DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A suspect has been linked through forensic evidence to three women who were killed in Daytona Beach between 2005 and 2007, authorities announced Monday.

During a news conference, Daytona Beach Police Chief Craig Capri named the suspect as Robert Tyrone Hayes.

Hayes, 37, is linked to the Daytona Beach killings of LaQuetta Mae Gunther, Julie Ann Green, and Iwana Patton, according to Capri, adding that all were killed with a gunshot wound to the head. 

Hayes has not been charged yet in the deaths of the Daytona Beach women, but he was arrested Sunday for a 2016 Palm Beach County murder, according to Capri. 

Investigators say a road crew worker found 32-year-old Rachael Bey dead three years ago, laying alongside the Beeline Highway in the early morning hours of March 7, 2016. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

Hayes made his first court appearance Monday morning after being arrested on murder charges Sunday. Investigators say he lived about a mile away from where Bey was last seen alive early that morning.

On September 13, 2019, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Fugitive Task Force was able to test a discarded cigarette Hayes had been smoking, and the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement compared the DNA from the Bey and Daytona Beach cases, and they matched.

"We have been able to take what we believe is a serial killer off the streets, and had we not done this, we're pretty sure that he would have killed again," Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a Monday morning news conference.

Daytona Beach's former police chief, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood, on Sunday praised city, county, and state investigators for relentlessly pursuing the serial-killer case using the latest technology for years, allowing them to finally pinpoint a still-unidentified suspect this weekend.

"The message really is you can't outrun us," Chitwood told Spectrum News 13.

A police spokesman would not reveal anything Sunday beyond saying investigators would announce "a major development in the Daytona Beach serial killer case" at the news conference.

Other similarities, investigators said over the years, included the reportedly "risky lifestyles" the women lived, including three of the four victims having prostitution arrests in their criminal pasts.

LaQuetta Mae Gunther, whose body was found Daytona Beach alley in December 2005, was the first woman killed.

Investigators said she was shot in the back of her head. She was found partially naked.

The women killed were:

  • Julie Ann Green, whose body was found by a construction worker in January 2006 on an access road off LPGA Boulevard.

  • Iwana Patton’s body was discovered in woods east of Interstate 95 in February 2006.

  • Stacey Gage's body turned up near an abandoned church less than a mile from Interstate 4 in January 2008, a month after she was killed. She did not have a prostitution record.

It is not known whether Stacey Gage's 2008 death is related to the suspected serial killer case, Capri said. Investigations are still underway, and authorities they say there is a good chance they will be able to tie Hayes to the murder of Gage.