Order Paper to Remove Stories on Serial Killer
tinydancer
By RON WORD
Associated Press Writer
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Attorneys for an accused serial killer asked a judge
Friday to order a newspaper to remove material from its Web site they say
will prevent their client from receiving a fair trial.
Paul Durousseau is charged with six counts of first-degree murder in
Jacksonville and one in Georgia between 1999 and February of this year. The
state is seeking the death penalty in the case.
His attorneys say that information published by The Florida Times-Union is
hurting Durousseau's case and want the newspaper to remove material on its
Web site it received from prosecutors. That information includes pictures of
the victims, a letter from Durousseau to his wife, and tape recordings of
telephone conversations from jail between Durousseau and his relatives.
"The First Amendment is not absolute," said Assistant Public Defender Ann
Finnell.
However, George Gabel, an attorney for The Florida Times-Union argued the
Web site and newspaper are protected by the First Amendment.
Gabel said the newspaper is sensitive to Durousseau's rights to a fair
trial. He said there are other means to secure a fair trial such as a change
of venue, heavy questioning of potential jurors and sequestering jurors.
Circuit Judge John Skinner said he would rule by Jan. 2.
The Times-Union detailed the case against Durousseau in front-page stories
Sunday and Monday, basing the reports largely on investigative records
obtained from prosecutors.
Finnell said her office and the court should have been notified by the
Times-Union and the State Attorney's Office before the records were
released, and now the newspaper should be precluded from publishing any more
reports based on the materials.
Assistant State Attorney Mack Heavener told the judge there was nothing in
the law which required prosecutors to notify the defense when it receives a
request for public records.
Chief Assistant Public Defender Bill White said his when balancing the
fair-trial rights of a defendant against the First Amendment rights of the
media, "there's still room for prior restraint."
tinydancer
Lots of Photo's at the link above,
td
Twisted trail of an accused killer
SPECIAL REPORT: There were arrests, acquittals, probation violations,
suspicions. But Paul Durousseau kept dodging trouble. Now he is charged as
Jacksonville's worst serial killer.
By JIM SCHOETTLER
The Times-Union
The killer looped an extension cord around her neck like a noose. He could
tighten or loosen it at his pleasure.
Her wrists and ankles were tied for control. She'd been stripped of all but
a white blouse and bra.
He'd leave behind a used condom this time. No fear of getting caught. He'd
killed before.
At least four young women were slain before that January attack on Shawanda
McCalister. Two would be killed later.
All were choked, most with a cord. They were bound or bore the burns of
bondage. The killer ripped jewelry from their bodies.
Another Bundy had been on the loose. That's what Jacksonville police would
say.
Manipulate. Dominate. Control. The mindset of a serial killer was clear. His
face remained a mystery for 5 1/2 years.
McCalister died during a murder frenzy charged to former cabdriver Paul
Durousseau, accused of being the city's worst serial killer. He has been in
jail since February but denies killing anyone. A trial date has not been
set.
Some who know Durousseau said he learned to manipulate girls as a youth,
obsessed over pornography and laughed at nude dead women on a favorite Web
site. Others found him charming, witty and gentle.
Durousseau, 33, skated through the criminal justice system by avoiding
arrests, receiving acquittals or escaping serious punishment for several
crimes. He even managed to escape scrutiny for weeks during the murder
investigations, though police had his name. Interviews, court records and
police reports show:
He was acquitted in a Georgia rape and a Jacksonville burglary, despite
eyewitness testimony. In another rape case, prosecutors gave him a deal that
included probation. It also kept his DNA out of a critical police database.
He repeatedly violated probation during a period that included the murders
of five women, but he went unpunished.
He was suspected of attacking a teenage girl and other crimes, but never was
charged.
His wife had him arrested and sought two court orders to stop his abuse and
death threats, but she refused to testify.
He drifted from job to job, including work driving a school bus and taxi,
without proper background checks.
He became the focus of homicide detectives three weeks after they first
heard his name. Two women were slain during that time.
A confident, defiant Durousseau jousted with detectives even after they told
him about evidence they had linking him to the killings.
"Why would I prey on them?" said the lean, 6-foot-6 former soldier.
But prey he did, police said. Seven times. There may be more.
Early days rough
Paul Durousseau's broken life began when he barely could walk. He was born
in the east Texas town of Beaumont to unwed parents, his father said.
Durousseau and an older brother moved to Los Angeles about a year later to
be with their mother's family. He told police his mother had caught his
father cheating.
Joseph Durousseau Jr. said he spent about a month in California before
leaving his sons behind for Texas. He wouldn't say why.
"She didn't want them to know me, so I just put it in the hands of the
Lord," the father said. He's only seen Durousseau twice since.
The brothers grew up in a tough neighborhood, but their devout mother
protected and disciplined them when needed, said his brother, Joseph
Durousseau III.
"Momma put the leather down when she had to," the brother said. "We got into
some trouble, but nothing like where we went to jail."
Durousseau excelled in sports and thrived on meeting young women as far back
as junior high school, his brother said.
"He just knew how to say the right things," he said.
Durousseau became a security guard after graduating from high school in
1989, got a woman pregnant and joined the Army rather than marry her, his
brother said. His first criminal conviction came in 1992 -- three years'
probation for carrying a concealed gun while a civilian.
He met Jacksonville native Natoca Spann in 1993 while both were soldiers on
an Army base in Germany. They married about 18 months later, beginning an
often violent relationship.
She told police he would push, punch and choke her during arguments about
money and women. He once crushed her in a bear hug for 10 minutes. Another
time, he landed punches while holding a pillow over her face.
The violent nature of the marriage was captured in an interview Durousseau
gave police in February. He recalled a conversation he had with his wife
while they watched the television crime drama CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation.
"Say I kill you and then I get amnesia, will I still get charged with
murder?" Durousseau said he asked his wife.
"Will you kill me?" he said his wife asked.
"No, until death do us part," he said he responded.
The couple moved to Fort Benning, Ga., in early 1996; Durousseau handled
ammunition in an Army ordnance company. He had a run-in with military police
a year later, when he was charged with buying a computer stolen from the
base.
Being punished for that crime would leave him bitter. Before that came a
young woman's cries of rape that threatened to change his life forever. But
Durousseau challenged the system and won. It wouldn't be the last time.
Rape acquittal
"Let me in! Please, let me in!"
The 18-year-old woman's shrieks startled a Columbus, Ga., neighborhood in
January 1997. She told police she was raped by a stranger who pulled her
into his car as she walked to school. She escaped by opening the passenger
door.
A medical exam showed signs of forced sex. The woman's description of her
attacker was crisp, right down to the Army-type gym clothes he wore.
The woman and a friend were driving two months later when she spotted the
same type car. She stole a look at the driver and called police.
A detective and the woman went to the driver's home the next day. By
coincidence, people were drawn outside by an emergency siren that warned of
an approaching tornado.
"That is the man that raped me, right there!" the woman yelled. She was
pointing at Paul Durousseau.
Durousseau denied knowing the woman, though police found clothes in his home
and car like those she described from the attack. Durousseau changed his
story at his August 1997 court-martial, saying he knew the woman and she was
the aggressor. He claimed she cried rape after he threatened to tell her
lesbian lover.
"She lied to him [the detective] about not knowing me, and if I had told him
that I knew her, they would have thrown the book at me," Durousseau told the
panel of officers at his court-martial.
Defense attorneys attacked the woman's story and brought up a false rape
charge she made against another soldier. The officers acquitted Durousseau
of rape after two days of testimony. They also gave him a bad conduct
discharge after he pleaded guilty to buying the computer stolen from the
base. He faced nine months in jail but got no time.
The same neighborhood roused by the woman's shrieks found itself part of
another crime scene three weeks after the acquittal, when a woman walking
her dog found Tracy Habersham's nude body.
Habersham, a 26-year-old Army brat, was dropped off by her brother at a Fort
Benning nightclub Sept. 5. She was depressed over the breakup with a
boyfriend and was looking for company.
So, apparently, was Paul Durousseau, his wife told police years later.
As the crowd began to leave at 2:45 a.m., Habersham's brother waited
outside. She had vanished.
Her body was found the next day in a ditch. She had been strangled, bitten
on the tongue and sliced on her ankle -- possibly after she was dead. A
heart-shaped gold ring had been ripped from her finger.
Clubgoers remember Habersham dancing with a tall man sporting a box-shaped
haircut. Police sought help from family and friends, posted fliers, erected
two billboards and sent the DNA of Habersham's killer to a nationwide
database hoping to identify him. They had no luck.
Ten days after the slaying, Natoca Durousseau gave birth to the couple's
second daughter. Whatever joy that brought would be short-lived as continued
domestic violence sent her fleeing to her grandmother's Jacksonville home in
November 1997.
Her husband wouldn't be too far behind.
Jacksonville attacks begin
The 15-year-old schoolgirl woke to a man licking her leg and stomach. He
lifted her shirt.
She knew him as the maintenance man at her Jacksonville apartment complex.
She pushed him away and demanded an explanation. He wanted to have some fun.
She told him to leave.
Durousseau is named in an April 1999 police report as the attacker. Officers
told the girl and her mother it would be up to them to file charges because
the crime was a misdemeanor that police didn't witness. No charges were
filed.
By that time, Durousseau had been in Jacksonville with his family for about
15 months. He'd been drifting between maintenance jobs, brawling with his
wife and searching for girlfriends. People reported him to police as a
burglar and a thief. No charges were filed.
Jacksonville's first murder victim later tied to Durousseau was found that
summer.
Tyresa Mack, 24, had a phone cord wrapped around her neck, was stripped
below the waist and bore bondage marks on her wrists. There were signs of
rape and robbery when her brother and sister found Mack dead in her Eastside
apartment on July 26, 1999.
DNA tests on a handful of suspects didn't match. Leads dried up. The case
was suspended.
It wouldn't stay that way forever.
Deal helps Durousseau
Natoca Durousseau's words were chilling.
"This man makes intimidating comments of how he would dispose of my body if
he killed me," she wrote of her husband in August 2000.
"He told me he will kill me and that he knows what to do," she wrote seven
months later.
Both times she filed court papers seeking protection. Both times a judge
gave her injunctions. Both times she failed to appear in court. Both times
the injunctions were dismissed. Natoca Durousseau declined to comment for
this story.
The following summer, one of Durousseau's lovers told police he smacked her
head against a washing machine, carried her to a second-floor bedroom and
raped her. The 19-year-old woman said the attack occurred after she tried to
end their relationship.
"If I can't have you, nobody will," Durousseau said, she told police.
Durousseau's story was similar to the one he gave in the 1997 Georgia
rape -- the woman was the aggressor and he couldn't get away.
Jacksonville prosecutor Alan Mizrahi agreed to dismiss the rape count and
allowed Durousseau to plead guilty to aggravated assault. He got two years'
probation, an order to be evaluated for sex treatment and a promise by the
judge to withhold adjudication so he wouldn't have a felony record.
Mizrahi said he had no choice. He said the victim sought only probation, a
medical exam questioned whether the sex was forced and a witness who heard a
commotion in the bedroom left without questioning the activity.
"We know something happened; what it was, I don't know," said Mizrahi, now
in private practice. "Obviously looking back on this case, we wish Mr.
Durousseau had been incarcerated for the rest of his life."
Because he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, Durousseau's DNA wasn't
entered into a database reserved for sex offenders and other felons. It was
the same database that contained DNA from the man who killed Tracy Habersham
in Georgia in 1997.
More breaks
A month after the plea bargain, police arrested Durousseau for grabbing his
wife during a heated argument. He spent 48 days in jail and faced a
probation violation that could have gotten him another year.
But Durousseau's wife wanted the case dropped and prosecutors agreed. The
probation violation also was dismissed.
Residents of Washington Heights Apartments, where the Durousseaus lived
during that time, said some of the couple's fights were over his constant
womanizing. Durousseau would use aliases, such as Chris or Jay, and make
lewd comments to women in the Northside complex.
"He always wanted people to make flicks with him," said Nakkia Green, 28,
referring to pornographic films. Colleny Robinson, 22, told police she
turned down the chance to date Durousseau after he told her he enjoyed
bondage and choking women.
Durousseau returned to jail in April 2002 after being charged with burglary.
That violated his probation, as did his missing multiple sex-treatment
classes while in and out of jail. State probation officials again
recommended he be sentenced to a year.
A jury took eight minutes to acquit Durousseau in the burglary after the
defense convinced them witnesses had identified the wrong person. Versions
vary about what happened the following day, when the probation issues were
heard by Duval County Judge Tyrie Boyer.
Boyer said prosecutors had no witnesses for a hearing and that both sides
recommended he extend the probation rather than put Durousseau in jail.
Prosecutors said they could have made witnesses available. They said they
remained convinced Durousseau was guilty of the burglary and wanted him to
go to jail on either probation violation.
The public defender didn't remember the recommendation but said the judge
was convinced Durousseau shouldn't serve more jail time because he was
acquitted.
In the end, Boyer extended the probation for two years. He also warned
Durousseau to attend his counseling classes.
"Sir, you really need to stay on the straight and narrow as it relates to
this probation," Boyer said. "I know it may be aggravating, but they aren't
going to stop on you. You are just going to have to go every single time to
those classes. You understand?"
"Yes, sir," Durousseau replied.
"OK. That's it. Have a nice day, Mr. Durousseau," the judge said. "They are
going to be releasing you today I presume. You might want to hug and kiss
your lawyer."
It was Oct. 4, 2002. The killing rampage began just before Christmas. Five
more women would die in seven weeks.
jim.schoettlerjacksonville.com, (904) 359-4385
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----
In his own words
From letter written by Paul Durousseau to his wife on Oct. 31, 2002, and
later found by homicide detectives searching his vehicle. The letter is in
its original form.
To: Natoca Durousseau
Open this letter if something should happen to me Paul Durousseau
HI NATOCA, I REALLY NOT KNOW WERE TO START FROM. I LOVE YOU AND THE GIRLS SO
MUCH THAT I AM NOT GOOD FOR YOU. I FOUND MY SELF DOING THINGS I SHOULD NOT
BE DOING NO NOT WITH WOMEN, BUT TAKING FROM OTHER PEOPLE. IT'S SOMETHING
WITH ME NOT YOU AND HOW CAN I AS A MAN HELP MY BABY JASMINE IF I HAVE THOSE
THINGS GOING THOUGHT MY MIND. SO WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS IF ANY THING
SHOULD HAPPEN TO ME GO ON WITH OR LIFE AND TAKE CARE OF YOU AND THE GIRLS.
MAYBE SOME PEOPLE WAS RIGHT ABOUT ME MAN MY MIND IS MESS-UP WITH B/S ... I
HAD TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER AND LET YOU HEAR IT FROM ME YOU WAS RIGHT ABOUT
ONE THING THAT I PAUL DUROUSSEAU COULD NOT TAKE CARE OF YOU LIKE YOU NEEDED
TOO
LOVE ALWAYS PAUL DUROUSSEAU
Bo Raxo
> http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/120703/met_14235803.shtml
>
> Lots of Photo's at the link above,
>
> td
>
>
> Twisted trail of an accused killer
>
> SPECIAL REPORT: There were arrests, acquittals, probation violations,
> suspicions. But Paul Durousseau kept dodging trouble. Now he is charged as
> Jacksonville's worst serial killer.
>
>
> By JIM SCHOETTLER
> The Times-Union
>
> McCalister died during a murder frenzy charged to former cabdriver Paul
> Durousseau, accused of being the city's worst serial killer.
Jacksonville's worst serial killer? Well, only if you go by the
strict definition requiring a cooling off period; he is unlikely to
have the highest body count of any killer in Jacksonville:
On the morning of June 18, 1990, James Edward Pough walked in a GMC
car loan office in Jacksonville, Florida and started shooting. Police
said he was distraught over GMC's repossession of his red 1988
Pontiac. "Pop," as his neighbors called him, started his rampage the
night before by killing a prostitute and her pimp. The next morning,
at the GMC office, he randomly killed eight and wounded five others.
When he saw no one else left alive he turned the gun on himself.