Man Released By LI Judge Claims He's A Serial Killer

A Connecticut man accused of murdering a Queens nurse he met on Tinder reportedly told police he's killed six others, including at least one person on Long Island.

Danueal Drayton, 27, of New Haven, appeared in a Los Angeles court Monday on charges that he sexually assaulted and attempted to murder a 28-year-old woman after they went on a date and headed back to her North Hollywood apartment, police said.

Police arrived at the apartment on July 26 to arrest Drayton for the murder of Samantha Stewart, a 29-year-old nurse found strangled to death in her Springfield Gardens apartment in Queens on July 17. By the time they found him, he was holding the other woman hostage, authorities said.

The New York Daily News reported Drayton confessed to murdering two others in Connecticut, one in the Bronx, one in Suffolk County, one in either Queens or Nassau County, and possibly another in California.

"My body did this, not my mind," Drayton told investigators, according to the Daily News. "I didn't want to do this. My body made me do this."

It was unclear if Drayton was telling the truth about the additional crimes, a police source said. Authorities said Drayton likely preyed on women he met through online dating sites.

Though Drayton was originally wanted for the murder of Stewart, whose lifeless body was found by her brother and father, he's now believed to be behind the rape of another Queens woman just a month before Stewart was killed, police said.

Authorities said he seemed to be repeating a pattern of rape and strangulation seen in Stewart's murder in the North Hollywood attack before officers intervened .

Drayton was released by authorities at a July 5 hearing in Nassau County after he was arrested for allegedly choking his girlfriend.

Judge Erica Prager ruled that Drayton, charged with felony strangulation, posed no flight risk and rejected the county district attorney's call to hold him on $7,500 bail. Days earlier at Drayton's arraignment, a different Nassau judge had set bail at $500.

"I'm devastated by my loss of my daughter, but hearing this news now it really, really shocks me, throws me over the edge," Kenneth Stewart, the father of Samantha Stewart, said of Drayton being released without bail in Nassau, CBS 2 reported.

A Nassau Court spokesman sent Patch the following statement: "A judge has broad discretion when determining whether to set bail. Many factors are to be considered, including the views of other agencies involved within the process. In NYS the purpose of bail is to ensure a defendants return to court, it is not intended to be used as a punitive measure. Neither side offered information to the court indicating the defendant had an out-of state criminal record and, at that time, the defendant had not been indicted by the District Attorney’s Office. In this particular case the udge carefully considered the facts before her and made her determination based on all the current, relevant and factual information that was provided to the court as required. Prior charges in Connecticut were not included on the NYSID report, which the court relies upon in such matters. It would have been impossible for the judge at that time to foresee the allegations that are presently unfolding and coming to light with regard to this defendant."

Drayton has, in fact, had numerous other brushes with the law, several of which resulted in stints in Connecticut prisons over the last few years.

Drayton was sentenced to three years in prison after a 2011 strangulation arrest in East Haven and ordered to serve another two years for unlawful restraint and violating a protective order in 2012, court records show. He was again sentenced to two more years in prison for violating a protective order in Waterbury in 2015 and most recently served three months in jail after a February arrest for harassment in New Haven.

In his latest arrest, Drayton was charged with attempted murder, forcible rape, false imprisonment by violence and sexual penetration by a foreign object. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison.

Written by Danielle Woodward

City News Service and Patch Staffers Rich Scinto and Paige Austin contributed to this report.

Photo courtesy of the NYPD