A Bronx dealer was shot to death Monday night (Jan. 7) outside of an apartment building he’s accused of stashing the naked bodies of two women he killed 15 years prior.
Jerodd Watkins 38, died outside of the Murphy Consolidation Houses at about 7: 20 P.M. The killer fired three bullets into the passenger side of Watkins’ GMC SUV, striking him in the head police sources tell the New York Daily News.
Police linked Watkins to the two killings in 2004, which briefly made women in the area think a serial killer was on the loose.
Watkins’ motivations for his killings reportedly weren’t that grand. Watkins first victim Jeanine Faulmino was a 34-year-old homeless prostitute who didn’t pay off a drug debt. She was found by police wearing just socks curled in a fetal position in the building’s staircase.
Seven months later on Aug. 9, 2004, law enforcement found a second prostitute, 32-year-old Diana Almestica strangled in the stairwell of the same building. Watkins and two other suspects were arrested later that month in connection with Almestica’s death. Police think she also owed him money.
The NYPD linked Watkins to Almestica’s killing and charged him with murder. In 2009 he was sentenced to six year for attempted manslaughter but had already served four years behind bars.
Watkins lengthy rap sheet includes years of selling drugs. In a previous letter to his sentencing judge, he said the reason he sells drugs is to provide for his children.
“It was the one thing I could do that would screw everything up. And it did,” he wrote. “Now I’m back in prison, doing the last thing in the world I wanted to do — hurting my kids by being absent, not being able to be there for them at all.”
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