Danueal Drayton, the man accused of using dating apps to meet women who were later attacked, is now speaking from jail. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Drayton said he was responding to voices in his head when he killed Samantha, a 29 year old nurse found dead in her Queens apartment.
Drayton was arrested last week in Los Angeles. Authorities say he sexually assaulted and strangled a woman and held her captive in her Hollywood apartment. He pleaded not guilty to those charges, though he later said he remembers strangling her.
In the Daily News interview, Drayton, 27, said he went on a date with Samantha, took her back to her home and strangled her. “I really liked her. I didn’t want to kill her,” he told the paper. “They told me she had to die.”
He also told the Daily News that he tried to resuscitate her afterward. He said he wanted to be caught and took some of her belongings, explaining that he kept the same phone because he knew police could track it.
According to the Daily News, Drayton has said he committed seven murders since his arrest. Those statements have not been tested in court, and he had not been convicted of any of the killings at the time of this report.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea told The New York Times that it would not be a stretch to think there are other victims. “We need those victims. We need them to come forward for a lot of different reasons,” he said.
Drayton has also been linked to at least one other rape in New York, according to reports, and was previously arrested for choking a former girlfriend.
