A suspect has been charged with murder in the 2018 killing of a New York, New York nurse, in which he allegedly left her naked in a blanket with her teeth knocked out in her own bedroom after the two met on a dating app.
In addition to the murder charge, Danueal Drayton was charged on Thursday with two counts each of grand larceny and identity theft, as well as possessing stolen property, sexual misconduct and more.
Samantha Stewart was a registered nurse at Long Island Jewish Hospital and a beloved role model for her brothers and sister, her family said after her death. Her brother discovered the 29-year-old unconscious with injuries to her neck and head inside her Springfield Gardens home, police said at the time.
The brother said that Stewart appeared to have been strangled and that her tongue was sticking out and her teeth were knocked out.
In the months after the alleged slaying, Drayton said he heard voices in his head that made him do it. He told the New York Daily News from a Los Angeles jail — where he was in custody at the time on charges involving another woman he allegedly held captive in California — that he remembered strangling Samantha Stewart and talked about voices urging him to harm people.
“I really liked her. I didn’t want to kill her,” he said from behind a glass partition. “They told me she had to die.”
Drayton said at the time that he and Stewart visited a race track and shared an artichoke pizza and he had no intention of hurting her.
“I’m a passenger in my own body,” Drayton said repeatedly. “It’s mind control,” he said. “They use direct-energy weapons on me to control my mind.”
Drayton said he strangled Stewart and tried to resuscitate her but eventually, her body went “stiff.” He used bleach to partially clean up the crime scene but intentionally left his “Egyptian cologne” behind in the hope police could link it to him.
“I wanted to get caught. I took some of her things with me and used them. I kept my same phone. I knew they could track it. I didn’t know how long it would take,” he said.
In the weeks before the alleged killing, a New York judge released the Drayton without bail in a separate strangulation case. The judge didn’t know he had a violent criminal history involving women.
That woman, Zynea Barney, told the Daily News that Drayton seemed like a “cool guy” initially, but when she broke up with him, he tried to strangle her at a park on Long Island until bystanders intervened. The next day he threatened to kill her and her family, she said.
The freeing of Drayton outraged Stewart’s family and frustrated prosecutors. They and Drayton’s defense lawyers believe he would still be behind bars on the Long Island strangulation charge if they and the judge had known about his rap sheet in Connecticut. His record in New York was clean at the time.
Drayton also faced charges in Los Angeles after police said he sexually attacked a different woman, attempting to strangle her and refused to let her leave her apartment, in the days after allegedly killing Stewart. He pleaded not guilty in that case. Drayton told the Daily News he also remembers choking that woman.
Two law enforcement officials previously told The Associated Press that after his arrest, Drayton claimed he had killed at least five women in Connecticut and New York.
After buying a one-way ticket to California using Stewart’s credit card, Drayton landed in Los Angeles and met a woman while taking an Uber ride, he said, and they went back to the woman’s apartment, where he choked her. He recalled seeing her body wedged between a toilet and the wall, thinking she was dead, but then she stirred.
Drayton said he attempted suicide with Advil before police caught up with him.
He told the Daily News he couldn’t remember meeting a 23-year-old woman he also allegedly raped in Brooklyn. But he added that the voices also cause him to have blackouts.
“They make it so I can’t remember,” he said.
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