Police: slain student last seen at SoHo bar

(Lower East Side-WABC, March 1, 2006) (WABC) -- Police have new information tonight on the final hours before the death of John Jay student Imette Saint Guillen. Police say she went to more than one bar and today released the location of the second bar, this one in SoHo.

Also today, her family made a plea for help in finding the killer. Details now from Eyewitness News reporter Marcus Solis live in SoHo.

Sources say it is a credit card transaction that places the victim inside the bar just before 4:00 a.m. and investigators believe that Imette Saint Guillen left the bar by herself, leaving them to believe that her attacker may have confronted her on the street.

The almost endless search by detectives for videotape has moved a few blocks west. A bar on Lafayette street, The Falls, has been identified as the last place Imette Saint Guillen was seen early Saturday.

Earlier the 24-year old had been at Pioneer Bar on the Bowery with a friend. That friend called to check up on Saint Guillen about a half hour after they split up. It's not known how or with whom Saint Guillen went to The Falls. More important is the mystery of who she left with.

Jessica Pierik, Area Resident: "It's usually pretty busy, there's a lot of people around."

Mike Trueblood, Neighborhood Resident: "It's surprising that this is something that happened in this part. Down Bowery and down Canal it gets sketchy."

Hours later Saint Guillen's body would be found dumped in East New York near the Belt Parkway. The victim was wrapped in a commercial grade comforter that police believe may have come from a motel.

The graduate student was naked, bound, her face wrapped with duct tape. She had been raped. Police were tipped to the location by an anonymous call from a pay phone. Her family is now urging anyone with information to come forward.

Alejandra Saint Guillen, Victim's Sister: "If anyone knows anything, the least little thing, something you might have heard someone else saying, you might have heard it just in passing, anything, if you could just please call."

The case now shares a link with another notorious sex crime. The Falls bar is owned by the Dorrian brothers. It was at their namesake bar on the Upper East Side that Robert Chambers met Jennifer Levin in 1986. Her death would lead to him being nicknamed the "Preppy Killer."

Now police are searching for another murderer.

Katherine Mesa: "It's a big eye-opener because there's lot of young girls like me who live in this neighborhood and I think we're all just a little nervous now."

Tomorrow would have been Imette Saint Guillen's 25th birthday. Instead her family is now making funeral arrangements.

Police are urging anyone with any information to contact the Crimestoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.

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