Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Killer dug grave for us, homeless couple say
Suspect in three deaths ‘seemed kind of innocent,’ man says
About six months ago, Paul Junor and his wife, Theresa Dewald, were in their homeless camp by a retention pond off State Road 7 in Plantation when a young man named Nate crashed through the brush and said he wanted to join them.
“He wanted to set up camp,” said Junor, 58, known on the street as Cowboy. “He seemed kind of innocent. And he sure didn’t know anything about being homeless.”
Nate turned out to be 22-year-old Nathaniel Maurice Petgrave, and police say he was far from innocent. Not only is Petgrave suspected of being a serial killer, charged in the deaths of three men, but police say he used the blood of his last victim, found Oct. 27 in Fort Lauderdale, to write a cryptic message that may have indicated his intentions to keep on killing.
At a news conference Wednesday announcing the arrest, interim Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Rick Maglione said Petgrave admitted the killings and told a detective he intended to kill five people in all.
People who live on the streets were not specifically targeted by Petgrave, police said.
Still, Junor and Dewald were left shaken by their encounter with a man who police say has admitted to murder.
On Wednesday, days after police searched Petgrave’s camp for evidence, Junor fought his way through the underbrush and spotted a 4-foot-deep, 5-foot-long trench that looks eerily like a freshly dug grave. “Were we going to be next?” Junor said. “I think it’s possible. I think he dug that grave for me.”
Junor said he saw no signs that the man camping about 50 yards away was violent. “I felt kind of bad for him,” said Junor, who panhandles for cash. “He seemed like a kid who didn’t know anything. When he asked us for beer, I told him to go find his own hustle and do it.”
Dewald, 48, said she remembers Petgrave wanting to trade granola bars for beer, talking about losing his job and an idea he had to teach young children how to manage money.
“I was shocked when the police told me what he’d done,” she said.
Although Petgrave most recently lived on the street, he has family in the area. He appears to have lived at his parents’ home in Lauderhill as recently as July 2016, when officers responded to a fight between Petgrave and his brother, Norris Petgrave Jr., according to an incident report.
Petgrave’s brother picked a fight with him, threw a punch and armed himself with a machete. Petgrave grabbed a baseball bat, the report said.
Norris Petgrave Jr. chased after Nathaniel Petgrave with the machete and swung the dull side at his brother, hurting his arm. At the time, the brothers had lived together in the home for five years, according to the report.
The single-family home, adorned with a bench and bougainvillea bushes, is off the commercial corridor of University Drive and Northwest 44th Street, in a neighborhood of neatly kept houses. A woman who answered the door Friday did not identify herself, and said Petgrave no longer lived there.
Neighbors recalled police responding to the house, where fights where known to break out. But it had been quiet there for months, they said.
Deni Ahumada said she moved into the neighborhood about a year ago and mostly kept to herself. But she recalled police cars at Petgrave’s former home and the ruckus at the time.
“It’s freaky; it’s very scary,” she said of the murders. “I’m in shock. So near. You never know.”
The investigation into the slayings began early Oct. 20, when two homeless men sleeping at an abandoned gas station at 3609 W. Broward Blvd. in Lauderhill were shot, police said.
Larry Scott, 65, died there. A second man, whom police did not identify, was shot in the neck and remains hospitalized in critical condition, Lauderhill Police Chief Constance Stanley said.
The next day, Lauderhill investigators learned of a similar case in Fort Lauderdale, where a man had been shot in the head.
In a store video taken near the shooting, police said Petgrave is seen talking with John Jackson, 50, about 1 a.m. Oct. 21, an encounter recorded by the Dixie Food Store at 110 NW 11th Ave.
Jackson was killed by a single shot to the head fired at close range in the store’s parking lot.
Comparing their cases led to a joint investigation by detectives from Lauderhill and Fort Lauderdale, who quickly identified Petgrave as a suspect, officials said.
The break came when an employee at a Lauderhill center that cares for homeless people recognized Petgrave’s picture taken from the store video. She gave police a name.
A month before the killings began, police said they had confiscated a Ruger P95 9mm handgun from Petgrave that he had been using for target shooting near a CSX railroad access road. The site is south of West Broward Boulevard, west of Interstate 95, at 401 SW 21st Terrace in Fort Lauderdale, according to police reports. But when authorities found he had proper paperwork for the weapon, they returned it.
On Oct. 24, police picked up Petgrave for driving a stolen black Chevy truck. Under questioning, he told police he lived in a camp in the woods near State Road 7 and Sunrise Boulevard and that he’d buried the gun nearby.
Police found Petgrave’s trash-strewn camp and makeshift shelter, where he apparently slept under a number of tarps in an overstuffed recliner. But detectives did not find the Ruger. They did find more than 30 casings identical to those at the murder scenes and paperwork showing Petgrave owned the gun.
The third killing happened Oct. 27 about 10:30 a.m., when the bloodied body of Derick Westley Tucker, 46 — who had been temporarily homeless and sleeping in a Public Storage unit at 1020 NW 23rd Ave. in Fort Lauderdale — was found there.
Next to Tucker’s body: A 9-pound pipe vice, machete and handsaw, all covered in blood. Scrawled in blood on the floor next to Tucker’s body was the message “4 STOP WAIT TIME,” according to an arrest report.
Petgrave thought he’d killed his fourth victim, represented by the number 4 in the message, but he did not know one of the Lauderhill men had survived, Maglione said.
Petgrave was arrested that day.
At the camp Thursday, Junor sat on the edge of the hole he thinks might have been intended as his grave.
“I was never scared of him,” said Junor, who has lived on the street with Dewald for years. “But I’m glad he’s gone.”
Petgrave is being held without bond in Broward County jail on three counts of premeditated murder.