ANGEL’S LEGACY
Beauty slain in 2006 Inspires crimefighters
WHEN KAYLA FULTON of the Nashville Police Department arrives at a crime scene, she often finds herself reflecting on the fate of one of New York City’s most notable murder victims.
Imette St. Guillen’s slaying 10 years ago shook the city — not only because of its savagery, but also because the killing ended the life of a beautiful 24-year-old woman with a bright future.
Like St. Guillen, Fulton studied criminal justice at John Jay College in Manhattan and dreamed of becoming a forensic crimefighter. But only Fulton’s dreams have been realized — a somber truth the recent alum carries with her every day as a rookie crime scene technician.
“I tell myself that I’m going to embody her,” Fulton, 24, told the Daily News. “I use that as fuel.”
St. Guillen was found naked, gagged, bound and wrapped in a blanket in Brooklyn in February 2006. Her legacy lives on in people like Fulton, a Tennessee transplant among the past winners of a scholarship awarded in honor of the slain John Jay graduate student.
The $12,500 annual scholarship was established by the college, The News and the Association for a Better New York to as- sist master’s students who share St. Guillen’s passion for criminal justice reform.
“If it weren’t for her and John Jay and the scholarship, I wouldn’t be here today with the career that I have,” Fulton told The News. “I’m eternally grateful to her.”
A Boston native with a thirst for social justice, St. Guillen was considered among the best and brightest in her master’s program. She was the kind of young person everyone rooted for — brilliant but not boastful, ambitious without a hint of arrogance.
St. Guillen threw herself into her schoolwork at John Jay, where she studied both forensic science and criminal justice. She made the dean’s list in 2004-05. She was scheduled to graduate with honors in the spring of 2006.
Her life was so full of promise, but then came the night of Feb. 24.
St. Guillen hit the town with her best friend, Claire Higgins. The pair, after downing several drinks and getting into a boozy tiff, parted ways just before 3 a.m. St. Guillen ended up at The Falls, a popular SoHo watering hole. It was the last place she was seen alive.
Her body was found dumped in
a desolate stretch of East New York the following day.
Darryl Littlejohn, a violent ex-con who was working as a bouncer at The Falls, was convicted of St. Guillen’s murder and sentenced to life without parole. Now 51, Littlejohn is locked up at the notorious Attica Correctional Facility.
St. Guillen’s unfinished work, meanwhile, has been carried forward by the John Jay College grads who were recipients of her namesake scholarship.
Neda Farshbaf, 32, was selected for the award in 2009. While applying for the scholarship, she noticed that one of the prerequisites was completing an internship. Farshbaf applied to CNN — and roughly six years later, she holds a coveted position in the network’s documentary unit.
“I definitely feel there was a guiding angel in that whole process,” said Farshbaf, who now lives in Atlanta.
During her time at the network, Farshbaf has worked on stories documenting the atrocities in Syria and the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who suffered a spinal cord injury while in a police van last April and died a week later.
Farshbaf gains comfort knowing that her efforts to shine a light on injustice match the ideals St. Guillen dedicated her life to.
“I definitely feel motivated thinking about making her proud and making her family proud,” she told The News. “I genuinely feel that way.”
Winning the scholarship in 2007 gave Kevin Barnes-Ceeney, 45, the resources and confidence to pursue his Ph.D. in criminal justice.
Nine years later, he’s the director of research at John Jay’s Prisoner Reentry Institute.
Barnes-Ceeney’s work has taken him as far as Rwanda, where he’s working on a project focused on how best to reintegrate into society perpetrators of the country’s genocide.
Through it all, he remains mindful of the goals St. Guillen never got the chance to accomplish.
“She had her aspirations to enter into this field and she had real compassion for people who had fallen on the wrong side of the law,” Barnes-Ceeney said. “But that was cut short. “I like to think that I’m trying to continue that work and keep that focus on having dignity and respect for people no matter what terrible things they’ve done.”
All these years later, the senseless murder still shocks the senses. “What happened to her is unfathomable to me,” Barnes-Ceeney said.