Jury: Ex-cheerleader guilty in killings of 3 Florida women
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A former college cheerleader has been found guilty in the deaths of three Florida women who were working as prostitutes more than 15 years ago. Thirty-nine-year-old Robert Hayes of West Palm Beach could now get the death penalty. The killings happened in the winter of 2006, when Hayes was a senior criminal justice major at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach. He was arrested in 2019, three years after another killing led investigators to match DNA from all four crimes. Hayes had been questioned, but not arrested, in the Daytona Beach killings years earlier because he had purchased a .40-caliber handgun similar to the one used against the first three victims.