Robert Hayes: The Daytona Beach Serial Killer
Introduction
Robert Tyrone Hayes is the man behind one of Florida’s most chilling cold‑case turnarounds – a former criminal justice student and college cheerleader unmasked years later as the “Daytona Beach Serial Killer.” Between late 2005 and early 2006, three women were found shot in the head and dumped nude in out‑of‑the‑way spots around Daytona Beach; a decade later, DNA from a 2016 murder in Palm Beach County and genetic genealogy finally tied those killings to Hayes and brought him to trial.
Early Life and Background
Hayes was born in 1982 and, on the surface, followed a conventional path: he attended Bethune‑Cookman University in Daytona Beach, studied criminal justice, and was known on campus as a cheerleader and seemingly ordinary student. Behind that facade, prosecutors would later argue, he was prowling the city’s margins at night, targeting women involved in sex work and using his knowledge of law enforcement to avoid detection. Police records show that in 2005 he legally purchased a .40‑caliber Smith & Wesson pistol – the same caliber used in the first three murders – just months before the killings began.
Victims and Crime Scenes
The bodies started appearing around Christmas 2005. Laquetta Gunther, 45, was found on December 26 wedged in a narrow gap between an auto parts store and a mostly empty utility building, nude and shot in the head. On January 14, 2006, 34‑year‑old Julie Green was discovered face‑down and naked on a dirt road at a construction site. Six weeks later, on February 24, 35‑year‑old Iwana Patton’s body was located along a dirt road in a remote area, again nude and killed with a single gunshot to the head. Daytona Beach investigators quickly concluded they had a serial killer: same victim type, same apparent sexual context, same execution‑style gunshot, and bodies dumped in isolated spots near the city’s edges.
In December 2007 another woman, 30‑year‑old Stacey Gage, was found decomposed and nude in a wooded area outside nearby Holly Hill after vanishing weeks earlier; she, too, had been shot in the head. Although investigators have long said her death is “eerily similar” to the earlier killings and have named Hayes the prime suspect, they never recovered usable DNA from that scene, and Gage’s case remains officially unsolved. For years, the Daytona murders went cold. Detectives interviewed scores of men who owned .40‑caliber handguns, including Hayes, but they lacked the forensic tools and direct evidence to charge him.
Cold Case and 2016 Murder
The case only broke open because Hayes killed again – this time 200 miles south, and with a different method. On March 7, 2016, the body of 32‑year‑old sex worker Rachel Elizabeth Bey was found partially nude and dumped off Beeline Highway near Jupiter in Palm Beach County; she had been strangled, and her body showed signs of a violent sexual attack. Palm Beach County detectives collected DNA from Bey’s body and preserved it, but it was not until Florida’s genetic genealogy team began re‑examining unsolved homicides that a breakthrough came. Using public family‑tree databases, analysts built a genetic profile that pointed straight at Robert Hayes, who by then was living in West Palm Beach about a mile from where Bey’s body had been dumped and working as a chef.
Arrest and Trials
Once Hayes surfaced as a suspect, investigators placed him under surveillance and collected items he discarded – a beer can and cigarette butt – which yielded DNA that matched the profile from Bey’s killing. That same DNA, when run against evidence from the Daytona Beach crime scenes, matched biological material recovered from at least two of the 2005–2006 victims, binding the crimes together for the first time. In September 2019, Palm Beach County deputies arrested Hayes and charged him with first‑degree murder in Bey’s death, while officials in Volusia County announced he was also their prime suspect in the three “Daytona Beach Serial Killer” murders.
Conviction and Sentencing
Hayes went to trial first in Volusia County. In February 2022, a Daytona Beach jury heard how DNA from the old cases and the Palm Beach homicide, combined with ballistics evidence linking the victims to the same .40‑caliber Smith & Wesson, pointed back to the former criminal justice student. Prosecutors argued that while he was attending classes and cheering on the sidelines at Bethune‑Cookman, he was also luring vulnerable women – most of them sex workers – to secluded locations, forcing or coercing sexual acts, and then executing them with a single shot to the head. Another woman involved in sex work testified that she survived an attack by Hayes, reinforcing the pattern of predation.
After more than eight hours of deliberation, jurors found Hayes guilty on three counts of first‑degree murder with a firearm for the deaths of Gunther, Green, and Patton. The state sought the death penalty, but at the end of the penalty phase the jury could not unanimously agree to recommend execution, forcing the judge to impose three consecutive life sentences instead. Prosecutors and the state attorney publicly stressed that, regardless of the absence of a death sentence, Hayes would die in prison and “will no longer prey on the unsuspecting and vulnerable.”
Separately, Hayes still faces trial in Palm Beach County for the murder of Rachel Bey, where he is accused of strangling her during a sexual assault and dumping her body along the highway. Authorities there have also scrutinized whether he might be tied to other unsolved cases, including Stacey Gage’s killing, though no additional charges have been filed.
Psychological Profile and Themes
Psychologically and behaviorally, Hayes presents a sharp contrast that fascinates both investigators and the public. On one side is the polished exterior: a college student studying how the justice system works, a cheerleader visible at games, later a restaurant worker blending into everyday life. On the other is the pattern prosecutors describe: a man who targeted marginalized women – often those engaged in street‑level sex work – isolated them at the fringes of town, and killed them in ways that stripped them of identity, leaving their bodies nude, face‑down, and exposed. The use of a firearm in the early killings, followed by hands‑on strangulation in 2016, suggests an offender capable of adapting methods while maintaining the same underlying theme: control over vulnerable women whose disappearances he may have believed would stir little urgency.
Aftermath
Taken together, the Daytona Beach and Jupiter cases show a predator who moved with chilling ease between the worlds of higher education and street‑level exploitation, confident that his victims’ lifestyles and the gaps in forensic technology would protect him. It took more than a decade, new DNA tools, and a multi‑county investigation to prove otherwise – and to ensure that Robert Tyrone Hayes, the so‑called Daytona Beach Serial Killer, spends the rest of his life behind bars.
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