SARAH GOODE SLAYING PROMPTS ALLEGED ABUSE VICTIM TO COME FORWARD

Newsday.com/ Mackenzie Issler
8/10/14
Dante Taylor, a 19 year old ex-Marine from Mastic, is charged with the murder of Sarah P.Goode, a 21 year old single mother whose body was found near her Medford home.  Goode, themother of a 4 year old girl, was raped, stabbed and beaten to death on June 7.  The brutalattack started in her car and ended in the nearby woods, not far from her home, where her body wasfound by volunteers.  Suffolk County homicide detectives couldn’t crack the murder caseuntil Nicole Lukas heard about Sarah and decided not to keep her silence any longer and stepforward.  It was attempted rape complaint against Taylor dating to 2011 that led to his July10 arrest in Vero Beach, Florida.  Days later, based partly on DNA evidence, a murder chargewas filed.  Lukas and Taylor met at her friend’s Sweet 16 party.  She remembersdancing and hanging out with Taylor and other local teens on July 9, 2011.  Afterward, she andTaylor exchanged phone numbers.  The next day, he called and asked her to meet with him andhis male friend.  The three ended up in Taylor’s bedroom, where they sat on his bedtalking about 2:30 pm.  Then his friend left, and Lukas said Taylor, then 16, stated touchingher arm and leg.  She said he pushed her down onto the bed and tried to take off herclothes.  She said she resisted and he took a knife from a shelf over his bed and threatenedto kill her, pressing the 6-inch blade against her throat.  He kept saying, ‘I’llkill you’, she said.  She waited until Taylor withdrew the knife and sprang off the bedbut he pushed her against a wall and began hitting her.  When he again forced her onto thebed, she slapped him in the face, causing him to roll over in surprise.  She said she ran outof the room.  When she revealed the attack to her aunt and grandmother later on, they allagreed: for her own safety, she shouldn’t report it.  She hasn’t seen Taylor sincethat day.  Lukas said she didn’t have the courage to report what happened to her whenshe was 18, she was scared and living with her grandmother less than a mile from Taylor’shome.  Taylor has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder and first degree attempted rapeand is being held without bail in the Suffolk County Jail.  He faces life in prison ifconvicted.
(New York)