New York Police Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea said earlier this week via Twitter that when police captured Drayton in Los Angeles for the killing of Samantha Stewart, a nurse from Queens, he had been holding another woman captive in her apartment. Drayton, 27, who has lived in Hamden and East Haven, has been arrested by New Haven, East Haven and Waterbury police on a variety of charges, including second-degree strangulation, unlawful restraint and violation of a protective order. Police traced Drayton’s white Ford from Stewart’s home to a John F. Kennedy International Airport parking lot, where they found the victim’s AAA card and the suspect’s release papers from a Nassau County choking arrest last month, the newspaper reported. Drayton met Stewart through the online dating app Tinder, according to the New York Daily News.
– He was on probation in Connecticut; eyed as a suspect in a New York murder; and now has been busted across the country for rape and attempted murder. Danueal Drayton offered some other crimes to cops in Los Angeles when he was arrested and charged there last week, per the Hartford Courant: He may be responsible for the deaths of up to seven others. Police aren't sure Drayton, 27, is being truthful about those killings, but they are sure he's wanted for the slaying of 29-year-old Queens nurse Samantha Stewart, who police say Drayton met on Tinder, per the New York Daily News. And authorities believe the woman they say Drayton was holding in a North Hollywood apartment also met him on Tinder, and that he may have used other dating sites to lure victims as well, CBS New York reports. Per the Washington Post, Drayton's brushes with the law date back to at least 2011. Charges against him in Connecticut have included strangulation and harassment, for which he received a year on probation after pleading guilty in March. On June 30, he was arrested for allegedly choking an ex but released without bail on July 5. Stewart was found dead on July 17, strangled in her apartment. Authorities say he bought a plane ticket to California shortly after that and soon set up a date with the woman he's accused of holding in the North Hollywood apartment. Police say Drayton's use of Tinder was linked to both Stewart and to a Brooklyn woman who'd been raped on June 17 and who allegedly knew him from the dating site. "My body did this, not my mind," a police source says Drayton told LA investigators, per the Daily News. Drayton, who's set to appear in California court Monday, will face charges of attempted murder, forcible rape, and false imprisonment by violence, among others.