A "cool guy" on dating apps who wooed dozens of women has turned out to be a suspected serial killer but, as one of his surviving victims told the New York Daily News this week, he was extremely charming and it would have been hard to pick up on the warning signs.
"There weren’t any issues. Nothing awkward," Zynea Barney said of Danueal Drayton, who she met on the dating app "Plenty of Fish" last November.
Six months later he did a complete turn around and allegedly tried to strangle her, and it turns out her former beau could be a serial killer responsible for several murders.
Last week police arrested Drayton in Los Angeles in connection with the murder of a Queens nurse found dead in her home recently and who he had reportedly been seeing after meeting her on the dating app Tinder, ABC15 Arizona reported.
Drayton claimed to have committed seven murders, police said, and they were investigating his link to the murder of a separate woman and the rape of another.
On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to the charges of rape and attempted murder of a 28-year-old woman who he allegedly held captive July 23 in an apartment in North Hollywood, California, the Daily News said.
Barney told the newspaper that when she first met Drayton he seemed almost perfect – a good listener, charming, impressive vocabulary – so how could she have known he would turn out to be violent?
On June 13, Barney had a huge wake up call.
She met with Drayton for lunch and afterwards they drove around for a bit before stopping at a park, where Drayton said he had left a bag of clothes he wanted to pick up.
The couple got into an argument and that was when he tried to strangle her, she said.
Barney managed to open the car door and throw herself out of the vehicle as three factory workers were passing by.
They pulled Drayton away and called police. He wasn’t arrested, however, and the reasons remain unclear.
Over the next few days Drayton said she would not leave her alone. He threatened her, slashed her car tires and sent her aggressive texts, she said.
Police eventually arrested him June 30 on charges of strangulation and criminal trespass, and his bail was set to $2,000. On July 5, he was released.
The judge reportedly wasn’t aware that Drayton was on probation after a separate harassment arrest earlier this year, The Hartford Courant reported.
"They should have never released him after everything he did," Barney told the Daily News.
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