A South Los Angeles man convicted of double-murder, but released on early parole, tied up and strangled his girlfriend to death in her own apartment.
Darryl Lamar Collins, 55, got sentenced to life without parole on March 20th by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge after being convicted of first-degree murder back in February for killing 53-year-old Fatima Johnson on July 2, 2021.
Johnson was a mom of six and grandma of eight who worked at a nursing home and had been sober for eight years while chasing her nursing license. Her daughters and a best friend found her body wrapped in a blanket inside her home. Her wrists and ankles were bound with shoelaces and duct tape, and she had underwear stuffed in her mouth with more tape slapped over it. The cause of death was asphyxia from neck pressure and possible smothering, officials said.
Collins grabbed her cellphone, some jewelry, and her Lexus after the killing, then pawned necklaces and sold the car to score drugs, according to the DA.
This wasn’t his first time. Back in 1995 when he was 24, Collins shot and killed two total strangers in less than two weeks. On September 17th he carjacked and fired two shots at 28-year-old Derrick Reese. Eleven days later, on September 28th, he walked into an Inglewood diner, held up 44-year-old cashier Thomas Weiss at gunpoint, and shot him in the face when the guy didn’t hand over cash fast enough. Collins picked up two consecutive 25-to-life sentences in 1998.
He only served 25 years before California lawmakers tweaked the youthful offender parole rules in 2017, bumping the age cutoff from 23 to 25. Since Collins was 24 at the time of those killings, he became eligible and walked out in 2020.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called the whole thing a textbook example of the risks with early releases for violent offenders. “Darryl Collins took three innocent lives,” Hochman said in the DA’s release. “Today’s sentence isn’t just about punishment, it’s also about protection from this sociopath to ensure he will never walk free again.”
Collins’ parole came less than a year before Johnson’s death, and Hochman noted that without the 2017 law change, the guy would’ve still been locked up.
