Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Associated PressThe prosecutor plans to present the case today for five first-degree murder indictments.
JACKSONVILLE - The six victims were young and attractive, with plans and dreams of families and better lives.
The cabdriver accused of killing them has been married to a woman he met in the Army in Germany almost nine years ago. Parents of two daughters, ages 5 and 6, they have lived a rocky five years in Jacksonville.
Those are the pictures emerging about the lives of the man police believe is a serial killer and the six women he allegedly killed, five in Florida and one in Georgia.
Paul Durousseau was to make his initial court appearance today. The Public Defender's Office said it expected to represent him, having done so in another case.
State Attorney Harry Shorstein said he would present the case to a grand jury today, seeking five first-degree murder indictments, charges that could bring the death penalty.
Durousseau, who is 6 feet 6 and weighs 160 pounds, was born on Aug. 11, 1970, in Beaumont, Texas. Before Jacksonville, he had lived in St. Petersburg, Los Angeles, Fort Benning, Ga., and Germany.
Legal troubles began for him at Fort Benning, an Army post. In August 1997, Durousseau was acquitted in a court-martial of one charge of rape, one count of kidnapping and one count of assault to commit rape of an 18-year-old woman in Columbus, Ga., said Monica Manganaro, a base spokeswoman. He pleaded guilty in a separate case to receiving stolen property, and the Army dropped two charges of larceny of government property against him. Durousseau was given a bad-conduct discharge, Manganaro said.
Columbus was the scene of the first of six slayings tied to Durousseau, police said.
The nude body of Tracy Habersham, 26, was found Sept. 7, 1997. She had been seen two days earlier at a party at a Fort Benning club. Police believed she was strangled shortly after the party.
After being booted from the Army, Durousseau and his wife moved to Jacksonville.
On June 24, 2001, Durousseau was charged with raping a 19-year-old Jacksonville woman. He was convicted of sexual battery, served 30 days in jail and was placed on two years' probation, court records show.
Last December, the Jacksonville killings began.
Nicole Williams, 18, a high school student, was found Dec. 18, lying dead in a ditch. She had been strangled.
On Jan. 1, Nikia Shanell Kilpatrick, 19, who was pregnant, was discovered bound and strangled in her apartment. Police said her two small children, in the apartment with her body for up to two days, were suffering from malnutrition.
On Jan. 10, Shawanda Denise McCalister, 20, also pregnant, was found strangled in her apartment. She was training to be a nurse.
The bodies of the last two victims were found together Feb. 5 in a vacant lot. Like McCalister, Surita Ann Cohen, 19, and Jovanna Tyrica Jefferson, 17, were last seen with a cabdriver.
That was the clue that tied the case to Durousseau, said Lt. Rick Graham, chief of the homicide unit of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
A search of Durousseau's previous residence turned up a bedsheet that contained DNA from Jefferson, police said. A search of his car turned up jewelry belonging to Cohen and Jefferson, and the pair's cell phone records showed that they had placed calls to him, police said.
Authorities said DNA evidence, semen, fiber analysis and more cell phone calls eventually linked Durousseau to all the earlier slayings.