and by whom. So it wouldn't be a big deal, he said, to just leaf through his logs and find out who had the van that night. He went into his office and dug the box of logs out of his file cabinet and began thumbing through them. Two, three, four months back, till he reached the weekend of the previous December. Lucius had the van that weekend, the pastor said. Now Lucius was the daycare center's 40-year-old maintenance worker.

His name was Lucius Boyd. Okay. He had borrowed the van that Thursday. And according to the logs, did not return it until Monday. That's the same day that Donia's body was dumped. The van's extended absence had gone unnoticed at the time because the van was not generally in high demand on the weekends, and the pastor himself was out of town through the middle of the month. The investigators took a look inside the van with the assistance of the pastor.

The first thing that caught their eye was a purple laundry bag, which looked eerily similar to the laundry bag that Danya had been stuffed inside. The detectives asked if anything had gone missing from the van and the pastor told them that there actually was a box of tools that he usually kept inside the van. They hadn't been seen since around the time that Lucius had borrowed the van. So what kind of tools investigators asked him? The pastor thought of them. Oh, no, no, no, no. There were screwdriver, he said, a drill, a saw, stuff like that. Do you remember the brand of the saw? Police asked him, the model maybe, the pastor couldn't recall. But remember, he did keep meticulous records.

So it was just a matter of going back to his office and digging it up, which did. And what a chance it. I know. The investigators were curious to compare the saw to wounds on Donanya's body. In particular, they had been unable to find anything that matched the horseshoe-shaped wound on her head.

But Lucius Boyd was someone they wanted to track down immediately until they could figure this out until they could match it. For one, he looked similar to the composite sketch of the man last seen with Danya. But also, the name Lucius Boyd was not unfamiliar to the detectives and when the pastor had said his name, they knew who he was. His family, the boyd family, was well known to police, not because of criminal activity, but because they operated a successful Fort Lauderdale funeral home, the James C. Boyd funeral home near downtown. But also Lucius Boyd's name had surfaced

early on in the investigation. Oh man, this always happens. I know. The name always comes up early. And they don't ask them. And then whatever later he ends up doing it. Right. Well the reason was, at the time, when Donia died, Boyd was already being investigated in the disappearance of another woman. Oh my god. 19-year-old Patrice Ashton, who was lasting getting into a car with Boyd. It was Boyd's girlfriend's car.

Never to be seen or heard from again. Lucius and Patrice were friends, and apparently they had planned on taking a trip to Winter Haven, Florida. And when Boyd returned from the trip, he was alone. So her family obviously notices Boyd is questioned and he claims that Patrice had just met two other men while they were there and decided to go away with them and said and he hadn't seen her since. To this day, Patrice Ashton remains a missing person. Her case is still unsolved. But she

was last seen with Boyd. It seems so obvious. His name has now come up in this case. And Lucius Boyd had since been connected to yet another woman who went missing. 25-year-old Danielle Zacott, who was in acquaintance of Boyd's and who was last seen buying bread at a Windixi supermarket on February 25, 1999, which if Boyd was responsible for her disappearance makes it tragic that BSO detectives waited two months to follow up on that generation Hope Day Care van because it was during that time that Danielle vanished. So essentially we have Patrice who goes missing before Danya, then Danya goes missing and then Danielle goes missing and Danielle goes missing after police already know about

the van, but have yet to investigate it. So now believing that Boyd was responsible for three disappearances and at least maybe one murder, police look into the background of Lucius Boyd. They're like, we need to figure out who the sky is, where's he come from. Boyd's background revealed that he was a violent,

dangerous individual who had many brushes with the law, but always seemed to walk away scot-free and clean. Which is why Reverend Lloyd, despite knowing of his arrest record, gave Lucius a pass and even hired him in the first place. The pastor assumed that because he was always acquitted or the charges were dropped, he was an innocent man, just unfairly persecuted. But it seems awfully weird that Boyd was given a pass when you know about his crimes

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Back in 1993, Boyd stabbed his friend, Rodrick Bollard, to death, following an argument over a car. Essentially, when it went to trial, Boyd was able to argue that it had been done in self defense. And so he got off. The strategy worked. Boyd was acquitted. His record also revealed that Boyd had gone to trial on at least two different occasions for rape. A woman named Brenda White, this is a pseudonym, who was then visiting Fort Lauderdelle, her hometown from Maryland, where she'd relocated,

went dancing with Lucius Boyd at Fort Lauderdelle's Baja Beach Club in 1997. She had known Boyd for a while because she was close friends with one of his sisters and she had no reason to expect danger from him. It was just a night out with Lucius Boyd. But at the club, Lucius was relentless in his clearly unwanted advances towards her. This was romantic for him. It wasn't for her. Which after a while, she grew exhausted in her attempts to dodge. And

after dancing, he somehow convinced Brenda to go sit down on the beach with him to, quote, fill the sand in her toes. And while they sat in front of the ocean, Lucius spoke of his grand ambitions to travel the country, telling her about his life, his plans for the future. He was posturing himself like some story book, Romantic Souter. And indeed, many of the women in Boyd's Life did describe him as a charmer.

And it's kind of, I think it's true, because at this point in our story, he had been married twice and had at least eight children. Oh my gosh. So it keeps getting crazier and crazier. Right. When he's on the date with Brenda, like he's been married twice and has eight kids. Just getting more crazy. He, he raped a couple girls, got acquitted, killed one of his best friends or killed his

best friend. Nothing happened to him. Has it married twice? Has it killed children? Has eight children. Patrice is missing and was last seen with him. Now, Adanya, it's body's been found and she's killed and now another girl. Yeah, yeah, but I don't think it's him, though. It's yeah, we're talking about Brenda who happened before all of this. Dan Yell is the girl

who went missing. Yes, Brenda was just one of was one of the rape victims that he's gets off that I'm telling you basically right now. He's not succeeding in charming her at the beach. And so when he drives her back to his home, he parks the car behind the house in the backyard and he turns off the engine and he lunges at Brenda's throat, strangling her until she passes out.

When she regained consciousness, he demanded that she have sex with him and when she resisted, he climbed on top of her held her tightly by her throw and raped her. All while warning her, you don't know who you're messing with. Now repeatedly throughout the ordeal, he squeezed her neck tightly enough that it would cut off her air and she would be close to passing out. But finally, when it was over, he told Brenda, who was shaken and traumatized by having

just been violently raped by her friend's brother, that he would let her go unharmed under one condition that she forget all about what happened and doesn't go to the cops. And she's like, absolutely, I won't go to the cops. I'll forget all about it. Please let me go. After which she immediately went to police and filed a report.

Lucius Boyd was then arrested and charged with rape, but he was released on bond. And at trial, this is nearly two years later. Boyd's defense attorney retraumatized Brenda, who again had been violently raped by attacking her character, pointing out that she wasn't wearing underwear the night of the offense and that she had been drunk. So he basically just tries to come up with all this bull crap. She was asking for it.

Yes. It's basically happening. And again, he gets off. He gets off. The angle works and he gets off. He gets off. The angle works and he gets off. I don't understand how one person can get off so many times. I, especially because there's a living victim. She went to the police immediately after.

And this is why women don't report. So crazy. What's this so crazy that you don't look at his record before and take that into account when you're at trial? I don't. He's already been in a trial for stabbing someone. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. So he gets off and acquitted of this in 1999. This is less than two months after Donia's murder and two days after Danielle disappeared. Okay. So he gets acquitted of this right in the middle. All of these

attacks, their disappearances and even murders were happening one after the other. Well, this one was the trial. But if only the BSO detectives had met with Reverend Frank Lloyd on January 30th immediately after they spotted that hope van, Daniel may still be here today, but they waited. And the story gets worse because there are more attacks previous to where we started our story. Only two months after he brutally attacked Brenda in 1997, a woman named Michelle had also had an encounter with boy that she would never forget. So essentially Michelle needed a ride and boy picked her up, said, save your money, I'll just drop you

off. He drove her around. He didn't take her to her house and she was starting to get nervous. Once the sun went down, he drove her to a park and then held a knife to her throat and demanded that she perform sexual acts on him. Oh my gosh. While she's doing down, he drove her to a park and then held a knife to her throw and demanded that she perform sexual acts on him. Oh my gosh. While she's doing so, he was smoking above her. And she gets this idea to pretend that the ashes that have been falling down are melting the car. And so she starts screaming and this distracts him, she grabs the knife and she stabs

him. She gets out of the car, she starts screaming. screaming tennis players who are playing tennis nearby in the park. Hear her screams and call 911. So police respond. Now get this. When police respond and she's hysterical, this man just tried to rape me. This man just held me against my will. He held a knife to my throat, but she has the knife in her hand. Police don't believe her. They don't believe her. They think that they say to her, you think someone as small as you

was able to overpower this man. And he says, listen, she's a sex worker. She was living, she had had a hard pass. She was living at a woman's house. And he said she just got mad that I didn't have enough money to pay her and freaked out. Oh my gosh. And she tells police, listen, I am not a sex worker.

I work at Lens Express. I was just walking to the train station when he pulled up and offered me a ride. I'm just trying to get back to women and distress. This is where I'm staying. And police tell her, listen, if anybody's going to gel, it's going to be you. What?

They don't believe her. So this is where it gets worse. The deputy who responds to this never took a report from this incident. He never ran Lucius Boyd's background or criminal history, which not only would have included the prior rape charges stemming from Brenda, but also the 1993 murder charges when he stabbed his friend, but also numerous other complaints of rape, which never led to charges being filed. So his, if they had just ran his name, they would have known that he was a predator. And also the deputy lost the knife that was used.

So he got three days suspension for that, but he wasn't, I mean, he wasn't let go or anything. But Michelle Galloway, this is our victim in this instance. She didn't give up. The next day she went back to the BSO and talked to another deputy about what happened, and that deputy actually believed her. And Boyd ended up being charged with rape, aggravated assault and armed kidnapping. However, at the trial, Boyd's Prince of a defense attorney, same guy once again attacked the victim's character, bringing up that she had served time and prison before for shooting a former boyfriend and self-defense and was successful in getting

boyd acquitted. Also, on the same day that Michelle Galloway had been attacked by boyd that all this had happened, the body of 24-year-old Melissa Floyd was found in a grassy area behind a guardrail alongside I-95. And three weeks later, her ID card was found 20 or so miles south on the grounds of the James C. Boyd funeral home. Okay. So I'm only telling this so you can understand how many women attacks, rapes, murders,

disappearances were tied to this guy back when we started our story. So please learn all of this and they can't believe that he's gotten away with it this long, but maybe this time it's going to be different. BSO detectives investigating Donia, DeCosta's murder tracked down Lucius Boyd and obtained a DNA sample from him. And then on March 25th, the results came back. It was a match to the skin cells found beneath

Donia DeCosta's fingernails, as well as the traces of semen found. So Lucius Boyd was once again arrested and he was charged with Donia's murder. What took you so long to catch me is what he told police when they arrest him because he finally realized there was DNA. Yes.

Then he decided to say that. That's insane. Police learned that Boyd's girlfriend had been out of town on the weekend that Donia was killed. So they went to her apartment where she was more than willing to cooperate with them. She allowed detectives to search the bedroom and they asked her if there were any bedsheets that had gone missing.

When Boyd's girlfriend checked the closet, she discovered that two sets of bedsheets were missing, a yellow sheet and a brown sheet. The same colors as the sheets that Danya had been wrapped in. A search warrant was served on the property and the girlfriend took the children she had with Boyd, who lived with them and left town for a year. That's so crazy that he has eight kids. Just and children with this girlfriend, are just living in his home as he's this awful predator.

Beneath the bed in the bedroom, detectives found blood stains, which were later positively identified as donias. The carpet fibers in the apartment also matched brown carpet fibers found on donia's body. And the fingerprints on the plastic bag matched those of Boyd's girlfriend, and the fingerprints on the plastic bag matched those of Boyd's girlfriend, which isn't to say she had anything to do with the murder,

but rather that it was just a plastic garbage bag that was from the apartment that she lived in. The tires on the Here's Hope Day care van matched the tire tracks found at the dump location, and the tools that went missing from the van were consistent with the wounds on Danya. And remember that saw that was among them? The base of the saw was were consistent with the wounds on Danya. And remember that saw that was among them? The base of the saw was perfectly consistent with the horseshoe-shaped bruise on Danya's head. So yeah, unlike the previous cases in which Lucius Boyd had been acquitted, this case against him in the murder of Danya de Costa was airtight.

He did it. There was no doubt, and a jury agreed. He was found guilty on June 21st, 2002, and he was sentenced to death. He still sits on Florida death row awaiting execution today. And he still denies responsibility and refuses to reveal the locations of Patrice Ashton and Michelle Zayka.

And that is the case of Lucius Boyd and all of his victims. Oh, man, what a sick human being. These predators don't understand how I mean, it's hard. Please work is so hard. It's just sucks when it takes so long for people to get caught like that. I know. Like he just got out so many times and that just sucks. And it's also like you understand that someone has to defend these monsters,

but then you look at his defense attorney and you just want to like, really, but like you said, someone has someone has to defend. And then you want look as defense attorney and you just want to like really. But like you said, people. Someone has to defend. Someone has to defend. And then you want to look at the police and be like, really? But also, how are they supposed to know that this was the lead? They were working out.

So it's just like this hard thing of, you know, it's a mess. It's a mess. All right, you guys, that is our case for this week. And we will see you next time with another episode and also some more binged episodes coming out here soon. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. you