Slain student's kin say they plan suit

The mother of Imette St. Guillen said her daughter would still be alive if not for the negligence of New York parole officials and the bar owners who hired the convicted felon accused of slaying the 24-year-old Boston native in February, a family spokesman said yesterday.

''If a good system had been in place, he would never have been working in the bar that night, and Imette would be alive," said Christopher Lang, a Boston lawyer and spokesman for the St. Guillen family. ''Maureen misses her terribly. It gets harder every day."

Lang said Maureen St. Guillen and her family plan to file a lawsuit against the state and federal parole board who failed to keep track of Darryl Littlejohn, a Queens bouncer accused of raping and strangling St. Guillen before leaving her body in a Brooklyn lot in February.

The family will also sue the New York State Liquor Authority, according to Lang, and the owners of The Falls, the SoHo bar where St. Guillen was last seen alive after a bartender reportedly asked Littlejohn to escort her from the premises.

The St. Guillens hope that the lawsuits will encourage legislators to reform the New York state parole system and State Liquor Authority, said Joseph Tacopina, the Manhattan lawyer who has been hired by the family to file an array of civil claims before next week.

''Maureen right now is focused on promoting legislative change to find out what flaws there are in the system," Tacopina said in a telephone interview yesterday. ''There were so many cracks that this guy fell through."

Imette St. Guillen, a popular graduate student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was found gagged, wrapped in a blanket and packing tape, hours after she was last seen alone at The Falls about 4 a.m. on Feb. 25.

Littlejohn, 41, who has been convicted seven times on drug and robbery charges and was violating his parole board-imposed curfew by working as a bouncer, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in March. He is being held in the Rikers Island correctional facility. He was also charged last month with kidnapping, assault, robbery, and criminal impersonation in allegedly grabbing a 19-year-old student off the street in Queens in October. Prosecutors say that Littlejohn shoved the woman into a van and punched her before she was able to kick open the vehicle's doors and flee.

St. Guillen, a graduate of Boston Latin and George Washington University, was an honors student at John Jay College in Manhattan when she was killed.

The New York State Liquor Authority concluded an investigation into The Falls for hiring Littlejohn this week and is considering taking disciplinary action, said Bill Crowley, a spokesman for the authority. The bar owners could have their license revoked for hiring a convicted criminal, he said.

Crowley would not comment on the pending lawsuit, because it had not been filed in court.

Anthony Garoppolo, federal chief of probation for the Eastern District of New York, declined to comment on the pending lawsuit yesterday.

Garoppolo has said that federal probation officials lost track of Littlejohn because of human error.

The St. Guillens are demanding tougher parole enforcement and more communication between the federal and state boards, Tacopina said.

Michael and John Dorrian, co-owners of The Falls, did not respond to several calls placed by the Globe.

The Dorrians should have verified Littlejohn's criminal background, Tacopina said.

''They put a predator into the mix there, and ultimately he was in a position to do with he did to Imette," Tacopina said.

Cristina Silva can be reached at csilva@globe.com.