After pleading guilty to the 1st Degree Murder of 70 year-old Paulette Larwinsk, a Maricopa County man, Jadyn Curtis was sentenced to natural life in prison.
Curtis, age 22, also received a consecutive life sentence for Sexual Assault, and consecutive 21-year sentences for Kidnapping and Armed Robbery, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Law enforcement officers were called to a strip mall near Indian School Road and Drinkwater Boulevard on June 24, 2018. A 70-year-old victim was found with obvious signs of a physical and sexual attack.
According to authorities, the woman frequently slept on a patio at the building and was known to many in the area. Investigators were able to use evidence from the scene and surveillance video from the businesses at the building to determine how the suspect attacked the victim with a large rock before pulling her body into a breezeway where he raped her. A few days later the victim died from her injuries at the hospital and police asked the public for help identifying her killer.
Tips from the public helped investigators to identify Curtis, a former employee of a business near the building where the attack happened. The defendant’s DNA was a match to evidence found at the murder scene.