Man Had Sex With Tinder Date's Corpse After Strangling Victim To Death, Stealing Her Credit Card

A man with an alleged history of murdering people that he meets on dating apps online has been extradited to New York and indicted on Friday, April 1, for the murder of a nurse who he reportedly met on Tinder.

Thirty-one-year-old Danueal Drayton has been formally indicted in New York for the murder of 29-year-old Samantha Stewart in 2018, a nurse who was found dead by her brother on her bedroom floor days after Drayton fled the state toward California, according to Law&Crime.

Drayton, a Connecticut resident who has reportedly confessed to and has been linked to six other deaths of women he met on dating apps, with prior convictions of strangulation and harassment, prompted the judge to refuse to set him bail, People reported.

“This family deserves justice,” District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “This was a brutal crime that makes every person using a dating app fearful.”

Drayton and Smart reportedly went on a date together before they returned to the victim's Queens home, where Drayton strangled and beat her to death before engaging “in sexual conduct with the dead body.”

He then stole her credit cards and fled to California after the victim’s death, where he was caught by police officers days later holding an unnamed woman, whom he reportedly had beaten and raped, hostage in a hotel room in North Hollywood.

Drayton has been imprisoned in California until last week under a rape charge, and will now be facing charges of murder, grand larceny, identity theft, and other crimes related to the killing of Samantha Smart. Officers believe that he uses dating apps as a way of luring his past victims to be alone with him.

“The common denominator in these two cases–one being a murder, one being a rape–is dating websites,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said. “So this individual is known to us and it is believed by us that this individual uses dating websites to meet women and then victimize these women.”

Scheduled to appear in court on May 23, Drayton could spend up to 25 years in prison if convicted of the crime.